Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Atlantic Rim
Posts: 570

Where Palm and Handspring Went Wrong

My current thesis is that Palm and Handspring's biggest mistake was relying upon third parties to develop and distribute core applications and hardware for their products. In a venture capital driven world it seemed wonderfully appealing to spin out "hardware solutions" and hope that the developer community would rise to the challange of building something that would keep users interested. So what we ended up with were a couple of fairly well capitalized hardware companies and a whole lot of shade tree developers (both hardware and software) that had neither the marketing expertise or the capitalization to promote their products effectively.

In retrospect, Palm especially should have developed core applications like Documents to Go in house. Same with a decent email app (can't organize email into folders with the standard Palm email client....thats just plain stupid. Someone noted in an earlier string how ridiculous that it is that Palms can't read a simple text document. I mean, what did they do at Palm, banish employees who made seemingly simple suggestions like "maybe what we ought to do is build core file applications right into the operating system".???

The Treo exists largely as Handspring's recognition that my premise is true. Was it Donna Dubinsky who first suggested at a development meeting "Hey guys, waiting for this Visor Phone module to take off really isn't cutting it, lets buy the damn company and wrap a whole PDA around the concept."? Or was it a high school intern on summer break?

Microsoft is walking all over Palm because they didn't rely almost exclusively on third party developers to develop and distribute simple file access protocol programs. Sony added MP3 capability on the backend first...but why didn't Palm?

Palm and Handspring are missing the boat with simple innovations like integrated barcode readers that could revolutionize the workplace. They need to find the wonk who is working on this stuff in his friggin' garage, hire him and integrate his shat into the GD OS software and hardware platform. And they need to do it starting 24 months ago.

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Connecticut USA
Posts: 2682

Re: Where Palm and Handspring Went Wrong

quote:

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Originally posted by Keefer Lucas
The Treo exists largely as Handspring's recognition that my premise is true. Was it Donna Dubinsky who first suggested at a development meeting "Hey guys, waiting for this Visor Phone module to take off really isn't cutting it, lets buy the damn company and wrap a whole PDA around the concept."? Or was it a high school intern on summer break?

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God bless America, my home sweet home...

Registered: Jun 2002
Location: By the toilet.
Posts: 174

PPC and Palm

Hey guess what I found out.

In my town, we had a very first group meeting of PDA users (consisting of PPC or Palm), and the whopping 3 person showed up. Anyways, that's not the point..

We just found out that we cannot beam each other contact addresses from PPC to Palm and vice versa. Able to receive a file using Palm, but the file was transferred but never showed up in Contacts.

Never able to beam into PPC at all.

I think that cross-platform for PDA should be using a standard IR protocol (with Microsoft, that's highly unlikely) for easy beaming of contacts to other people.

The discussion among us (2 Palmers: A Sony Clie N70-somethin, and my Pro and 1 iPaq user) was mostly about how Palm's software was mostly thrid party and how the PPC has better built-in solutions. Of course, the PPC owner was never able to find any other 3rd party software anyway, but having Outlook, Excel and Word built-in is quite useful.

The iPaq user was a Palm IIIx user, but found out the Palm was too limited so he switched. He was hoping that our next upgrade will be a PPC, but to me, that's quite unlikey, given the amount of data that I would have to manually switch. The Sony guy was quite happy with his device too.

For about the same price as the iPaq, the Sony CLie has tons more features, and even has camera to go with it. Got me thinking. My next upgrade will be a Sony, if they are able to maintain the long battery life & simplicity advantage of Palm OS devices in the future.

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I'm just a dreamer..

Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 106

Palm started out giving you an electronic replacement for the "Daytimer" type organizer. Simple, functional, fast, reliable; did exactly what they said it would - and generally did it well.

Microsoft started out trying to port already bloated software into a smaller, slower platform. What you got was complex, disfunctional, slow, unintuitive; the only thing CE had going for it was growth potential - but not for a long time.

