Palm Announces Killer New Phone 617
Barence writes "At CES, Palm announced what promises to be the product that finally matches and even betters the Apple iPhone, and certainly looks to be the most important product announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. It's called the Palm Pre and it's based on a completely new operating system, called Palm webOS. Its key specs include a 3.1in 320x 480 touchscreen, 8GB of storage, UMTS HDSPA support (in the UK version of the phone), 802.11b/g WLAN, Bluetooth, and GPS. It also includes a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, 3.5mm headphone jack, and what Palm described as the 'fastest ever' Texas Instruments OMAP processor."
How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thus far, I have yet to see an "iPhone killer" do anything of the sort.
If Palm wants to do so, they're going to have to do everything the iPhone does and do it better. That means the interface and the integration, as well. The past decade of iPod dominance has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither a laundry list of features nor a very appealing price can compete with cool factor and a really nice user experience.
Dan Aris
*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone? (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been plenty of phones on the world market better than the iPhone for some time now.
The iPhone wasn't even the best phone in the world when it came out.
No GSM support in the US? (Score:4, Insightful)
Only Sprint. I don't think switching will even be a consideration for a lot of people. Palm always finds a way to screw themselves. Too bad, looks like a great phone.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Chances are if they come too close to be an iPhone killer they are using some of apples patents.
While I do like seeing competition for the iPhone and iPod, It seems that a lot of people seem to miss the little details that Apple likes to put in its product, that makes it that much better.
For example I will use OS X and Ubuntu with AWN. They both have a fancy dock. AWN has way more features then the Mac OS X Dock. However it isn't really that usable. Things such as if you run a new app. I want to right click the running application and say keep on dock. Or just being able to drag and drop an App into awn from your file system browser... And get the correct Icon. Being able to group all open windows of the same application together. I am not talking about eyecandy, (like the OS X animations when you zoom in) but actual usability that people tend to miss when trying to copy the idea.
Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone? (Score:1, Insightful)
If the world market was cornered with wonderful products, then you would see companies like Google and Apple developing Android and iPhones. They see opportunity. I agree.
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
If Palm wants to do so, they're going to have to do everything the iPhone does and do it better.
This is an unfair requirement - the Iphone after all doesn't do everything that every other phone does, after all! Missing features are accepted as "not something I'd need" or hand-waved away as "Grumpy featurism". So the same should be true of the Palm - it's okay to miss features, as not everyone may need every feature. As long as it just works, that's all that matters. It's the double standard - Apple products are okay as long as they have a "cool factor" (your words, not mine), but other products are held to some impossible standard of "must be able to do everything that any other phone can do, and more".
The only reason there's yet to be an Iphone killer is the same reason that there isn't a Nokia killer or a Motorola killer - no phone company is in a dominant position (and certainly not Apple - not even close I'm afraid), and no company has yet to produce a "killer" phone to put them in the dominant position.
The past decade of iPod dominance has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither a laundry list of features nor a very appealing price can compete with cool factor and a really nice user experience.
Ipod, yes. We're talking about a different market here.
Before we know if this is a joke or not.... (Score:2, Insightful)
What Palm OS does it run? If it's the same thing my treo 650 ran, it's a joke.
This could save Palm (Score:5, Insightful)
Support Verizon, and I'll be the first in line for this. Why is it that we never get any love from the phone manufacturers?
I don't think it's *quite* on the level of the iPhone, though it certainly seems to have come the closest of any thus far. The UI looks a lot nicer than Android, and the hardware nicer than the iPhone (physical keyboard FTW).
As long as Palm make the price reasonable, and keep the application interface as open as possible, they'll sell a ton of these.
Frankly, I'm impressed, given that virtually everyone's been expecting Palm to kick the bucket in the near future.
Re:Looks cool, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
They made a lightning fast, small, good looking, stable, awe-inspiring operating system that didn't actually run anything useful.
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thus far, I have yet to see an "iPhone killer" do anything of the sort.
If Palm wants to do so, they're going to have to do everything the iPhone does and do it better. That means the interface and the integration, as well.
The device has a keyboard. It isn't a good keyboard, but even so it's a whole lot better than the keyboard on the iPhone - and the lack of a keyboard is a significant part of the reason I don't have an iPhone. The contacts management software which was demo'ed is way better than the iPhone's. And if, as claimed, the device has good Microsoft Exchange support, then for many commercial users it's one better than the iPhone on that count as well.
