Just got done reading about the iPhone and it looks like Jobs just laughed at everything Palm has said cannot be done.... In other words, everything we've been asking them for over the past few years. Looks like Jobs was listening instead of laughing....
1) OS Stability - This thing has OS X on it. I doubt you are going to be able to load MAC apps on it - but OS X will give the iPhone the rock solid stability we've been asking for and the framework to add future hardware features without undermining the OS stability. Third party apps are not going to crash this bad boy because OS X has the protected OS memory that I've griped the POS has lacked for years.
2) Multitasking - I never really understood the concept of multitasking on a PDA or smartphone. Then I saw Jobs playing music in the iPod app, take a call, switch to a picture, mail it the guy, then hangup and have the phone take him right back to the part of the song he left the iPod in. I think iPhone is the first phone to figure out multitasking in a useful way.
3) WIFI - This thing AUTOMATICALLY switches from EDGE to WIFI when a WIFI network comes into range to save battery life and save data usage fees.
4) Form factor - This thing is only slightly wider and longer than the Treo but is half the width at .46". The sacrifice is a removable battery and QWERTY keyboard. I'll ditch the removable battery if voice time is five hours and automatic WIFI switch saves battery as advertised. I am still out to jury on the touch keyboard but Jobs point about a UI changing from app to app is well taken.
5) Integrated/included applications - No more buying 3rd party apps to get an MP3 player, MPEG4/AVI viewer, Bluetooth 2.0, Safari tabbed browser, better email app, etc. And being all Apple software, this stuff all integrates with each other. This is what the average consumer WANTS. No having to scour the internet doing research to buy and load everything they need. Instant power user!
6) Upgraded memory - There is 4GB and 8GB version available. That's right - no buying an SDHC card and then hacking the OS to get it to work.
7) Price - For all those people who said that including all of the aforementioined features, in a CONVERGED device, would make it unaffordable, iPhone laughs at your being blindly apologetic for Palm. With a two year contract, 4GB version is $499 and the 5GB is $599. And there is no extra purchase $200-$400 dropped on an SD card and 3rd party applications.
Drawbacks -
1) Cingular - We all know their data plan is much more than Sprint but they did say that a 3G version will be available at some point in the future.
2) Non-business - This is being targetted at non-business users as not having support for Exchange is going to be the one - and only - big sigh of relief that Palm and Blackberry can have from this bomb. I also heard no mention of being able to integrate Office documents. But you know there will be future versions.
Ditch the Resource Defense
Many apologists have made excuses for Palm not having the resources to deliver the above features. I remember Sega and Atari complaining about that when they couldn't compete with Sony's development or marketing for the Playstation. The bottomline line is that such excuses are purely reserved for companies that are pushed out of a market and into bankruptcy. That's just a cold hard fact. If Palm hadn't made the decision to relinquish control of the POS by spinning it off to PalmSource, maybe they would've had the resources to continue development of POS over the last 2 1/2 years that Apple spent drawing their plans against them.
Hope for Palm?
They did just buy Garnet and will undoubtably be trying to update and stabilize it - especially after the iPhone demo. But keep in mind that a lot of their OS engineer resources went with PalmSource. It would be nothing short of a miracle if they could transform Garnet into an iPhone like platform over a year or so. Maybe that's what Jeff Hawkins is working on. They better pray that Apple doesn't release an business centric version in the meantime.
Maybe Palm is just going to market Windows Mobile from here on out and let Microsoft worry about providing an OS to compete with iPhone. Maybe Ed Colligan will reconsider his laughing at the iPhone and beg Apple to package iPhone software on a Treo. And maybe, just maybe, the 700p firmware update will come out before the iPhone.
And BTW, Palm introduced the 750v or something at CES. It is GSM without an antenna.:shake:
1) OS Stability - This thing has OS X on it. I doubt you are going to be able to load MAC apps on it - but OS X will give the iPhone the rock solid stability we've been asking for and the framework to add future hardware features without undermining the OS stability. Third party apps are not going to crash this bad boy because OS X has the protected OS memory that I've griped the POS has lacked for years.
2) Multitasking - I never really understood the concept of multitasking on a PDA or smartphone. Then I saw Jobs playing music in the iPod app, take a call, switch to a picture, mail it the guy, then hangup and have the phone take him right back to the part of the song he left the iPod in. I think iPhone is the first phone to figure out multitasking in a useful way.
3) WIFI - This thing AUTOMATICALLY switches from EDGE to WIFI when a WIFI network comes into range to save battery life and save data usage fees.
4) Form factor - This thing is only slightly wider and longer than the Treo but is half the width at .46". The sacrifice is a removable battery and QWERTY keyboard. I'll ditch the removable battery if voice time is five hours and automatic WIFI switch saves battery as advertised. I am still out to jury on the touch keyboard but Jobs point about a UI changing from app to app is well taken.
5) Integrated/included applications - No more buying 3rd party apps to get an MP3 player, MPEG4/AVI viewer, Bluetooth 2.0, Safari tabbed browser, better email app, etc. And being all Apple software, this stuff all integrates with each other. This is what the average consumer WANTS. No having to scour the internet doing research to buy and load everything they need. Instant power user!
6) Upgraded memory - There is 4GB and 8GB version available. That's right - no buying an SDHC card and then hacking the OS to get it to work.
7) Price - For all those people who said that including all of the aforementioined features, in a CONVERGED device, would make it unaffordable, iPhone laughs at your being blindly apologetic for Palm. With a two year contract, 4GB version is $499 and the 5GB is $599. And there is no extra purchase $200-$400 dropped on an SD card and 3rd party applications.
Drawbacks -
1) Cingular - We all know their data plan is much more than Sprint but they did say that a 3G version will be available at some point in the future.
2) Non-business - This is being targetted at non-business users as not having support for Exchange is going to be the one - and only - big sigh of relief that Palm and Blackberry can have from this bomb. I also heard no mention of being able to integrate Office documents. But you know there will be future versions.
Ditch the Resource Defense
Many apologists have made excuses for Palm not having the resources to deliver the above features. I remember Sega and Atari complaining about that when they couldn't compete with Sony's development or marketing for the Playstation. The bottomline line is that such excuses are purely reserved for companies that are pushed out of a market and into bankruptcy. That's just a cold hard fact. If Palm hadn't made the decision to relinquish control of the POS by spinning it off to PalmSource, maybe they would've had the resources to continue development of POS over the last 2 1/2 years that Apple spent drawing their plans against them.
Hope for Palm?
They did just buy Garnet and will undoubtably be trying to update and stabilize it - especially after the iPhone demo. But keep in mind that a lot of their OS engineer resources went with PalmSource. It would be nothing short of a miracle if they could transform Garnet into an iPhone like platform over a year or so. Maybe that's what Jeff Hawkins is working on. They better pray that Apple doesn't release an business centric version in the meantime.
Maybe Palm is just going to market Windows Mobile from here on out and let Microsoft worry about providing an OS to compete with iPhone. Maybe Ed Colligan will reconsider his laughing at the iPhone and beg Apple to package iPhone software on a Treo. And maybe, just maybe, the 700p firmware update will come out before the iPhone.
And BTW, Palm introduced the 750v or something at CES. It is GSM without an antenna.:shake: