A Look at Palm's Latest OS

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/a-look-at-palms-latest-os/?src=twr

by donohoe • 16 years ago

47 43 16 years ago

gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com

teeohhem• 16 years ago

Great OS, but it came to market too late. Not to mention WebOS was half broken when it was released. It STILL does not have voice recording capabilities, which eliminates a ton of app-potential. I love it...but it is too little, too late, Palm.

barkingcat2• 16 years ago

The palm pre has an app called zocoder that can act as a voice / sound recorder

The apis have changed a lot, perhaps since you last looked?

barkingcat2• 16 years ago

Correction, the app is called zcorder

http://www.precentral.net/zcorder-brings-voice-recording-web...

It can't record phone calls though, but I imagine that was some sort of security precaution on the part of palm.

meowzero• 16 years ago

I don't think it came to the market too late. It had a lot of potential to be a solid #3 competitor in the mobile space behind Android and iPhone. I think their main problem was their crappy hardware they put the OS on.

glhaynes2• 16 years ago

I'd say it came to the market too late to not have huge marketing behind it. I bet we'll see Windows Phone 7 which is far later do much better (at least in terms of market share/units shipped). Yeah, crappy hardware hurt badly, too.

zandorg• 16 years ago

Don't forget RIM and Blackberry in that list.

skymt• 16 years ago

Are you sure the past tense is appropriate? HP just spent a bit over a billion dollars to buy webOS; I'd be shocked if we don't see a major push next winter at the latest.

camiller2• 16 years ago

I think it would be better to say it was incomplete. What shipped worked quite well and did what it was supposed to do, but there was a lot more functionality that should have been there (voice dial for example). As meowzero says, their real problem was the quality of the hardware, it is probably the most fragile phone on the market.

kenjackson• 16 years ago

It's timing to market was just fine. But two issues killed it, IMO:

1) The SDK took way too long to come out. I was ready to do some dev work on it. But by the time it came out, I had passed on it. SDKs must be ready at device launch, and the app store must ship with the device.

2) The advertising was horrible. The Pre should have been a huge seller with Sprint customers, but many didn't even know about it.

chrismealy• 16 years ago

Looks like they reinvented HyperCard for 2010. I love it.

henry81• 16 years ago

I have a Palm Pre.. I got one early on, was a huge fan, but now I fully believe the platform is dead. All you ever hear about is iPhone or Android. That aside, the Palm experience totally sucks. It would be amazing if the phone didn't freeze on me while trying to view a webpage and listen to an MP3 at the same time. No, that's asking too much

megaman8212• 16 years ago

I don't understand, this article is talking about the future of Palm devices. You don't think a faster OS and newer hardware will fix a couple of freezes when multitasking?

billybob• 16 years ago

The question is "who will they fix them FOR?" If the parent poster's experience is typical and nobody cares about this OS, improvements to it are irrelevant.

Personally, I'd like to see Palm OS stay in the fight. I like the stack UI concept they discussed here, and anyway, competition is always good.

wazoox2• 16 years ago

I have a Pre plus, uptime is in weeks (out of updates, I had to reboot it only once in 6 months), and the interface is really far ahead for multitasking, and I multitask a lot with it; mp3 + web + contacts + an app or two all the time, and it rarely hiccup if ever.

hexley• 16 years ago

Umm, don't mean to burst your bubble but the iPhone could do all that from day 1, sans "multitaskin"g. Is this word now becoming as meaningless as "bricked"?

irons• 16 years ago

As difficult a situation as Palm is in, I was reading that article thinking Nokia is in far worse shape. WebOS remains just a promising also-ran next to iOS, Blackberry, Android, and presumably WP7, but MeeGo doesn't even rate mentioning, and Symbian is a walking corpse.

iuyhgtfvgbhjn3• 16 years ago

90% of potential cell phone customers aren't looking for a smartphone, they don't currently have any sort of phone and guess who makes all the cheap waterproof rugged phones.

hint - the next billion customers don't live near Apple stores.

mikedouglas• 16 years ago

You'd be surprised. Worldwide mobile phone ownership is up to 5 billion[0]. Meanwhile, much of the first world has already transitioned to smartphones.

If you wanted to jump on the cheap phone trend, you're ten years late. Whatever margins existed once are now gone. Nokia, the king of cheap phones, just fired their CEO and replaced him with a software guy from Microsoft. Apple, HP and Blackberry know exactly what market their fighting over.

[0] http://www.poder360.com/article_detail.php?id_article=4704

sandGorgon2• 16 years ago

You are wrong - the next billion (or two!) live next door to China, from where we are seeing the emergence of the first sub $200 (full, unlocked price) phones this month [http://www.priceindia.in/tv/spice-mi-300-price-%E2%80%93-che...]

That price figure is going to fall way, way lower once the Android supporting Mediatek chipsets enter full production [http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners-semicon...]