Sure, it isn't a better music player. It may not be a better movie viewer. But the iPhone, despite being very pretty, isn't actually a very good telephone - contacts management is poor, reception is poor, battery life isn't good, sound quality is so-so. It's a great phone for people who don't use a mobile phone for their work - but most people do.
Of course, the iPhone's killer app is the iTunes store. For non-technical users it is quite simply the easiest way to locate, buy and install software to the phone. Palm (and Google and RIM and Microsoft) have to equal that, and it will not be easy.
Why it will fail (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Mobile phones these days are computing platforms. The reason why Microsoft dominates the desktop market is because the vast majority of software runs on it (hey, Macs are cool too, but they don't have the range of PC software). Apple's iPhone has already claimed that victory - to beat the iPhone, one needs to provide an easy way of uploading software, and, IMHO, a way of verifying the quality of the applications.
2. Apple has the advantage that it could leverage off the existing developer base for the Mac - that is, the development environments aren't completely different. Try releasing any computing platform in which people have to learn *another* darn computer programming framework/language and see how you go. Computer languages take *years* to grow to a critical mass.
3. Every technology marketer is saying "blah killer" at the moment. Can you honestly imagine the Palm marketing executives saying, "our phone is pretty powerful, but we really will have to see if the community adopts it and develops worthwhile applications for it". At the same time, all the little journalist worker bees have to get page hits in this new online news world. "iPhone killer" turns up constantly, because it gets clicks. Your here and I am here aren't we :-)
Palm didn't say that (Score:5, Insightful)
to be fair to palm, they have been very careful about avoiding the term 'iPhone killer'
From Newsweek:
>>>
So: is it an iPhone killer? McNamee wishes people wouldn't ask that question. "Everyone in the cell-phone business has missed the point. They're all trying to make an iPhone killer. I don't want to compete with Apple. Why the hell would you want to get in the way of that machine? I look at the guys who are trying to compete with Apple and I think, Are you guys crazy? I just want to learn from Apple's experience."
>>>
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find disturbing is that people consider this to be "the most important product announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show." When as explained in the article, it's something that's as good as a product that's already been on the market for two years.
There seems to be an unhealthy amount of Apple hate in that statement - either the iPhone is a good product and has been out for 2 years, making this unimpressive (though good that there's competition); or the iPhone is an awful product, and this being "just as good" is thoroughly unimpressive!
would you buy a cell phone with NO support? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a T3 and I know a dozen people with palm pilots. If there is ONE thing we can all agree on, it's that palm's support for their product is next to nonexistent. If you have a problem with your palm pilot, you'd better start looking in the various independent forums for help from other palm users. If they can't help you, you're just plain screwed.
I don't care if palm DOES come up with a better product than the iphone, I won't touch it with a 10 ft pole. Right now I am trying to decide whether to ditch my T3 for a touch or for an iPhone, so I can keep notes and have my addressbook on the go. Syncing on my T3 has been iffy at best, and is currently totally nonfunctional unless I want it to breed duplicates and erase data every time I sync, and the palm desktop software hasn't been updated in years.
I know that the touch and iphone will sync flawlessly with my computer, and I won't get that sickening feeling every time I sync it, wondering what it's going to erase this time. I get asked from time to time for help with others' palm pilots, and I hate to give them help because I feel so totally helpless in trying to prevent the thing from self-destructing their contacts. All I can do is make backups continuously throughout the process. The inability to make a backup of the PP directly into its SD card makes initial syncing one of the most dangerous computer tasks I ever have to deal with. I've seen palm desktop sync from an empty computer TO the palm, totally erasing it, on numerous occasions, despite following directions carefully. It's almost random. And once the computer and the palm get sufficiently out of sync, it creates such a mess that you have to wipe one and pray it syncs from the non-empty one to the one you wiped. I can't stand that.
Stay away from palm, please.
Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right? (Score:0, Insightful)
"but I doubt Palm have as nice developer tools as Apple"
You mean where you are forced to buy an otherwise worthless but overpriced Mac just to do development on. And use a language no one but Apple uses instead of industry standards like Java, Javascript, etc that everyone already has years of experience with.
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:1, Insightful)
... or turn on auto hide for the dock or move it.
What there need to be an iPhone killer? (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be a sensible aim if the iPhone was the market leader.
