Pre week is here, so that means its time for all the tech pundits to strap on their thinking caps can come up with provocative things to write about the Palm Pre. There are two camps that these writers can jump into that will be sure to rile the masses: the Pre will succeed and prove a worthy challenge to Apple and RIM, or the Pre will fail and Palm will see its last days. Over at ZDNet they’re expecting a homerun, and PC World doesn’t anticipate much success for Palm.
We’ll try our best to play the reasonable devil’s advocate along the way, and we’ll start with the bad: PC World. To boil it down, their five points are as follow...
5. Despite successes of the past, Palm of today is not the same Palm that brought us the Palm Pilot or even the Treo. PC World says, “Palm is effectively, a start-up.” Things can go wrong, despite all the fresh blood. Of course, the fresh blood is what has brought us a device as revolutionary as the Pre (and it was fresh blood that brought us the Palm Pilot and the Treo), so despite the missteps that fresh blood can bring, it was needed.
4. Users today won’t think much of multi-tasking on their phones. While everybody but the iPhone supports multi-tasking, without having been able to truly leverage its full capabilities people just won’t be able to fully comprehend what to do with it. This assumes that users are not smart enough to fully leverage the capabilities of webOS, and with how dead simple Palm has made it, it’s hard do believe that would be the case.
3. On a similar note to #5, the new blood in Palm does not have the same experience with developers that Old Palm or even Apple today has. Without a strong developer base there won’t be enough applications to justify getting the Pre over something like an iPhone of Blackberry.
2. In a stretch, the slide-out keyboard was a bad call. Apparently people don’t want a compact device with the best of both the iPhone and BlackBerry/Treo hardware worlds. Whodathunk?
1. The biggest and most relevant point of all: Palm just doesn’t have the cash to compete. The assumption is that even if Palm makes all the Pre phones they possibly can, but still can’t meet demand (that’s bad?) and can’t capture market share to gain third-party developers.
So, that’s PC World’s take. Ready for ZDNet’s positive spin?
5. Palm has experience building the ecosystem of software. Much more so than any other mobile platform, Palm has worked with third-party developers until the cows came home. Only problem is, we’re working with a whole new platform right now and the SDK hasn’t even been made public.
4. The Pre is not the iPhone, and carriers like that. We all know that AT&T has (at least for now) the exclusive in the states on the iPhone, and everybody else is looking for a phone to compete. Moreso than any phone in the last two years, the Pre has been hailed by the media as that phone, and Sprint is pleased as punch to be the exclusive launch partner. So excited is the mobile industry by the Pre that even Verizon (despite the BlackBerry Storm) and AT&T (despite the iPhone) both want the Pre and other webOS devices on their networks.
3. webOS development is easy as pie, and developers like pie. With the SDK application development environment centered around HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, developing for the Pre will not only be easy, but it will be easy for the tens of thousands of experience web developers already out there. Unlike the iPhone (Objective C) and Android (Java), very little specialized experience will be needed to develop a lean and powerful application. There are, of course, two problems. The first is that there’s only so much you can do with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Developers are going to want deeper native access so they can code more powerful applications. Second is the limited deployment of the Mojo SDK. Eventually it will go public, but for now only approved developers are getting it, which means there will be fewer applications in the App Catalog.
2. Standing in stark contrast to PC World’s #2, ZDNet thinks that the combination slide-out QWERTY keypad and the full touchscreen is 100% win. The full screen is great for reading and web browsing, whereas the physical keyboard is great for entering text with ease. While the sliding design is a compromise between the two, all compromises come with parts that people are bound to not like: it makes the device thicker and generally results in a smaller screen and keyboard (or a relatively large device, like the G1).
1. Multi-tasking. Sure, all of the Pre’s competitors (iPhone excluded) support multi-tasking out of the box, but none have found so elegant a solution to managing multiple applications. The cards metaphor utilized so effectively by webOS combined with the unobtrusive notifications are so reminiscent of desktop applications that users will feel right at home.
There you have it, five points against and five points for the Palm Pre. Give it a few months and we’ll have an idea of which side was right. But you know who we’re pulling for.
