foo fighter
Member
Registered: Oct 1999
Location: I'm not sure, but I see lots of lights everywhere.
Posts: 1287 |
I would like to make a few things clear to all you nutballs who keep emailing me. I like the Palm OS very much. In no way do I think that the Pocket PC marks the death of the "Palm Economy", quite the contrary, I think this is great for the Palm community. Any time there is new innovation in the computer industry it benefits all platforms. Who knows, maybe one day we'll see Palms that have built-in stereo out jacks! But as simple as the Palm is, it's beginning to show it's age. I do think this is the beginning of the end of the Palms domination in the PDA market.
The problem is that Palm views any new feature as going against the "Zen of Palm". This is both a blessing and a curse. The Pocket PC has many features that Palm users have begged for over the past 4-5 years. Including: audio capabilities, more advanced built-in apps, color screens (with higher resolution), expansion slots, and so forth. The Visor comes closest to this feature level but not right out of the box. Visors' have the illusion that they are cheaper than the Pocket PC, but that's not entirely true. Add up the cost of all the Springboard modules that add to its capabilities. The Visor deluxe costs $250...but the Innogear MiniJam player will set you back around $169(I think that's the price), now add the price of apps. QuickSheet (equivalent to Pocket Excel) costs about $40...ouch!, SmartDoc (equivalent to Pocket Word)is about $20, Ultrasoft Money (equivalent to Pocket Money) is about $30. That alone goes beyond the price of a Pocket PC, and we still haven't added the COLOR DISPLAY! Plus the Pocket PC has an "industry standard" expansion slot, not a proprietary Springboard slot. How many consumer electronic devices have a Springboard slot? How many have Compact Flash?
The biggest problem for the Palm economy, as I see it, is the fact that the wrong company holds control over the Palm OS. Palm is simply too conservative for it's own good. HandSpring has the most lucid vision of what features PDA devices should have, at least in relation to the Palm. Microsoft was always criticized for not understanding what consumers wanted from a handheld device. But this time I think it may be Palm who's left holding the bag. Microsoft may have found a niche with three critical features...Color...MP3...and ebooks. All of which are the hot buttons in consumer electronics. Palm has always contended that it's devices are simply Organizers, but that image may prove to blow up in it's face. It's going to become harder to justify owning several devices that each perform a specific task when you can simply own one device that does most of them. The Visor carry's that philosophy, to some extent, but those features are not built-in. Would anyone really want a Palm VII that required the purchase of a $200 add-on to connect to a wireless service provider...of course not! You would expect it to perform those functions out of the box.
In the end it comes down to innovation through competition. Many of you out there hope that the Pocket PC will be a failure and that Windows CE will die away for good. Get real!, do you really think you will ever see any innovation within the Palm Economy without outside competition? Many of you see Microsoft as a monopoly, but what happens when they (Microsoft) leave this market...that's right, Palm will become a monopoly on handhelds! Without competition a market stagnates, becoming the status quo. Look at Windows on the desktop. We, as consumers, haven't seen any "radical" new GUI interface innovation from Microsoft since 1995. That's based, partly, on the fact that Microsoft practically owns the desktop. And so it's going to take a competitor to bring new innovation we all crave, namely Apple, in the form of Mac OSX. Without Apple we will still be using the same Win95 interface for the next 3 years!
In the end it comes down to choices. Change is good, especially when it's for the better. And the Pocket PC is clearly a choice we need.
[This message has been edited by foo fighter (edited 03-25-2000).]
|
03-24-2000 04:16 AM
Email This Page to Someone! |
Receive updates to this thread
]