I predict $100 Mediatek-powered Android smartphones by summer 2011, flooding the Asian market.

rimantas• 16 years ago

hint: you don't make much money selling dumbphones, no matter market share.

dagw• 16 years ago

I recently needed a second phone for work and bought a cheap Symbian phone, and I have to say was very positively surprised. Half the price of the cheapest android phone, MUCH better battery life, really easy to use for calling and texting, yet still has wifi, GPS, browser etc if you ever really need them. In fact I'm starting wonder to if cheap symbian phone plus iPod touch (or Android equivalent) isn't a better overall solution than buying the latest high-end smartphone.

blub4• 16 years ago

It looks like Nokia is the next to die after Microsoft's demise three years ago.

bad_user• 16 years ago

I think the biggest battles in the smartphone market are yet to come.

I have an iPhone 3GS and I love it, and while the iPhone is considered the best smartphone yet I see multiple problems with it ...

     - piss-poor battery life ... yes, I recharge it at night but there are days 
       when I forget about it ... the other Symbian-based smartphone I have 
       can last for 3 days - basically I'm not using the iPhone as a phone 
       (too unreliable)

    - no replaceable battery

    - the UI paradigm is lacking in areas Microsoft / WebOS / Android seem 
      to address ... those app icons are taking valuable screen estate without 
      much usefulness 

    - valuable applications aren't properly integrated with iOS ... I have the    
      following apps: Skype, YMessenger, Twitter and Facebook; and none 
      of them are saving contact info in my iPhone's contacts. This is one area 
      Windows Mobile 7 seems to be addressing

    - the notifications are really fucking disruptive ... it 
      interrupted my TowerMadness game multiple times :)

    - for developers you need OS X / Xcode for development, 
      and this can be a PITA. WinMo7 probably has the best developer tools 
      available.

    - iOS has Game Center, but Microsoft has the XBox console market and 
      XBox Live upcoming in WinMo 7. Depending on their implementation, 
      the XBox Live integration can be groundbreaking.

    - WinMo7 will probably have the best Office integration you can get on a 
      smartphone.

And I don't own an Android phone, but I see lots of fragmentation problems and poor management of the marketplace.

Bottom line being: lots of areas where iOS / Android could be improved, lots of room left for competition.

Don't count on Microsoft / Nokia being dead, yes big corporations are rigid and have a hard time changing directions, but they still have lots of resources, lots of talent and the duty to reinvent themselves when the shit hits the fan.

vladk• 16 years ago

Palm/HP is in a tough spot, but it's possible for them to go up with a bit of luck.

They need mindshare, solid hardware, and apps. The 3 are codependent. Good hardware and apps help mindshare, and having market interest and a good phone attracts app makers. If they mix their timing just right they could come in at third place behind apple and google.

They are doing good things right now on the app front. More and more good iPhone games are coming to WebOS. HP is having a lot of their software engineers spend a bit of time writing for WebOS as a sort of 20% project.

If they can get an exciting headset (not just good, exciting), and a marketing campaign that puts it in enough impulse buying hands, then win those users over with webOs + good app selection, they have a chance.

However, if they release a half hearted handset with little marketing, their base wont' expand and it will slowly but surely fall into obscurity.

mattmaroon• 16 years ago

Yeah, I love my Pre, but the hardware already feels dated. It's crazy how much progress is being made in mobile devices every year now, reminds me of desktops in the mid 90s. You buy one and feel like it's out of date a month later.

What really killed them was launching exclusively on Sprint. With hardware evolving as fast as it does, by the time it made it to Verizon and AT&T it was just no longer compelling. While I actually love Sprint, there are a lot more people on Verizon and AT&T.

I really think market share will take care of any lack of apps. More advanced hardware, a more attractive design, and a better marketing campaign would take care of that. I think HP has a real shot, though maybe my love of WebOS has me biased.

pkaler• 16 years ago

HP/Palm have one possible advantage: bundling for the enterprise. Give away a Palm phone with each purchase of a PC by corporate accounts.

Apple essentially does this in the consumer market. MacBooks and the iPod Touch get bundled together during back-to-school season.

mattparcher• 16 years ago

Not a bad idea. Of course, corporate phones require significant support and build-out of infrastructure, whereas a consumer device just works, but RIM made a similar move with their buy-one-get-one-free offer in Spring 2009 for Blackberries, and it apparently helped to boost their (consumer) market share by 15%:

http://news.cnet.com/blackberry-curve-outsells-the-iphone-3g...

jrockway• 16 years ago

I don't think the enterprise cares about cost; they care about control. For example, my work blackberry requires a 10 character password (that's not qwertyuiop, apparently), and they disable changing the wallpaper, ringtones, use of the camera, and sending text messages.

Why? Because it's a checkbox, and clicking it seems like work. ("Yes boss, I did do a lot of work today. I ensured that nobody can steal our intellectual property by disabling the cameras on all the blackberries!" "Great work!")

stcredzero• 16 years ago

The idea is to link windows by task, rather than by the application that runs them.

To me, this is a profound idea. It's the same thing that "Code Bubbles" does for developers.

http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/acb/codebubbles_site.htm

A Look at Palm's Latest OS

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