Thanks to no1smartphone and clevin in our forums for the tips!
Comments
It's not uncommon for new tech to generate polarized reviews. Check out this old review of the iPhone: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug-on-the-iphone
Wow...this article uses amazingly familiar language, too! I honestly think people write just to gamble on the 50/50 chance that they can call themselves visionary later on. I really hope that the anti-Pre camp is found to be just as wrong as this author was about the iPhone! Thanks for sharing this!
So, how'd that merger between Nokia and Motorola work out?
The palm pre is going to be the first in a line of devices spanning several generations of gadgetry. Web OS is Palm's baby and it will only get better as it goes I'm sure.
Let us all remember how pissed off customers were at Apple once the glam wore off on the iphone. Once they started seeing that it couldn't some basic things, along with all of the bugs in the software and/or firmware people were very irritated. It took Apple a year to really make the iphone to the point is today. Palm can learn from Apple's mistakes (hopefully) and avoid some stupid decisions.
Derek, it's not really clear in the five-point lists what is said by whom. what is pcworld/zdnet, and what is you? maybe you can make it more clear.
PC world:
We’ll try our best to play the reasonable devil’s advocate along the way, and we’ll start with the bad: PC World. To boil it down, their five points are as follow...
ZDNet's:
So, that’s PC World’s take. Ready for ZDNet’s positive spin?
No offense but it looks pretty damn clearly who's opinion is what once you read the thing.
No offense but it's pretty damn clear that you're wrong.
this is a quote from the article.
this is ofcourse the pc-world list (duh), but in bold is what I think is added by Derek.
4. Users today won’t think much of multi-tasking on their phones. While everybody but the iPhone supports multi-tasking, without having been able to truly leverage its full capabilities people just won’t be able to fully comprehend what to do with it. This assumes that users are not smart enough to fully leverage the capabilities of webOS, and with how dead simple Palm has made it, it’s hard do believe that would be the case.
So you see? as asked by me in my OP: what is pc-world and what is Derek? the first time I read it wasn't clear that Derek added comments. And looking at reactions I can see I'm not the only one.
I had the same confusion with the PC World section. 5 and 4, especially.
It might help to have the author's comments in italics so they are obviously different from the quoted text.
I think the biggest factor will be when the GSM version comes out. At that point, there will be a huge upswing.
Palm has a history of clustereffing things (Cobalt, anyone? Foleo debacle? OS licensing?(see Sony, who made superior devices but couldn't fade the jacked up licensing fees, while WinMo was basically giving it away.)
This is not some "new Palm". The senior execs are the same as the Treo days, and they know how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
In the end, the development of apps on WebOS needs to mirror/exceed what is happening on the iPhone. That will be the true decided.
Multi-tasking is huge, no matter what anyone says. Removable battery is critical. A physical keyboard is a requirement for heavy email and texters (sorry but I know a lot of iPhone users, and they don't email/text/IM even one third the amount of people with BB/WinMo plus a physical keyboard.
This is going to be big. Too many Apple Fanboys are spending time dissing it, which is a sure sign of success.
Well said.
Cobalt can't be pinned on Palm, directly. That the Palm OS was split-off into its own, separate company, PalmSource, perhaps, but Palm proper had nothing to do with Cobalt.
You are right about the Foleo, but Microsoft under-cutting the competition way, way past their ability to compete is the Microsoft way of DOing business.
OMG, I was really pissed when I read that PC-wtf article! (OK, breathing now.) I really felt that so much of what that clown was saying was about Palm itself. OK, yes, I know that that's obviously a factor for the future, but his title was "Five Reasons Why the Palm Pre Will Fail" (or somesuch). His whole article was totally Palm-bashing, as there isn't much to knock about the Pre itself, and he knew it.
I'll have to contact that circus that's missing it's clown and let them know where to look.
I'm hoping Sprint can keep the ball rolling long enough to provide the cash for Palm to release an unlocked GSM version. I currently own a 3G iPhone and an unlocked/unbranded Palm Treo Pro. I prefer the form factor of the Treo Pro but the WinMo OS is tedious. I'll be selling the 3G iPhone and using the Treo Pro until the unlocked GSM Pre comes out. I wish they'd released on AT&T. Those of us who travel outside the USA would have liked that.