4 years later:

Palm OS robustness has allowed it to extend beyond the Daytimer paradigm into ebook, graphics, simple multi-media, rudimentary communications. The same core functionality still shines as top-notch. But the OS is stretched to the max on capability.

Pocket PC 2002 is easily adapting to the advanced capabilities of the more savvy handheld user due to the innate expandability of the operating system. Core software has improved to the point it is approaching the same simplicity, usability, reliability of the Palm apps. The OS foundation is no where near its full potential, and hardware advances only make it look better and better.

I believe Palm had a short term view of Palm uses - the user base is (largely) outgrowing the Daytimer level of function. Palm now finds itself scrambling to cobble together a more capable operating system to compete with what comes easily to Pocket PCs. Handspring overcame some of these shortfalls with hardware (various Springboards, hybrid phone - although hardly the first to do so), but the Palm OS is rapidly falling behind Microsoft in both hardware and software needs. Even Handspring is looking beyond the Palm OS for its next generation of tools - you think the Springboard-using community was upset with Handspring when they dropped support, how about when they drop Palm OS altogether?

Will be interesting to see if Palm OS 5 and eventually OS 6 get catch Palm back up.

Kupe

Registered: Oct 2002
Location:
Posts: 36

quote:

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Originally posted by Kupe


Will be interesting to see if Palm OS 5 and eventually OS 6 get catch Palm back up.

Kupe

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Registered: Jul 2002
Location:
Posts: 120

This is, I'm sure, way too simplistic but I like to think the PalmOS is like Open Source and the other guys well ... Microsoft.

I'm certainly not bashing Microsoft for what they've done for the world of computing, but perhaps, just perhaps, the handheld world is a little different.

Or, to put it another way, Microsoft &co. is geared to the corporate market while PalmOS geared toward, well ... us folks.

In any event, I don't see them looking to do anything that is in the price range of the common person. If there is to remain a digital divide, guess who is targetting the high end?

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Nebraska- the Good life
Posts: 695

I would agree that a better built-in software suite would have helped- if not in the initial versions, at least by Palm OS 3.1, but I still think that Palm's biggest single goof was in marketting and advertising- or the lack thereof.

Palms are now several years old- yet look at how often we still meet people with absolutely NO idea what the things do. How many people do you know that would benefit big time from one, and could easily afford one, but don't have one?

While I sorta applaud Palm for holding true to the original 'fast and easy' vision, I agree that there are some features that they should have added by now, such as a seamless interface with Microsoft Office software, etc.

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Do what you can, with what you have, where you are at!

Registered: Oct 2002
Location:
Posts: 36

Every once in a while the nice display of the PPC draws me into thinking about going that directions. Luckily I have one at my desk at work that my job provided to me although I hardly ever use. All I have to do is try and make a couple notes on the thing and I get so frustrated by the fact that I have to save it to a peticular file (just like on a computer). Then I realize why I love the PalmOS so much. If I want to make a memo, it's just there when I need it. I don't have to search for it or save it to this directory or that directory. Simplicity is why I use Palm and not PPC.

Registered: Jul 2002
Location:
Posts: 120

Re: simplicity.

I couldn't agree more. That part of the population that still wants nothing to do with computers in general, are being treated to the even bigger threat of more, bigger, better via things like WindowsXP.

I've been with computers since my Commodore PET in 1982 and have gradually been able to coast with the learning curve (sort of - I'm definitely no expert). But I can't really imagine when someone who isn't brought up with them today could jump in except, maybe, with a simple PalmOS handheld for starters.

I'll take simplicity over more, bigger, better (multi-multi) anyday as long as we keep the price down.

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Nebraska- the Good life
Posts: 695

Ah, simplicity in computers (and lets leave Mac out of it!)

I started with a PET at school in the 70's, and got a VIC20 at home as soon as I could afford it. While the VIC was not great, the C64 I upgraded to was. My favorite program was called 'GEOS' by Berkely Software. It was a graphic interface that used icons, the mouse, and had an integrated suite of applications. This is all before macs- and GEOS was available in an Apple version as well- I always wondered how much Mac 'borrowed' from GEOS!

