Bloomberg Reports That Palm Is Up For Sale 240
leetrout writes with this excerpt from a story at Bloomberg News "Palm Inc., creator of the Pre smartphone, put itself up for sale and is seeking bids for the company as early as this week, according to three people familiar with the situation."
First bid (Score:5, Funny)
I'd buy that for a dollar!
Re:First bid (Score:4, Funny)
Re:First bid (Score:4, Funny)
I'm all of the above people... I just forgot to login.
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I use that reference occassionally. I find it hysterically funny, but people rarely get it. Bravo!
One of the best running gags in a movie ever. Should have caught on like "Show me the money" or "You can't HANDLE the truth"...
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Mainly compatibility - Palm seems to have stagnated in some technologies and failed to work on implementing some standards and everyone else seems has passed them by.
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What happened to Palm? I remember when their "PalmPilot" was like the iPhone today - people had to have it.
You mean, not many people had either? Except whilst smartphones were rare back then, today almost every phone does these things. There are many products that do these things, and given that companies like Nokia, Motorola, LG, Samsung, RIM all sell more, the "had to have it" factor is clearly not unique to Apple, I'm afraid.
BeOS! (Score:5, Interesting)
AFAIK, Palm still owns BeOS.
Hopefully whoever buys them does something with it, or sells it to someone who will.
Re:BeOS! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:BeOS! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, open-sourcing it would qualify as "something" :)
I'm sure that'd help the folks working on Haiku.
Re:BeOS! (Score:5, Insightful)
what relevance does it have now?
The only OS to ever do GUI responsiveness properly?
Re:BeOS! (Score:5, Interesting)
I think BeOS stil has a relevance today, as it beats the pants off any current OS in respnsiveness to The User: any command/mouseclick has the highest priority, file copy be damned. I have tested with many current OSes (even OS X fails this test) start copying a huge file, and see if responsiveness is affected at all. With BeOS, it wasn't - not even the slightest. The file would get copied a few secconds later, if I interact a lot with the UI, but so fucking what?
What a pleasure it was to use BeOS. For whatever reason, programmers just refuse to create such pleasant-to-use operating systems.
(I won't relay the often mentioned smoothness of displaying videos and playing MP3s. It's not that important. But it sure is impressive when you can play 30 MP3s at the same time, and some even backwards. Is there ever been an OS that dominated all the others so blatantly? The things BeOS was able to do were simply ridiculous.)
It's dead for a reason. (Score:2, Insightful)
I think BeOS stil has a relevance today, as it beats the pants off any current OS in respnsiveness to The User: any command/mouseclick has the highest priority, file copy be damned. I have tested with many current OSes (even OS X fails this test) start copying a huge file, and see if responsiveness is affected at all. With BeOS, it wasn't - not even the slightest. The file would get copied a few secconds later, if I interact a lot with the UI, but so fucking what?
That's it? So what?
How many applications ar
Re:It's dead for a reason. (Score:5, Interesting)
BeOS is dead for a reason.
Yes, and the reason is: Microsoft bullied PC makers so they would not sell computers with any other OS. See here. [theregister.co.uk]
People hate Microsoft for a reason.
Yes but... (Score:2)
They were still managing to sell quite a few copies. Be could have made a business out of distributing and selling operating systems online. Indeed, that's really the only way Linux got distributed. I thought they were doing a good job of it too.
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No, it's because the BeOS management got greedy when Apple offered to buy the company out. AIUI, Apple gave a fairly generous offer, but at the last minute Be mgt wanted another 20 million, so Apple told them to fuck off & bought NeXT instead.
NeXT, helmed by Steve Jobs, had a Unix-like operating system that became Mac OS X.
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My understanding was that while BeOS had many advantages such as the one you cited, the companies like Apple that looked at it decided it was going to be harder to hone the OS down into a practical and consumer-friendly operating system, in terms of refining or seamlessly adding on all the services that needed to be there. And we take an incredible amount of services for granted now, such as being able to render everything from HTML to streaming video in many different apps. But if they were missing, they w
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Yup, it was missing a lot of the bloat that's forced down our throats with other OSes and that's why it was so fast and elegant.
But what was really missing was better driver support and applications.