Palm has the advantage of knowing what are mistakes and what aren't. Like the original PalmOS was designed only for a fairly low resolution of 160x160, but they then had to adapt that number through various revisions to different screens, and add color. The point of using HTML and CSS is that web developers ALREADY deal with a variable display area, not all web users have Apple Cinema displays, and some web users view the web on relatively small 8 inch netbook screens, which doesn't count the mobile users.
It's likely that Apple has locked in the screen to HVGA and if they ever need to change that for a follow-up device it will be very hard to get 30,000 applications to rewrite their Objective C code to redo their layout. WebOS will already be running on HVGA and QVGA by the end of the year, and web developers can deal with that.
The Pre's resolution already is Half VGA (360 x 480). Quarter VGA (240 x 320) only makes sense for a tiny texting device that I seriously doubt they'll make.
Hopefully Palm will soon announce a full-on media phone aimed smack-dab at the iPhone's heart, boasting Widescreen VGA (800 x 480) or at least standard VGA (640 x 480). Then, nixing the physical keyboard entirely would make sense, as that phone's raison d'etre would be media.
Iphone was a hit because it was a world phone.
Open it to GSM and USA Tmobile 3G and watch them sell as much as the iPhone. Remember up to a quater of iPhone sold were not registered to ATT.
Sprint is the worst cell provider in the world. There is a reason people are not with Spirit. I fear they will loose so much and think people don't like their phones. Palm has always made their phone open to all carriers. I think it was a big mistake going with Sprint. Time will tell.
Palm and Sprint go WAY back. Sprint took first crack at the Treo 600, 650 and the Centro. They were the only carrier to get the (unfortunate) Treo 850 and the first to pick up the Treo Pro.
iphone was a hit because it merged an iPod with a phone and added a few bells and whistles. The number of people buying iPhones because they are worldphones is minimal.
People that travel have lots of options. Roaming internationally with your US based GSM is probably the worst of those options. Renting a phone is not much more than just renting a sim and tolerating GSM echo full time is not worth what minimal savings one would reap by marrying a world phone full time.
Is anyone else sick & tired about the slider keyboard when used in the same conversation with screen size? Sure, the Pre's screen is SLIGHTLY smaller than the iPhone. But how big is the iPhone's screen when you are using that massive virtual keyboard. You can only see a few lines of what you have typed at best! When I type an email on my phone, I expect to see what I've written without having to scroll around the screen like crazy. It's all about efficiency! I can deal with the slightly smaller screen and the somewhat thicker phone in my pocket.
I'm gonna love this phone. It'll be all about fun for a while and once the app store is fully loaded, then it will be all about how this phone will make my life easier. I'm looking at this as another 2 year investment, even though with Sprint I'll be able to upgrade after 12 months.
Someone above mentioned that Sprint is the worst carrier, a sentiment I hear frequently in tech podcasts and blogs. I would say Sprint's available hardware over the years may have been lackluster, but I have to say in my experience, particularly since the rollout of EVDO, SPrint has been a great carrier for me. I travel all over the continental US performing and I'd say about 90% of the places I'm in (And I'm in some really remote/rural places many times) have EVDO access. That means I get very decent broadband internet with my Treo 700p tethered to my Macbook most of the time. I have mobile broadband and am streaming video and occasionally video iChatting through much of the way down the 5 from Northern to southern CA, for example. You couldn't pay me to switch from Sprint to AT&T, as much as I am an Apple supporter. I don't think their 3G network can compare (currently), and the equivalent family plan for me to get two lines of iPhone service would be at least 50 dollars more a month. Personally, I'm sold on the Pre. On the list to get two for the wife and myself on Saturday, and very excited about webOS.
They the worst in customer service surveys, but truth be told, they are not too far behind #1 in most surveys and as a rule, the entire industry is pretty brutal. But if you're looking at the ratings, it's sort the champion having a grade of 59 and Sprint has a 57, both are miserable failures for quality and treating customers right.