Now, show us some reference where the iPhone is shown to be leading the market.
From Nokia's Q3 report:
"Nokia estimated mobile device market share of 38%, down from 39% in Q3 2007 and down from 40%
in Q2 2008."
and later
"NOKIA MOBILE DEVICE VOLUME BY GEOGRAPHIC AREA (million units) Q3/2008 Q3/2007 YoY
Change Q2/2008 QoQ
Change
Europe 27.4 29.0 -5.5% 27.1 1.1%
Middle East & Africa 21.5 19.3 11.4% 21.1 1.9%
Greater China 19.8 18.9 4.8% 17.6 12.5%
Asia-Pacific 33.6 29.5 13.9% 36.4 -7.7%
North America 4.5 5.4 -16.7% 4.5 0.0%
Latin America 11.0 9.6 14.6% 15.3 -28.1%
Total 117.8 111.7 5.5% 122.0 -3.4%
"
From Apple's 2008 Q4 report: "Quarterly iPhone units sold were 6,892,000"
So Nokia is selling 117 million units, Apple is selling 7 million.
According to Nokia's report the global market for the period was 300 million units.
Again, why do we need to kill the iPhone?
That the iPhone is mentioned as the aim to be killed is a testament to the marketing skills of Apple.
The general public is not that stupid: we don't want network lockin (not in Europe, not in East Asia, the biggest mobile markets) and people are clearly finding the iPhone deals extortionate.
Certainly other companies need to do something about the mindshare that Apple is enjoying now, but I wonder how important that is going to be once Steve Jobs leaves Apple. His marketing based vision of the company will be difficult to be push by somebody that is not as charismatic as him (he has been described as a cult leader, which is not far from the truth).
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:3, Insightful)
That has never happened to me, in 8 years of using OS X. I am not saying it isn't a problem, but it seems like a rare bug to me. There are bugs then there are usability issues.
Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Palm built a brand once. Then they squandered it. They could build it again.
Apple went through the same pattern.
Apple showed it is never too late. (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple was in the doldrums before Steve Jobs' come back.
Microsoft invested money on them for crying out loud.
Palm has a brand recognition that can be put to good use, if they come with a good product they could become big players again. Openness is key, they should remember how quickly Palm became ubiquitous thanks to the easy access to development tools.
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps, but at this point they're coming out with a product that more or less matches what the competition did 6 months ago. Does anyone doubt that this year's hardware from Apple is going to blow Apple's previous year's hardware out of the water? So what's the window of opportunity for this knock-off to "kill" the iPhone? To me it seems more of a desperation move to keep slightly relevant, by at least staying the game with a product in the same generation as everyone else.
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:5, Insightful)
No...stay there as long as possible...it is your last place to be where fun/childish behavior is sanctioned and acceptable.
Sure, you have more money when you get into the real world, but, you also have to work, and have responsibilities. Especially if you get married. If you want the best of both worlds...don't hurry into marriage when you get out. In that case, yes, you have some more adult responsibilities, but, you do get to keep and burn more of that money you start to earn for yourself...and you can still get away with acting somewhat like an idiot, and you don't have someone bitching at you to 'act right'. You also are strapped with potentially a lifetime ending anchor of a kid...at least not yet.
So..stay in as long as possible. But, once out...stay single for awhile...no need to get completely locked down into full 'adult' life right away. At the very worst...if you have to, don't marry the girl, just live with her....kinda like leasing with an option to buy.
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
You left out "insanely zealous fan base willing to pay twice as much for a shorter
laundry list and more vendor lockdown than half a dozen competitors".
By that logic, Apple has a zealous fan base that consist of like 75% of the MP3 owners. However only like 10% of the computer market (if you are being very conservative), so does that mean that these huge droves of apple fanbois are abstaining from buying an apple computer?
I'd argue that you've got about as many hardcore mac fanbois on the iPod as you do in the computer market that will buy anything apple sells, that should be in the single digit percentages overall. The rest of the 75% dominance of the iPod is from an actual good design that outshines the other mp3 players.
The iPhone is no different, there is a small percentage that buys it because it's from Cupertino, the rest of them are buying it because it eclipses all other smart phones out there for them.
Sheldon
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Take a seat, breathe deeply... The world doesn't revolve around you, in fact it doesn't even register than you exist and it certainly couldn't care what phone you are waiting for.
