Palm's Software Chief Quits 98
alphadogg writes "Michael Abbott, the head of Palm's software and services team, will leave the company at the end of next week, according to a regulatory filing Palm made on Friday to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He submitted his resignation on Monday and will leave the company on April 23, Palm said. The resignation came as reports surface that the struggling handset maker is seeking a buyer. Last month Palm reported disappointing results for the quarter that ended Feb. 26. Its Pre and Pixi smartphone lines, which run the WebOS operating system, are up against a growing number of smartphones using Google's Android platform as well as Apple's popular iPhone."
And nothing of value was lost. (Score:4, Interesting)
Access owns PalmOS, Access owns BeOS, WebOS was a failure, and it's a damn shame, but Palm hasn't done anything worthwhile since the Treo 650. I loved my Treos, and I loved the Kyocera 6035 I had before them, but the only value Palm provides these days is nostalgia.
Re:And nothing of value was lost. (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree, WebOS is simply amazing. I've used an iPhone for over two years and switched to using the Pre recently, WebOS is the most elegant mobile platform around. The iPhone OS and Anround are both nice, but I think if more people actually gave WebOS a try, they'd love it.
and yes, the hardware is pretty bad, not "absolute crap" -- but need quite a bit of improvement :(
Re:And nothing of value was lost. (Score:5, Interesting)
You can put a lot of money into marketing a good product and it can still fail.
1. The Name WebOS... Sounds kinda gimiky to me. The Web is Popular and we want an os that sounds like it will be good at browsing the web... How About WebOS. That name sound so 90's to me that it isn't funny.
2. Timing. At around the same time other companies tried to make lame iPhone wannabes. The fact the blackberry storm stunk at the same time put credit to people well if I want something like an iPhone ill get an iPhone.
3. What I call the OS/2 Warp add campaign. A lot of talk but little showing the product in what it does... You need to give credit to Apples adds. They show you how to use the phone as part of the add. Web OS adds where soo... All the apps I need to run will be on the web...
4. Tried to be an iPhone killer... Palm wasn't in a position to go head on head with Apple. The whatever you can do I can do better type of stuff really hurt Palm especially as they lowered their prices. Because if it was that much cheaper it must be a cheap ripoff
5. the iTunes compatibility thing. That was rather unethical business by palm in the first place to in essence hack the phone to make it look like an iPod... Then to market it as iTunes compatible. Then try to complain about USB compliance to Apple because apple stopped the hole. Then to push it further until they lost their USB compatibility. In the mean time you give customers a feature which breaks on them until the next update... Not giving them positive reviews.
6. Crappy Developers Emulator... Sorry a VirtualBox that runs a Linux distro that runs Web OS... Without physical buttons that actually let you go back. It made it a pain to do development on it so developers will go well I will do it for the iPhone and we will see if it is compatible later.
Palm's crappy hardware killed them (Score:5, Interesting)
I started with the Palm Pilot 5000, and over the past 10 years I've never been without a Palm OS PDA. Just to prove that I am as familiar with Palm OS devices, here's a short list of the ones I've owned for at least a few months at a time: Palm Pilot 5000, Palm Vx, Clie SJ30, Palm m505, four Palm TX, Clie NR70, two Clie NX70 and three Clie TH55. The reason there are so many duplicates on the list is because I was buying and selling them at a small profit.
For the most part the hardware was reliable, but the ONLY devices to completely fail on me were the Palm ones. The battery died on my Vx, and replacing it was impossible without butchering it (disassembly instructions involved using a heat gun to melt the glue) or spending a lot of money to have it replaced by Palm with a refurbished unit. The touch screen on one TX stopped responding, and another TX stopped charging. Every Clie I've ever owned on the other hand was still running, no matter how abused it was. I bought a Clie NX73 off Ebay, and when it arrived, the hinge was completely worn out, the casing was beaten up everywhere, the screen was scratched BUT it was working perfectly. In terms of features the Clies were also far ahead of any Palm device. They had high resolution color screens, memory card slots, wifi, BT before anything from Palm, and they had MUCH better build quality and materials to boot.