They've been losing market share over time. TMobile beats or equals them for value. AT+T are very big and can leverage their dominance in other services (telephone, cable and internet) to create packages that small Sprint can't keep up with.
I have been with Sprint for 8+ years (and all the phones have been Palms), and I have had next to no problems. (I'm only qualifying it because I have a horrible memory!) Whereas this guy that I work with has Verizon.... and just LOVES Verizon .... and Verizon is the best .... and you should switch to Verizon ..... etc etc blah blah blah. Yet he's the only person I know who's regularly on the phone with them, about this problem or another with the network (mostly). I can't WAIT to flash my Pre in his face!!! Him and his BB Storm .... oooooh!! HA!
Chodaboy, thanks.
Colonel Kernel, PalmSource, Palm - there's all the same to me. They both blew it. PalmSource and Cobalt was a fiasco - build an OS, and never have it implemented on ANY device...despite being out there for two years.
Shadelo, Sprint is not the worst carrier by a longshot. I am surprised by the continual Sprint bashing. They are one of the best in terms of coverage and performance, esp. on the data side. They are absolutely the best on price, esp. when combining voice and data. I've used them all - Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and they all pale in comparison. True, 10 years ago, there were some metro areas with coverage gaps (see Chicago), but all that has been addressed a long time ago. Sure, the customer care reps can be a pain, but that's par for the course with any carrier. (I shouldn't need to contact customer care anyway. Sprint's online account management (which they implemented last year) is better than any other -activate and swap out phones with no human intervention.
I agree they should get it on GSM asap...it will be huge.
The great thing about WebOS is the sizing issues go away...so other hardware (tablets, netbooks, etc.) could run it, and the apps could adapt quite easily. Veery smart architecturally. Now, people say html, css, and javascript is limiting, but quite frankly, if anyone can remember back to the mid 90's, everyone was putting javascript as just a stop-gap, to be replaced by "real" java. Close to 15 years later, it's still going strong. Ajax, anyone? Don't underestimate what clever developers can do with "limited" tools. And when Palm provides the SDK and some deeper level hooks/functions, it will only get better.
This is a case of good enough being just what the doctor ordered.
As soon as PalmSource was spun-off and Palm was renamed PalmOne back in 2003 it became apples and oranges. Saying they're the same "to [you]" is silly.
PalmSource's Palm OS 6, Cobalt, for what ever reason (I can't find why) was a dud. PalmSource came back with version 6.1, but it still wasn't good enough. It was rejected by everybody, not just PalmOne. Then PalmSource changed their minds and began working on their Linux OS, leaving the rest of the Palm OS world hanging.
So that albatros was absolutely not hung around PalmOne's neck. That they would go on to hang several around their own neck in the years to come is a separate issue.
[EDIT: Eh, I misused the term, albatros. My point was that Palm is not to blame for another company's failure.]
Just a reminder: the iPhone multitasks perfectly well. You can start a download, pop over to iTunes, play some music, answer a phone call, hop out to look something up on the web and email it off to the person you're talking to, the hang up, have your music fade back in, and go check out that just-finished-downloading app.
(And on HSPA, you can do the above thanks to simultaneous voice and data).
The huge elephant in the iRoom is Apple not allow 3rd party applications to multitask. Which is, of course, why there's confusion and why other platforms make fun of the iPhone at parties :(
Otherwise, excellent devil's advocacy!
Dieter, Derek,
I am not able to send any PMs - I tried to send Derek one but it didn't go, hence this comment - and I am not able to start a new thread.
Is there something wrong with my account?
Thanks.
I am not able to start any new thread, either. Even if it's intentional, it's still odd.
Here is my thoughts on the piece. The pre will succeed on its gains in technology and innovation. It does not have to be an iphone. It is palms trophy. But here the part that scares me that NO one has addressed. Palm is starting off with a low stock on opening day and there are no limits on how many you can buy. I checked with sprint yesterday. What do you do if someone comes up and buys them all out. Its like ticket scalpers...the good people will be left without. I know I won't be able to get one. I hoping my friends will be able to.
It not a failing as a innovator, its failing in marketing.
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