Off course, it didn't help that the Be Inc never had the balls to try and compete with Microsoft. First they wanted to make computers (BeBox) then they thought they were going to be bought by Apple. After that, they tried the niche market of audio. In Japan they managed to get BeOS pre-installed on a few machine
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BeOS came with video playback and web browsing apps - remember that back then the web was really primitive and writing a web browser wasn't a massively complicated undertaking. Apple turned down Be because they thought the company was worth less than Be did - and it turned out that they were right, Be turned down a $50m offer from Apple and ended up taking a $20m offer from Palm. I can't say I'm too disappointed by this - it meant that a load more people got exposed to OpenStep than had been before - but
Re:BeOS! (Score:5, Interesting)
I do think that current OS's really suffer from the "give me my damn mouse back, let me click that button, don't make me wait for seven thousand services to start up before you let me click the start button that appeared in the first second" syndrome. But that doesn't make an OS, that makes a GUI on top of an OS. The problem is "easily" solved (for a definition of easily) by queueing user events and handling mouse motion / keyboard input in a separate thread (not at all a performance problem with modern machines).
User reponsiveness is vital, that much I can agree on. I can't wait for the OS that can properly remember and queue user events from the first second so that I can send a list of keystrokes and have it get on with them - I hate when Windows chugs and your button clicks are completely ignored (programmatically, graphically, etc.) and then there's a burst of activity once it's idle again. Ideally, such interaction would be per-application (so non-busy apps would still respond as fast no matter what else was chugging away) - incidentally, window-focus-steals are the worst idea ever invented, whether by the OS or the applications themselves.
But that's a GUI issue, for the most part. Yes, the OS shouldn't chug that badly in the first place but when it does, the underlying GUI still has millions of cycles in which to respond. It doesn't, because of deep-level order dependencies and other things. The main problem, though, is programs and OS's drawing themselves before they are actually able to respond - I've seen Windows desktop, start bar, etc. appear sometimes MINUTES before the start button can actually be clicked in any useful manner, and that's *completely* pointless and just makes me think that the computer is much slower than it actually is. It's a pain in the arse and all programs should be made to draw to a back-buffer until they are actually ready to respond to user input, and any that don't within 0.5 of a second should be terminated in the style of Windows' "This program has stopped responding".
The problem is not the OS (though some OS queueing techniques can help desktop interactivity), it's mainly the application side... programs that draw too early, set themselves up piece-meal and serially, draw the user into clicking them before they can respond (what's wrong with greying out any buttons/menus until you *are* ready to respond to them?), don't queue events properly and aren't allocated a high-enough event priority when they are the main-focus app.
That's not worth an obsolete (sorry, but it is) OS, when it can be fixed by a simple event model and some slightly stricter application requirements. You can't hold an OS responsible if the programs draw themselves, then go through a serial setup and ignore all button presses in between, or when they are busy, etc. Proper multithread use is the main factor. The OS is not.
Re:BeOS! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't spell piecemeal in a piecemeal way.
Not an application problem (Score:2, Interesting)
You are wrong.
The problem is that the disk I/O priority in Windows is done in a (presumably) FIFO kind of way, regardless of which application and thread is performing the request. So when Explorer requests 5 x 10 KB files (the icons for the start menu items) from disk, it has to wait 5-10 seconds before Windows finally delivers because 10 other services currently booting are loading DLLs.
Suggesting that Explorer should instead have already loaded the icons into memory will not work simply because the user
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(I won't relay the often mentioned smoothness of displaying videos and playing MP3s. It's not that important. But it sure is impressive when you can play 30 MP3s at the same time, and some even backwards. Is there ever been an OS that dominated all the others so blatantly? The things BeOS was able to do were simply ridiculous.)
Ah yes.. the first time I ever tried it I managed to open _all_ my MP3s at once (I wasn't very smart back then) and sat there for several minutes - jaw dropped to the floor as all of them (or most, I couln't really make out individual sounds) played at once, my desktop piled up with windows each playing one file.
And I could still navigate around without getting stuck somewhere... one of the more amazing moments of my (probably too boring) life..
Obituary for BeOS (Score:5, Interesting)
-- Jean-Louis Gassée, CEO Be, Inc.
The flipside of the coin. (Score:2)
The problem with BeOS was that that which made it sweet also made it difficult to program. In Windows and other STA modelled applications, you don't have to worry about your application being pre-empted within the context of a message. BeOS would do that, which is why it was so responsive and so scalable. If you did the cheesy thing and put a locking mechanism around the body of your message handlers, you would effectively cripple what the OS could do with your application and essentially "Windowsify" it
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You're missing the reason for that responsiveness, which is the real reason BeOS is now more relevant than ever. The entire system was built from the ground up with deeply pervasive multithreading. A hello world app had two or three threads! In the current trend of higher and higher core counts the wisdom of this design philosophy becomes more and more apparent.