When Palm announced the Pre I was really excited, because WebOS looked amazing and the hardware had great specs. Backwards compatibility with PalmOS apps was also a HUGE bonus. But the anticipation lasted precisely until I got to actually hold a Pre in my hand. I absolutely, positively hated it! The shiny plastic shell was cheap and scratch prone (just like the TX). The sliding keyboard was awkward, cramped and had a raised lip around it that feelt unfinished. Overall the Pre was a big disappointment. Not a bad device, but worth half what Palm was charging for it.
At this point I was really hoping someone will license the WebOS and design a GOOD smartphone to run it. That never happened and probably never will, since all manufacturers went with Android. In the meantime I picked up a Nokia N900 and I'm not sorry I did. I can still run my PalmOS apps through Garnett, and having a full Linux computer at my fingertips is simply amazing.
So that's my take on it. :)
Re:And nothing of value was lost. (Score:3, Interesting)
mostly the choice of CDMA2000 as the connection system. And maybe tying it to a US carrier at first launch.
this btw, is something is think more and more companies will burn themselves on trying to emulate the original iphone launch without considering that the US (and to a lesser degree the world) market have changed.
just observe what dell is trying to do with their mini 5, or google with the nexus one. Basically, they are trying to negotiate exclusivity agreements with one or more carrier, rather then just making a sim slot available and have the carrier, if interested, sponsor parts of the product cost vs a contract for the customer. And if not, sell it worldwide for any and all to use if they have a valid sim on a carrier network.
heck, google having multiple issues with android right now. First off, the android market is not part of the base android package, but rather a google allowed bundle on certain devices (best bet, a 3G radio is required). Said market is also content limited when it comes to payed apps depending on what carrier's sim is inserted. Third, there is little incentive for the hardware companies to update to latest android after a product have gone from design to production.
ha! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And nothing of value was lost. (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a reason why they're carrier exclusive -- the carriers agree to spend $50-$100+ million on advertising in exchange for being exclusive for 6-12 months. For a company like Palm with only $400 million in cash to cover all expenses, it's not something you can easily ignore.
The downside is that the carrier decides the marketing campaign, and it's not always a good one. The Verizon Palm Pre Plus "mom" ads may have even *hurt* sales.
.NET and biochemist (Score:5, Interesting)
Anybody notice that Abbot was formerly the general manager for .NET online services @ Microsoft before webOS?
http://www.neowin.net/news/palm039s-head-of-software-resigns?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+neowin-forum+(Neowin.net+Forums) [neowin.net]
Seems to be a biochemist by education too:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelabbott [linkedin.com]
So not sure if his leaving is a huge loss for Palm. May be just cutting the fat.
Any phone company could succeed. (Score:2, Interesting)
Making a good phone isn't rocket science. Give it the same form factor as the MyTouch/iPhone, and then give it:
A) Good battery life
B) Good call quality
C) A front facing camera
And why not use the free and excellent Android Operating System, and then put money into some really killer apps, rather than duplicating effort trying to reinvent the wheel with YET ANOTHER phone OS? I'd like to see a Skype alternative that worked on free and open codecs like speex and theora, in particular. If I had that on a phone that was less than $100, why would I buy anything else? I'm really surprised at the lack of innovation in the phone market. I STILL don't have a video phone, which is ludicrous given a 640x480 webcam can't cost more than $5 to install on the front side of a phone.
Sad... (Score:3, Interesting)
My point is: Palm could be one of the big players today, if they haven't stopped in time. They were almost alone for too long in the market, and forgot how to evolve. This is why I admire Google: they are the top of the top in several things, but still they keep evolving, adding funcionalities that we didn't think of in GMail for example, way before someone else's do.
Like the first poster said: Palm today is nostalgia. And this is from someone who loves Palm...