People who know what 'open' even means in terms of software are a tiny proportion of the market and the fact that you don't think a closed phone can be good is almost entirely irrelevant to how this will be reviewed.
In fact the fact it looks pretty ugly will be a far more important factor in how it is reviewed than how open it is.
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're completley wrong on the marriage thing.
I certainly wouldn't rush into it, or rush into having children, but being married gives me one person I can be fun/childish with every day guaranteed (living with would work here too). Being married also has a huge benefit when it comes to wasting money. My wife and I can afford, and maintain a 3 bedroom house, either of us on our own would not be able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment, or maintain a house.
Additionally I vacuum half as often save 30-50 percent on the bills, and don't need to cook all the time (most of these apply to living with someone too).
These are not reasons to get married, I just simply wanted to point out it is not the end of childishness/fun. If you really want to commit to spending your life with someone, and makign the compromises that will be required (it's two way if done right) it is not something to dread or avoid. And it can certainly lead to having more money to spend on yourself, not less.
And no one has ever lied about having a killer pru (Score:3, Insightful)
http://gizmodo.com/384440/rim-engineers-call-touchscreen-blackberry-apple-killer [gizmodo.com]
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/08/songbird-the-open-so.html [boingboing.net]
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081215/amazons-mp3-store-one-year-in-no-itunes-killer-probably-wont-be/ [allthingsd.com]
http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/10/facebook-to-launch-itunes-competitor/ [allfacebook.com]
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/appleaday/blog/2008/07/dells_ipod_killer_revealed_pro.html [baltimoresun.com]
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1027_3-5183692.html [cnet.com]
Is everything about an iphone killer? (Score:4, Insightful)
Symbian os still outsells ihpones grossly.
On the other hand, i remind whhat i love about my palm m105
-ran on 2AAA batteries for several weeks (if uses at phone book/clock/calendar). The baterries were available at the end of the world and it ran on rechargeable.
-monochrome display was readable in sunlight and had soft eye-friendly illumination
-the clock/calendar worked and did not crash (i had a z31 after that and found crashes in very basic functions)
-synchronization was easy
-memory was enough to have one or two dictionaries installed
I wonder how why palm wants to compete in the market where they are trying to compete now. would they produce a m105 with an e-paper display and in a more flat case and with flash, i would buy it without thinking twice. Would they integrate on of the power-saving an somple models with a few basic funcion (implemented decently) like email, simple web (no, youtube is not needed-and neither is flash) and UMTS (i need that since i live in Japan), i also would buy it.
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:3, Insightful)
OTOH, don't wait 'till age 49 to have your first kid (voice of experience here).
I love him like nothing else in the world, but God; my back, my knees...
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:*Finally* matches/betters the iPhone? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that would be hard for Palm to do.
Back when I got my first Palm (a IIIe) in 2000 or so, Palm was the epitome of gadgety-goodness: simple to use, long battery life, and open to development. I'm not even trained a programmer and I tinkered with Palm programming (heck, for a couple of months I was actually working on a Palm program for an employer). I owned that original IIIe, a IIIc (with color!), a T-3 and two Treos. Palm devices were simple, fast, and reliable--with a user interface that wasn't cloned from a desktop metaphore (curse you, Bill Gates, and your idiotic WinCE, too).
Unfortunately, as the world of mobile computing moved on around Palm (and my Palm devices), Palm stood still. The Treo was still using the hideous Blazer browser and the applications and interface were stuck in the 90's. I kept hoping against hope that Palm would come out with their forever-promised-but-never-delivered Linux OS, but it never happened.
When my second Treo died an untimely death in an unfortunate swimming pool accident, I bought "just a phone" and never looked back.
I think that for most people interested in Smart Phones, Palm says: old-fashioned, poorly supported, and not really up-to-snuff. Much like American car manufacturers have to fight the poor-quality, unreliable image long after their cars have become competitive, Palm will have an image problem for quite some time.
Too bad, really. They were giants, once.
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, don't get married quickly. Date like 100 people first to find out what really is out there, but don't just date whomever happens to be nice to you, be choosy, and aim high even if you get shot down 50 times, you'll get used to it.
I thought I knew what I wanted. I chose poorly. That was a very expensive price to pay for some not so great years followed by an even higher price.
Marriage should be illegal until about 30. At least late 20s.
Besides, the young and irresponsible thing goes over a lot better in your 20s instead of your 30s...