On a side-note: Will the BeOS IP become like the Commodore IP? Will every company that owns it ultimately bankrupt?
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Heh... Palm bought that OS because they were looking for better answers than they had at the time- and BeOS was flogging itself as an IA (set top internet appliance...) OS at that time. And, for that application, it actually made raftloads of sense- light and lithe, to the point that using goofball chips like the National Semiconductor Geode GX wasn't so much of a disadvantage. Unfortunately for BeOS, the floor fell out of that market (because it wasn't modeled right, coupled with the dot-com bust...) an
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Funny, I don't remember Apple going bankrupt when they did the same thing.
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Sure it is! It turns out getting a PVR to display frame-accurate video to a TV is almost impossible with a multitasking OS. Watch a channel with a stock ticker / other scrolling banner, and you will see, it jumps at times. Go ahead and crank up the priority on X and mplayer (or whatever player you use); it can't do it.
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No, Palm sold BeOS when they sold Palmsource. Besides, BeOS is dead. Everyone will just have to accept that.
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Re:BeOS! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah!
Now we can have a viable competitor to Hurd!
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It would be nice if companies opened up their dead operating systems, but often times they would be infected with licenced code, or involve patents and simply it's easier and less effort to keep it closed.
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It's ALWAYS easier and less effort to do nothing and leave a product behind dead.
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AFAIK, Palm still owns BeOS.
No, they don't own it anymore. PalmSource, the owner of PalmOS and BeOS was sold to ACCESS Co. in 2005.
Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS#History [wikipedia.org]
Re:BeOS! (Score:4, Funny)
AFAIK, Palm still owns BeOS.
Pfffft. Big deal. I still own BeOS, it even came with a nice book. You don't see me trying to sell myself for millions of dollars.
Palm doesn't own it anymore. (Score:4, Informative)
No, that would be ACCESS who own the BeOS code base and who have already blessed the Haiku developers with permission to distribute the BeBook and other assorted documentation. The BeOS code is safe. The Haiku clean room implementation will make it easier to modernize the base for R2 once full BeOS compatibility is reached.
--bornagainpenguin
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Sad (Score:5, Interesting)
Palm was actually doing good until one day some pinheads in the management decided that sales is more important than technology advancement. It's amazing to see history repeated itself over and over again in tech world.
Another good line of products ruined by great management decision. Sad, really sad.
Re:Sad (Score:4, Insightful)
Good business can carry crap tech, even the best tech can't correct for even mediocre business.
Sad, but that's how it rolls
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That's worth a +1 Insightful if ever a post was...
Re:Sad (Score:4, Insightful)
I still use a Sony Clie PEG-N710C running PalmOS for word-processing on the go. No current smartphone can compete with its docking and folding Stowaway keyboard, its reflective color TFT screen that I can see in direct sunlight at the park or on the beach, Documents to Go to seamlessly sync any word processing documents back and forth with my computer, and the ability to mount its Memory Stick as an external drive via a USB cable with any computer so I can copy my files to others on the go. Of course, it would get killed by modern devices on nearly any other task, but for ultra-portable word processing, it still kills anything else I've found.
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Sadly, the whole thing was let down terrible by the outdated Palm OS. A
Re:Sad (Score:4, Insightful)
Another good line of products ruined by great management decision. Sad, really sad.
Remember that next time anyone complains that CxOs are overpaid. Good ones really are worth their money (yeah, the bad ones really aren't, but you can say the same about engineers).
WebOS actually looks great (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd say it looks better than iPhone OS, and that says something. I hope HTC (or Lenovo, or someone else competent) buys them (and their substantial patent portfolio) and makes an iPad competitor based on WebOS, just to piss off Apple. Steve Jobs will be livid -- any lawsuit will only bring an equal and opposite countersuit, and the software is Apple quality (indeed, much of it was written by ex-Apple engineers and designed by ex-Apple designers), which makes it twice as painful.
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The tentativeness of this 'news' seems important. Goes up on a Sunday before markets open. I'd hate to say it, I wouldn't put it past a competitor to drop a rumor like this as a kick in the nuts.
The iPad competitor based on WebOS has me chuckling and dreaming of the possibilities. Steve will be so livid to see this happen I'll be LOL'ing.
