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Is Palm OS dying?

Was having this conversation with my Brother In Law. It seems to me that not only have PPCs made significant inroads on Palms sales dominance but while the Palm OS seems it really has not changed significantly in the past couple of years, PPCs have made real improvements.

I know this topic has been discussed before but I am now debating the merit of a new Visor or a PPC. Is Palm killing itself?

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What does it look like I am doing...I am kickin' my @ss!!!

i think if the palm os 5 isn't significantly better(alot) with a re-designed interface it will be doomed. i mean anyone i know that likes ppc better than palm will always say, the os is so much better, and that alone is the main reason to get one they talk about.

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"Few women admit their age. Few men act theirs."
"The sum of the intelligence on the planet is constant, but the population is increasing"
"I am not a vegetarian because i love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.-- A. Whitney Brown"

Well, they say the worst thing to do in business is to do nothing. Palm hasn't done a whole lot to diversify their product line. They have done little to prepare for the new PPCs coming out.

They still have a chance...but they REALLY need to get their asses in gear if they want to impress people over the next year or so...

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We're all naked if you turn us inside out.
-David Byrne

This is kinda long, I've recently been giving this some thought because I want to upgrade to a better Palm device, but there is nothing on the market that I think I would be happy with for the next 2 years.

Well, not much has changed with the basic palm since it was introduced. Which sure says a lot for the people who designed it. Sure, we know have more memory, and we finally have a memory expansion slot introduced with the latest Palm. Oh, and a basic color screen. I think what is really at issue here is the design philosophy behind Palm computers. Originally it was meant to be a calendar and phonebook. But a group of people were smart enough to realize that the Palm could be so much more. So now we have really almost two distinct sets of users I think. The average user who wants to do scheduling, keep a phone book handy, and a ToDo list. Then the Power User who wants to be able to surf the Internet wirelessly, create/edit Word/Excel documents, keep a photo album with him, and possible play some games. Palm devices are great for the first group of users, although I think its a little ridicules to spend this kind of money to do just those things. But as far as the second group is concerned I think the Palm is clearly handicapped. To be successful for the Power User I think you need the following : 16 mb ram, hi-res color disply, memory expansion slot, and to make it really nice some type of connetion for a wireless device. So there are 2 questions that need to be answered 1) Is there a large enough audience of Palm Power Users to justify Palm building a device to meet their needs? 2) Is Palm innovative enough to build such a device? I hope they are. I personally dont like the WinCE interface, seems far too complex to me. I like the simplicity of the Palm. I'm also anxiously waiting to see if Handspring will introduce a new color model soon. So I will probably wait until the Xmas season to see if any new Palm device is out. If not I will probably pick up one of the new WinCE devices. Will just have to live with the complexity

Oh, well this is just my .02

I don't hear much about OS 5.0. Any word on when it is expected or what its capabilities will be?

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What does it look like I am doing...I am kickin' my @ss!!!

I feel the same way evey one esle does about palm OS 5.0. If palm doesnt make it better i am jumpping ship and swimming to another island. here i come PPC 2002. i have just last week closed the pain full realization that my egde will not be getting any accessories from handspring or any third-party. So if OS 5.0 doesnt WOW me i am gone.

my personal feeling is that Handspring should buy Palm inc. and throw down with the OS like i know they could. And if HS did that they would blow out the "man who sold his soul to the devil", and all those company's that sould there soul to him.(Bill Gates).

Unfortunately Palm finds itself in the same position that many before them have been. For example Apple, Wordperfect, Lotus 123, Netscape, Novell. These are the companies or products that where directly affected by MS marketing machine in one way or another. And now soon to be added to the list will be Palm. If Palm doesn't get cracking they will slowly but surely loose market share and the Pocket PC will rule the market. What's that saying goes something like "Those that forget history are doomed to repeat it." Well Palm needs to learn from the other companies casualties. Will they learn? or Is it too late? I don't know. But if everything we have has some type of MS OS on it, soon very soon we will have to subscribe to use the OS on a Pocket PC, Windows XP, Office XP. Heck if MS could they would sell subscriptions to oxygen.

Disclaimer: I am not a MS basher, I run WIN2K and XP at home and work. I also have a Prism. I just don't want MS on everything!!

ethos

If only Palm or Sony would start advertizing a little more. Have you ever seen a TV commercial with a Clie playing MP3s or Zap2016? The only place I have every seen ads was in magazines and it showed a pink Visor displaying a todo list, I think. Wait until they go looking for that pink Visor.

We need to get the public to see that these are not just datebooks. I am always amazed to see the look on someones face when I beam him a game to his Palm device and they didn't even know you could beam stuff let alone play games.

I would like to see a commercial that shows a color palm with a 1/10 second shot of each color app out there.

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Scott Olendorf
Sony Clie N610C,
Blue Visor Deluxe, Magellan GPS Companion

I can only respond in terms of my own wants and desires for a PDA: Nope, it ain't dead. I think the new Sony Clies show that to be abundantly clear.

With the exception of some Industrial Design problems and some font design issues, the N760C is just what I want. If HandSpring could grab the high-res color from Sony and implement it in a Visor, I'm there.

One person's opinion, anyway.

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Jeff Meyer

"And he died like he lived: with his mouth wide open."

Palm OS is not dying in the sense that Palm OS may not be around in the next year or two. But I do think Palm OS is settling into an equilibrium in terms of the market it reaches. Back about a year ago, it seemed like the power-user market had roughly equal competition from Palm (mostly via the Prism and the Palm Vx) and from WinCE, while WinCE had zero presence in the entry-level market. I think Palm still owns the entry-level market (mainly because of the cost of PPC devices) but Palm really hasn't kept up with PPC in the power-user market. Indeed it seems like PPC has really been defining what the power-user market is in recent months in terms of features and hardware, and Palm has just been playing catch-up (with questionable effectiveness).

So it looks like there is a two-tiered system for handhelds now -- Palm OS for the basic entry-level handhelds and PPC for the power-user handhelds. That is not necessarily bad news if it's true, because I think the entry-level market is still pretty big -- but it is sort of disappointing for an OS that seemed to show great promise not to long ago for ALL levels of users. Perhaps we'll see Palm recapture some of the high-level market with hardware and OS upgrades, but PPC has really been innovating lately and the longer Palm waits, the harder it will be to catch up.

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BertBert
Mark 12:28-31

I'll agree that PalmOS seems to remain static. I don't particularly think that's a bad thing--the simplicity is still what draws me to Palm products over PPC ones.

But I'll admit that my eyes almost bugged out of my head when I saw ESRI/ArcView's GIS application for PPC. For someone like me, organizing data collection all over New York State, this thing was like bread from heaven. (That being said, we haven't purchased it...yet.)

It does seem that PPC has more "capability" to do these corporate/professional applications. And its there, if anywhere, that they're going to overtake Palm, if they haven't already.

quote:

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Originally posted by pbryon
It does seem that PPC has more "capability" to do these corporate/professional applications. And its there, if anywhere, that they're going to overtake Palm, if they haven't already.

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BertBert
Mark 12:28-31