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod parent DOWN!
That is one of the saddest and most cynical posts I've ever seen on Slashdot, and I've been here for a while.
I got married seven years ago (I was 22) to a woman I met in college after only two years in college. We had a daughter almost three years ago. I have a great, challenging job in information security with responsibilities and a career path. Our only debt is a car loan that will be paid off within the year and our mortgage that will be paid off around the time our daughter goes to college.
I'm having more fun now than I ever had in college, and that's really saying something.
There is no reason, at all, to ever have less fun in life just because you've matured to the point where women, children, and responsibility are opportunities to be enjoyed, not albatrosses to resent.
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a huge difference here.
Apple was basically telling developers "you can make iPhone-optimized websites! They're just like apps, honest!"
Palm is telling developers "our SDK is based around web conventions that any web developer would already be familiar with."
Probably the biggest difference here is that with WebOS, you're actually installing an app to run locally. Pre-SDK iPhone was nothing more than websites that could disappear once you ducked into the subway.
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:3, Insightful)
You certainly do not have any children.
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:5, Insightful)
.it is your last place to be where fun/childish behavior is sanctioned and acceptable.
Or have kids. Nothing keeps you younger or acting more child-like than playing with kids - plus you have an excuse to but all those cool toys you didn't have when you were a kid and want to play with now! :-)
Re:sorry! (Score:4, Insightful)
It also has an externally replaceable battery, so one guesses the individual batteries won't last as long as an iphone or else it's thick as a brick. (they don't give the dimensions or show it in profile)
Why would one guess that the battery won't last as long as the one in the iPhone? One would think that a user-replaceable consumable such as a battery would be a good thing
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
and no company has yet to produce a "killer" phone to put them in the dominant position.
You're assuming that "dominant position" means "top selling". There are other forms of dominance - one of which is illustrated by the fact that we're having this discussion at all. The iPhone has become the benchmark against which any new smartphone is judged by the press and blogosphere.
It's the double standard - Apple products are okay as long as they have a "cool factor" (your words, not mine), but other products are held to some impossible standard of "must be able to do everything that any other phone can do, and more".
Thing is, Apple don't try for the ultimate feature list: they decide which features most people will actually want, and implement them well.
E.g. the iPhone famously doesn't have MMS. My HTC Windows Mobile smartphone does, and I've sent exactly 1 MMS message which took half an hour of faffing around to discover that you have to set the camera to the right resolution for MMS before you take the photo (and then remember to un-set it when you want to take a good quality photo). I think WM has cut & paste (another area where the iPhone gets slated) but buggered if I could successfully copy an EMAIL address from a text message into the contacts... The WM media player is unusable (iPhone is excellent); the web browser is unusable (iPhone may not have Flash and Java, but IE Mobile barely has HTML). On WM I can use my own MP3s as ringtones, but from the number of missed calls I get, I strongly suspect that people are hanging up before WM has got round to staring the player. Oh, and the phone is so carefully designed that its impossible to pick up in a hurry without pushing one of the buttons thoughtfully positioned exactly where you natually hold it (another reason for dropped calls). Maybe the iPhone camera isn't the best: but if I gave a toss about picture quality I'd use a proper camera with a proper lens: I've yet to successfully take anything other than a blurry mess with WM.
...so until I've had my hands on any new "iPhone killer" and determined that the impressive feature list has actually been implemented by someone with a clue and some capacity for attention to detail (i.e. it isn't a Windows Mobile device with a lipstick-on-a-pig iPhone lookalike skin) I'll reserve judgement.
I did have a play with the Google G1, and really, really want to like it, but the hardware is frankly bizzarre, the "real" keyboard is so small and untactile that its no better than the iPhone's on-screen keyboard and the processor doesn't have enough grunt to run the (not bad looking) web browser smoothly.
Heh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, but I suspect that you haven't read the famous quote from Sigmund Freud:
"Two can live as cheaply as one, especially if they both have good jobs."
Thrown in FWIW as devil's advocacy, since I actually agree, having been married for over 20 years...
Re:How many iPhone killers is that? (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Palm is apparently allowing access to the hardware via CSS, HTML, and JavaScript (details are scarce right now), something no one else does right now
Yeah... what could possibly go wrong with that idea? :)
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:5, Insightful)
And sometime after you finally get your college loans payed off, and you're married with a mortgage you're paying and three kids, you'll be saying
. wait for it
. wait for it
.