Its too bad some cell phones are locked down so much. If price for WebOS wouldn't be so bloody high, would make a really nice project to open source.
Re:WebOS actually looks great (Score:5, Informative)
WebOS is by far the best mobile OS on the market. It's still young and still has its problems, but the GUI is as beautiful as it is useful. The "type anything anywhere" concept is beautiful. You want to set an alarm and can't remember that you do that in the clock ap and you don't remember where it is? That's fine...type in alarm from anywhere in the UI and it'll show you the clock icon. It handles multitasking well, looks miles better than anything else on the market, and the best part....there's a backdoor purposely left in for us nerd types to install unapproved apps, overclock the processor, etc. Palm did everything right with WebOS except the marketing.
My first choice for a purchaser would be HTC. They could take their form factors they were designing for Windows Mobile phones, dump WebOS on it, and have market penetration nearly over night. They're going to have to have new designs/concepts for WM7 soon anyway. Either way, there's going to be a bidding war for Palm because of all the patents they hold. The WORST possible thing that could happen would be Apple buying them for the patents and dissolving the software.
Re:WebOS actually looks great (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:WebOS actually looks great (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but you're talking about Apple, not Apple. Two distinctly different companies. Apple was a fantastic company that looked to do interesting new things and push concepts and technology. Apple is a company that is so in love with their own vision that they purposely leave out important features if they get in the way of this vision. Palm is/was a great company because they've always had a vision and always pushed the vision, but they've always been realistic about their limitations and mixed a little bit of Apple A with a little bit of Apple B.
But you're absolutely right, Job's has a major NIH issue and it's honestly a shame.
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Yeah, it's a shame he never borrowed ideas from Xerox.
Or Konqueror, or Unix, or Adobe, or Macromedia, or SoundJam, or Tony Fadell, or Fingerworks. And it's too bad Apple never thought to outsource their manufacturing to leverage the PC components designed and built by other companies like Samsung, Seagate, Western Digital, Nvidia, ATI, Intel, etc.
Yeah, it's a shame Apple has insisted on inventing everything themselves.
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There is no reason why good business and pissing off apple should not go hand in hand. Would be killing two birds with one stone, and I'd be all for it.
Not that I hate apple per se, I like their goal oriented non-compromising approach to developing a product and wish more companies would adopt it. I just don't like their goals very much.
Too bad (Score:3, Insightful)
more than 3 is chaos (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:more than 3 is chaos (Score:4, Insightful)
Then HTC should buy out Nokia to combine great touchscreen hardware with a solid/cool/functional platform, and then LG should buy out HTC and put cool blinking lights [youtube.com] and win back the teenage girl market. But by then the phone would have lost their business market so they would have to spin off their business-oriented smart phone division (formerly Blackberry). Of course, former Nokia employees would be pissed that LG is creating flip phones and using touchscreens so they all rage quit and form their own phone company that focuses on simple-to-use candy-bar and slider phones. Also because of the flip phone format, touchscreen user-friendliness would be rendered nearly useless, so LG would spin off their touch division (formerly HTC).
Are we done speculating now?
All of my Palm is up for sale too! (Score:2)
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That's a sweet couch man, I'll give you £35 for it!
the one in the /. icon (Score:2, Interesting)
i have never used the pre because its cdma, there's no decent cdma network here. and of course palm did not launch it outside the us.
I moved to the Droid (Score:2)
Palm don't want my money (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in a rich country in Europe. Palm will not take my money to buy a Pre, over a year after its introduction.
I hope Palm will serve as an example to companies: If you introduce a product whose sales are uncertain, you need to sell it worldwide as soon as possible, otherwise you are just turning down peoples money.
Palm: Great Engineers, Rubbish Marketeers.
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I thought U2 had a stake (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought the band U2 had a stake in Palm?
Re:I thought U2 had a stake (Score:5, Informative)
So its their fault! (Score:2)
Poor Palm.
Understatement of the week (Score:2)
Palm Inc., creator of the Pre smartphone
A few (million) people own devices that Palm made prior to the Pre...
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Motorola should buy them. (Score:2)
Re:Google should buy them (Score:5, Interesting)
To expand on your point; Google lacks a great deal of intellectual property that puts them at legal risk from competitors such as RIM and Apple when it comes to their Android OS. A Google acquisition would spell a quick end to the HTC vs. Apple suit. On the other hand, if RIM, Apple, or Nokia acquires Palm, we can say hello to a torrent of lawsuits directed at every aspect of their respective smartphone manufacturing competitors.