When I got my first PC, I ran the PC version- Geoworks. This $80 program gave me an interface, Geowrite word processing (that in many ways still is better than even the newest Word in its ability to seamlessly integrate graphics and do layouts), Geodraw, Geofile, Geodex, and more.

As PC's improved, so did Geoworks (it is now called something like New Deal, or something). In the last version I had, it ran on very little RAM, took up very little hard drive space, cost a bare fraction of any one Windows application and does most of what a PC user would need (including being able to read and write to Word format, etc.)

I would still be using it except that I decided that I needed Windoze at home, just like at work, and so many games, etc. are locked into Windows- even Palm Desktop needs it. I DID run both for a while, but it did not make a ton of sense to keep two operating systems like that running, so I reluctantly gave up on the easy, clean, well-written program that actually played at least a part of the evolution of Palms.

There are still times, however, that I cannot believe that we allow Windows, with all of its massive, resource-guzzling code to continue to live- and even to GROW!

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Do what you can, with what you have, where you are at!

Registered: Jun 2002
Location: By the toilet.
Posts: 174

PPC

quote:

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Originally posted by Palm-n-Hand

I wasn't aware that PPC had overtaken the Palm OS. The fact that they haven't and Palm will be releasing an updated OS makes me think that PalmSource will be just fine.

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I'm just a dreamer..

Registered: Jul 2002
Location:
Posts: 120

Just put the next book (a free classic literature work) I want to read when I finish my current book) on my Visor Neo. It is now all set in CSpotRun for my viewing and reading pleasure.

The whole process took less than three minutes!

My top three ebook reading devices are:
1. Visor Neo
2.Visor Deluxe and 3. Visor Platinum

and, of course, all PalmOS

I frankly don't care a fig about PPC as long as we can still have the above three available somehow.

I'm preaching to the converted except maybe the manufacturer. Handspring ... Hello, out there!!

Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 3034

Re: PPC

quote:

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Originally posted by Digisane
If you go to some other forums such as www.mypdacafe.com and look at some of the postings, most of them recommend anything that's PPC, for example, the iPaq, the HPJordana, the Xda etc. etc. And most of them are PPC users.

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Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Nebraska- the Good life
Posts: 695

Re: PPC

quote:

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Originally posted by Digisane


If you go to some other forums such as www.mypdacafe.com and look at some of the postings, most of them recommend anything that's PPC, for example, the iPaq, the HPJordana, the Xda etc. etc. And most of them are PPC users.

So far i haven't seen anybody with a Visor there. Of course, you might argue that all the Visor users are right here...

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Do what you can, with what you have, where you are at!

Registered: Feb 2000
Location: Moved to Clie Land
Posts: 331

I think they just quit listening to the consumer. They thought they knew more of what the consumer wanted than their power user base..

Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Asia
Posts: 15

Satisfying users' needs

I was curious about the built-in application of the PalmOS. Palm OS 3 and 3.5 functions the same... except for a few changes. I even tried the palm OS 5 emulator, the built-in applications are still pretty much the same... so 'obsolete'...still so simple... .TOO simple

There weren't enough extra features included in the built-in applications of the newer palm OS.

Considering that most of us use interface enhancements like silverscreen, launcher etc... palm didn't even bother to update their OS to support interface enhancements... perhaps allowing users to change the icons or the scrollbars, etc.

Moreover, applications like expenses, mail aren't even viable!

Most of us are using 3rd party software like pocket quicken, wordsmith, etc.

So what's the use of those lousy applications? We should at least have the option to delete it to save some space so that we can store the 3rd party software :P.

Palm is just like handspring and vice versa, they just don't 'get' what the user wants..

It reminds me of a software reviewing site which gave out free beanies (propeller hats) whenever users earn 25 points, and it stops there.

I suggested them to give more freebies for say 100 points, 125 points etc. And all they replied was 'no, we only give out beanies when you reach 25 points'.

That software reviewing site went down with the dotbombs.

Hopefully, palm and handspring comes to their senses and doesn't end up the same with that review company too.