"I wish I was back in college".
Sooo...how were the original iPhone apps written? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real difference between the Palm Pre and the iPhone when it comes to developers, is that all Palm's standard apps that come with the phone were written with javascript, CSS, and HTML. They're "eating their own dogfood", so to speak.
So do you think the original iPhone apps were not written in Objective-C using Xcode?
Dan Aris
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:4, Insightful)
Every month...same chick...who knows exactly which spot to touch.
No akward first-time-with-new-person sex.
It totally sucks, lemme tell you.
Re:sorry! (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially when Apple is involved.
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:1, Insightful)
Personally, I don't see how anyone would finding staying in, and looking after the kids preferable to a weekend spent raving, with the inevitable afterparty orgy.
From where I'm standing, you're just using "maturity" as a rationalisation for ruining your life.
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my $.02, but while this may be true, it can set you up for The Two Income Trap [motherjones.com]. In the long term, you'll find greater security (and happiness too) by living closer to the means of only one.
Case in point. My wife died three years ago, but as we always lived within the means of one salary (mostly), financially I'm fine, as would she have been if I had died instead.
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:4, Insightful)
just because it's "off-topic" doesn't mean it can't be insightful. the GP's post was simply following the course of the conversation. he didn't hijack the thread or post about something completely random that has nothing to do with the thread.
i mean, when you have a conversation with someone off-line do you bitch about people being "off-topic" whenever the conversation naturally progresses to or touches on a new topic? this is a casual discussion, not a goddamn book report.
Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you have "years of experience" with Java yet think of learning Objective C as anything but absolutely trivial, then face it: you're a lameass programmer.
I don't advocate developers locking themselves into Apple's stuff, but damn, that has got to be one of the stupidest reasons to stay away from Apple, that I have ever heard. You would sound smarter if you had complained about the color of the plastic they use.
data != application ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Migrating data is not the same as (sup)porting an application.
Given that the launch date is still far off, there is still a (naive?) possibility that they will support Garnet. But we probably shouldn't hope for it (nor continue to write apps for it).
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:5, Insightful)
No akward first-time-with-new-person sex."
Yeah..but, then she gets fat...etc...and you're stuck with her.
Not to mention (and I heard this from a LOT of my married friends) kiss BJ's good by...she just did that to snag you.
Apparently the old joke about what food destroys a woman's sex drive (wedding cake) holds true for a lot of them out there, and you don't find out till after your married and then your screwed (no pun intended).
Apparently you got lucky. Good for you...
Re:What there need to be an iPhone killer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, sure, lies, damned lies and statistics, the tools of the marketing gurus.
It is like that baseball player in a movie who is fired but claims it is unfair since he broke the record for triples for a month of August.
Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking from deep experience developing for a number of mobile platforms (15+ years), the iPhone's development AND operating environment (note the combination) is by far the most advanced (and this is coming from someone who is not an Apple gearhead - just a developer who likes powerful platforms). Any capable developer who understands object oriented principles (e.g. Java) and understands one compiled language becomes quickly productive in developing iPhone applications.
As for having to buy a Mac, for professional developers, this is a small price to pay vs. the time spent doing development for a platform that can actually make the developer some money (the AppStore is a *real* revenue stream).
Unless Palm provides some sort of native code compiler for javascript (a la Google Chrome), this approach is a non-starter for entire classes of applications that are possible on the iPhone.
Re:Developer Friendly...Apple?!? Joking, Right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you have years worth of favourite code snipets in C++, Java, etc. that you've developed and reuse in your projects? Switching to Objective-C isn't about learning the trivial syntax differences, it's about having to rewrite what you have because almost nobody has any Objective-C code lying around.
Re:WebOS -- "WEB"-OS (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the idea of using Javascript with a custom API is actually not a bad one, as long as whatever SDK is offered has extensive tie-ins to the OS. There's been enough work around speeding up Javascript now with Squirrelfish and Google's stuff that the performance of that doesn't even concern me a great deal for most apps...
However I am right there with you on wondering what the security implications are of using the same model for your browser as your applications. The model they have of having to install the application may provide the answer in that in normal browsing no extended features are offered, and you have to agree to install an application... but potential holes in that firewall make things a little more risky.