As an aside, I don't think it would be bad if Microsoft purchased Palm, since Microsoft's smartphone IP is shallow at best. I would be happy to see a real Windows Mobile OS pop up that could cut it with iPhone OS or Android, and I don't think that WM 7 is going to do it.
Re:Google should buy them (Score:4, Funny)
I would be happy to see a real Windows Mobile OS pop up
No thanks, I had enough with the pop ups on their desktop OS.
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...since Microsoft's smartphone IP is shallow at best.
What makes you think this? Microsoft has been in the smartphone market for much longer than Apple, and they've also got R&D departments in a lot of related fields - multitouch computing and the like. I'd be shocked if they didn't have a large number of patents that cover smartphones.
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The problem is there is nothing Google really needs at Palm. The patents would just be used for defense against really crappy patents that should never have been issued in the first place to Apple. As for Android, i personally prefer it over both iPhone, Symbian and WebOS. Palm wouldnt bring anything to the table.
Nokia on the other hand, they would benefit greatly.
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Even if the patents that Google need to defend against are really crappy, it may worth having some ammo because bogus patents still can be used for suing, while zero patents can be used for nothing.
Moreover, invalidating bogus patents is quite expensive, risky, and time-consuming.
OTOH, how many patents does Palm have, and how many of them are valid ones?
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The other problem is that there is nothing anyone needs at Palm. Palm is the only one using WebOS, and anyone can order up a million devices from a manufacturer using reference designs from Symbian or HTC (using either Windows CE/Phone7 or Android) and market them under their own brand name [kogan.com.au] with almost zero licencing fees. By building a phone around the Palm platform you're doomed to vendor lock-in from the beginning, on a mostly-dead platform to boot. From a development standpoint Palm is a terrible choice
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Re:No surprise. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have the Pixi Plus with Verizon service. Other than battery life (which is a well-documented issue that has several acceptable solutions), I cannot find a SINGLE thing I don't love about it.
It's a shame the app store isn't on par with Apple's. As devices go, it's not only one of the most technically capable phones on the market, it's also the ONLY real smartphone that fits in the pocket of a pair of jeans. For someone who doesn't carry a purse, that is a huge factor.
One of the problems is that in all the side-by-side reviews, the Pre always beats out the Pixi because...wait for it...it can't run as many apps at once. (Note: the iPhone presently can't run more than one, and reviewers worship it.) So people buy the Pre, and then aren't happy with it because the form factor is annoying and the keyboard is unusable (and because they expect their battery to last three days while they watch videos over Wi-Fi). And Palm gets a bad rap, even though they make a device that people would fall in love en masse with if they weren't talked out of giving it half a chance.
To each his own, but for me Palm offers a product that nothing else today can compete with. I really hope the market gives them a fair shake before letting their technology fade away.
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As devices go, it's not only one of the most technically capable phones on the market, it's also the ONLY real smartphone that fits in the pocket of a pair of jeans.
I guess that depends on the size of your jeans, and depth of your pockets. My N1 fits rather nicely in mine, and I've seen people do that to their iPhones.
Quick: name two smartphones that have a touchscreen AND a physical keyboard on one surface, with no (other) moving parts ...
... and a tiny screen (2.63" @ 320x400) in comparison to all competing smartphones?
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I guess that depends on the size of your jeans, and depth of your pockets. My N1 fits rather nicely in mine, and I've seen people do that to their iPhones.
That's nothing. In the US, I've seen people do that with their iPads! They've got some wide butts out there ;-)
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> To each his own, but for me Palm offers a
> product that nothing else today can compete with.
The problem, historically, is that Palm will continue to offer this same product with minor cosmetic tweaks for a few years after their competitors have adequately competed and the entire market has subtly changed to the point that Palm's products don't really fit in. Palm will respond to this by changing their branding.
Palm's had some real hits over the years, but between hits they stagnate like no other maj
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No, Apple usually does major cosmetic tweaks. Even if they didn't, they have the marketing savvy to actually get people excited in a way that Palm just doesn't. WebOS is the first major thing to come out of Palm in ages, and it arrived about 3 years too late.
c.
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As devices go, it's not only one of the most technically capable phones on the market, it's also the ONLY real smartphone that fits in the pocket of a pair of jeans.
My 5800 fits nicely, it has a slightly slimmer "candybar" form, compared with the wider smartphones. Not that I disagree with your post in general, just pointing this out.