The phone looks very interesting, but the reality of how good it really is I think awaits the release of the SDK. But I do think this is the only phone Palm could have released and still maintained itself as a separate entity - if they had gone Android they would have been absorbed before too long by one of the other cell phone makers.
Very interesting...
Because removable batteries add space requirements (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would one guess that the battery won't last as long as the one in the iPhone?
Because engineering all the space for a compartment with walls (to keep you from screwing up the insides of the phone) and walls around the battery itself (to keep keys from puncturing it in your pocket) all waste space that can be taken up by battery material.
Thus, you either have to make the device larger to compensate or the battery will simply not last as long. Not to mention the processor in the Palm device is faster and probably consumes more energy...
Even with it's slightly larger size the G1 gets mixed revues on battery life for the same reason, when you are running 3G you are eating a ton of battery and there's no avoiding the advantage of more battery material.
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:0, Insightful)
Shut...The....Fuck...Up...Already.
Fuck you and your moralistic approach to life and everything else. Marriage is an obligation as is child rearing. And more often than not: It SUCKS. And yes, having a kid and a wife is an enormous time sink, which means that anything you wanted to achieve essentially gets shelved until you're too fucking old to act on it.
The grand parent post here is absolutely 100% on target. It's you and the other "marriage minded moralists" who are full of shit, promoting the idea that the only way to be a complete human being is to be in a state of dependence to another. Marriage does not make more richer, it does not give you more time and children only make it worse.
Life alone for awhile, accomplish something (isn't that what anyone would want in a mate, anyway) and then -- if and only if you are ready to shit away the rest of your life -- get married.
The parent post is the exception. The grandparent post is closer to the rule.
Women and children ARE albatrosses.
Two Income Trap (Score:5, Insightful)
"However, with 2 earners you're only losing 40-60% of your household income in the face of a layoff, versus 100% for a 1 income. This makes a 2 earner household more resilient."
A two earner household is only more resilient if, and only if, it can stay afloat for a significant period of time on a single salary. If, as the parent implies, they need BOTH salaries to make the mortgage payment, the car payments, pay the student loans and the credit cards and the other bills, THEN they are susceptible to the Two Income Trap. Lose just one salary in that case, and the ship begins to take on water and sink.
Further, you tend to imply that gross overspending is the major cause behind bankruptcy, when in fact two of the major triggers are job loss and medical problems. Get sick, or involved in a significant accident, and one wage earner can lose their job just when they're getting hit with major medical expenses. Children are a issue too, but often because parents buy that "two income" house in order to be closer to better schools.
If at all possible, it's best to try to keep base expenses within the range of a single salary, and use the second for savings and investments, vacations, eating out, supporting hobbies, and so on. Then, and only then, is a two earner household truly "more resilient" and not susceptible to "the trap".
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What there need to be an iPhone killer? (Score:2, Insightful)
Certainly other companies need to do something about the mindshare that Apple is enjoying now, but I wonder how important that is going to be once Steve Jobs leaves Apple. His marketing based vision of the company will be difficult to be push by somebody that is not as charismatic as him (he has been described as a cult leader, which is not far from the truth).
While I agree that the numbers make the idea of an "iPhone Killer" somewhat silly, can we please put to rest this idea that Apple is driven by marketing? It's so far from the truth it's laughable. Apple makes products that are based on being designed for aesthetics and ease of use. The fact that they use well-designed marketing campaigns to promote their products is (and always has been) secondary to the design that goes into the products themselves. Besides, one would think that the landslide victory of the iPod in the personal music player arena would have driven home the fact that feature laundry lists aren't necessary for good appliance-type products, which is the other point that people who think Apple is all about marketing usually miss.
I'm not even sure what a good example of a marketing-based company is. Usually it seems more like shoddy companies just try to use marketing to shore up their shoddy products. My 2Â, anyway.
Re:Palm can't compete with appstore (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not like you can't download Palm software from thousands of different places.
Sure the store is great, but so is choice.
Re:3.5 mm? o.o (Score:3, Insightful)
That means your married friends are wussies, like the majority of men. Either they didn't choose their woman correctly in the first place or (more likely) they just wussed out after marrying and became more and more wimpy -- in popular culture, this is known as being "pussywhipped".
Women despise wussbags, and will withhold sex as her attraction to the man drops and she becomes more and more resentful. Men need to learn what pushes women's attraction buttons.
Getting married is not a license to slack off and get complacent.