One of the problems is that in all the side-by-side reviews, the Pre always beats out the Pixi because...wait for it...it can't run as many apps at once. (Note: the iPhone pres
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Re:No surprise. (Score:5, Insightful)
now i dont know jack about the palm-pre of web-os, but since when do you NEED an app store on a proper smartphone? The iphone might have triggered android in hopping onto the "app-store" bandwagon, and with all the ipad-hoopla, the media might make you think that without an app-store you cant do anything, but a proper smart-phone should be able to have software installed which isnt given the official X seal of approval.
My 3 year old nokia doesnt have an app-store (come to think of it, it has the n-gage thing for games), but i still managed to get opera installed... or just about any piece of java code i write.
I thought the entire point of smart-phones was that they grew closer and closer to a general purpose computer, not being a walled-garden
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Just because Apple's App Store = walled garden does not mean app store = walled garden.
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i know, but itsme posted like the palm-pre is worthless because its app-store isnt up to par, my point is that the app-store shouldnt be the only means to get apps
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And it isn't. Palm already has a vibrant non-official app ecosystem. Because it is so dead-easy to program for, many iPhone and Android programmers have ported their apps to WebOS, and they are in the unofficial "catalogs" (Such as PreWare) already.
Very sad to see this happen to Palm. I have a Pre and absolutely love it. Hopefully they will get picked up by HTC or another handset maker and be turned into an OS company. Let's be honest: While WebOS is without a doubt the very best smartphone OS yet ma
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2000 apps might be a lot (never used that many on all platforms) or nothing at all (my old Sony C702 had at some point more than 3500 apps available and it wasn't even really a smartphone). Let me ask you for example if there is any application similar to Garmin Mobile XT or iGo/Amigo with nice (off-line) routable vector maps from most of the world? Or some chess program that can compete at least with a 5-8 years old Pocket Fritz 2 ? What about fring or skype? Or something similar to Pocket Stars?
Or to put
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There is a lack of some types of apps, but it's not as if the entire app store has no merit. Most of the content of all of the app stores is trivial. It's possible that the overwhelming majority is like that. But there are definitely exceptions to that, and some of them are available on WebOS. Here are a few examples:
- X-Plane (flight simulator series with several forms of it)
- Need for Speed
- Epocrates (Medical reference program)
- TimeTracker (project-coordinated time tr
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The RIM BlackBerry doesn't need an app store either. They created one in the same me-too fashion as everyone else, of course. But MobiHand also has an app store that can run on the device.
Having an official app-store (and/or a 3rd party one) is important because without it, many users seem to think "it doesn't have apps". But, not requiring you to go through said app store is also important.
I find the Droid commercials quite amusing, actually. Not because they advertise anything special and unique, but
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Of all the carriers I've had (and I've had all the big ones), I've liked T-Mobile the best. I always have service, I never get screwed on my bill for no reason, the network seems as fast (or usually faster) and AT&T and Verizon. Why does everyone seem to hate them so much?
Probably because their coverage is crap if you don't live in at least a medium-sized city. They know their coverage is crap, and they don't do crap to fix it, either. The T-Mobile approach to dead spots is to list them as "low signal" on their online maps and then ignore consumer complaints about dropped calls in that area.
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Why would HTC want to drop the (free) Android, which already has a strong following in its application store, in favor of WebOS?
Re:HTC (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's assuming HTC thinks they can do a better job of selling WebOS/the Palm brand better than Palm has been able to do. Palm has managed to keep their head above water far longer than anyone thought they would, but as a managed brand name, I doubt HTC would/could give Palm the love it needs to extract the value the paid for the brand. In the long run, buying the Palm brand is going to the the albatross around the neck of whoever buys them, much like TimeWarner buying AOL, or Yahoo buying Broadcast.com.
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HTC could buy Palm, licence certain IP to Google / the OHSA and so free Android from any legal mither from Apple.
Personally, I'd love to see WebOS g
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You can buy a heck of a lot of lawyers and corporate blackmail artists for a billion dollars! No, let me rephrase that. A BILLION DOLLARS! A BILLION!
You can hire almost 2000 IP lawyers at $250/hr full time for a year for that amount of money. You could employ the entire Dominican Republic for a year with that kind of money! And you're saying A BILLION DOLLARS is the best way to fight, at most, a $100 million dollar ($100 million stretched over a period of 10 years) lawsuit battle? The WebOS licencin
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Re: (Score:2)