An Apple In Your Palm
As some people may recall, in June of last year a company called Elevation Partners acquired a 25% equity stake in Palm for $325 million.
As I mentioned at the time, the most interesting and exciting part of the deal was that it brought two former key senior Apple Computer executives to work their magic at Palm. The first is Jon Rubinstein a technical guru who famously headed the iPod division at Apple and has joined Palm’s board as executive chairman and leads Palm’s hardware design and manufacturing. The second is Elevation co-founder and Managing Director Fred Anderson – the former Apple CFO credited with completely revamping the company’s finances from 1996 to 2004 – who also joined Palm’s board.
Since then it appears that Palm has very quietly and discreetly “poached” two other senior Apple executives. The first (since December of last year) is Mike Bell, a 16–year Apple veteran who until recently was vice president, CPU Software, in the Macintosh Hardware Division and now serves as senior vice president of product development at Palm where he leads the company’s product-realization group, leveraging his extensive expertise in bringing products to market. The second latest hire from Apple is Lynn Fox, the former head of Mac Public Relations who will now lead Palm’s own PR initiatives.
Exactly what all of these and other new hires at Palm are doing these days is not yet a matter of public knowledge but we do know that their focus is on:
- The development of a powerful next-generation operating system codenamed Nova OS which people in-the-know tell me is “very, very cool indeed” and will very much resemble the iPhone user interface… The unveiling of this new OS and release of its SDK is rumoured to become available by the end of this year.
- The development of a completely new smartphone hardware platform with multiple devices and price points to appeal to both the consumer and corporate market running both the new Nova OS and Windows Mobile. There has been absolutely no indication whatsoever as to what these new smartphones might look like but my own wish for a Treo 800p is an ultraslim device along the lines of the iPhone with a full QWERTY rubber keyboard like that found on the Centro (see mockup above) along with 3G connectivity, a high-speed processor, flush touchscreen, built-in WiFi and possibly also GPS among others.
It is rather unfortunate that we may need to wait some 12 months before any of us can actually proudly hold such a new Treo smartphone in our hands but at least I’m becoming ever more optimistic about the potential solution that Palm will eventually offer us in 2009 – one that keeps all those things we love about Palm while adding much needed new Apple juice as well…
Treonauts are always full of juice… 
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Comments
I would like to see a slightly different form factor like the HTC/At&T tilt. I know it is a little more difficult to use one-handed, but the improved keyboard space make it well worth it for trying to type longer e-mails. And the larger almost fulll candybar sized screen is great for multimedia applications. I think it would require AD2P.
I really like the tilt, but since i am a mac die hard, i could not see running windows mobile on my phone. A good linux based system would be nice.
Let's hope these guys don't ruin a good thing. Can you imagine having to buy all software, hardware and media through Palm and Palm alone? Can you imagine open source code going away, and Palm becoming an Apple clone? I sure can, and the thought horrifies me!
If I had wanted to be part of the iHerd, I would have gone out and spent a bucketload of money on an iPod and an iPhone. Instead, I decided to use more than 3 or 4 brain cells... and I bought a Palm Treo.
James - I have a lot of friends who are very happy with the HTC Tilt but I don't believe that we'll see this type of form-factor from Palm (at least not in the short term).
Mike40 - like you I want Palm to retain the best that it has while also bringing the best that others (RIM, Apple, HTC, etc.) have to offer. I don't want Palm to become _exactly_ like Apple at all either but the company certainly needed to get out of its NIH (not invented here) syndrome and it's good to see new blood and ideas streaming within Palm now.
Cheers, A.
I would love to see a Palm Centro with iPhone capabilities. I have seen a Windows Mobile phone and a Nokia device running Palm OS software but if they could create a cleaner version with the iPhone it would be great. I strongly suggest however they keep the keyboard. It is so important and much easier to use than a screen embedded one. Also if all the current Palm software still has an option to run on this new platform the same way it runs on the Centro I would definitely buy this phone quick.
Thinking about the Palm TX's screen vs iPhone vs the smallish Treo screen and even smaller Centro screen, I came to the ephiphany as well that something like the tilt approach may be necessary to facilitate both a full-sized physical keyboard (not an on-screen virtual thing) as well as a much bigger flush touchscreen.
In its "portrait mode" a physical phone dial pad could remain on front without stealing too much real estate from the screen. In "landscape mode" there'd be a slide out physical keyboard, need not have keys like the HTC (we love our keys as is, and don't need them to be much bigger.)
I don't know exactly how to make this go, but the bottom line is we need a bigger screen, but the Treo keypad is the best of any smartphone, so keeping that somehow would be a good idea.
Or, just use the current keyboard on a new phone with a much bigger screen and just make the phone a little bigger, so be it. At least it's still plenty smaller than a laptop.
Mike, you cool non-conformist dude. So much smarter than most people, I bet you ran out and got a Treo tatoo to go with that smartphone. Oh, btw, "Smartphone" refers to the phone and not the owner.
It looks like Palm does indeed have some good brainpower at the company, but how many people really care to wait until 2009 to see what Palm will come up with? Are they really going to blow away Apple and Android (and RIM)? Not! It's been YEARS since Palm actually invented anything good. The "not invented here" syndrome is funny since they had to buy Handspring to get the Treo. That "Folio" thing must be the last thing they "invented" and before that the lame "Lifedrive."
Oh, is the PalmOS Open Source? Didn't think so. If you care about that (I don't) then I guess you'll be getting an Android. Unless, of course, that would be such a no-brainer that you have to do something different.
I too am a Mac die hard - 22 years. Hopefully Palm, given the new Mac input, will finally get up to speed with the competition, tho no hardware can match the internal workings of Palm. We need the clean, sleek look, an interchangeable battery and a larger screen. i wouldn't mind the thickness of the treo if there were a flip or slid-out screen with a larger keyboard inside. Palm and Mac - it can be a great combination - just think of all the Verizon customers, (like me), who are just waiting for palm to re-invent itself, who don't want to switch to AT&T. Palm can again be #1 if they start thinking outside the box while maintaining their overall great product. There's no excuse not to get a new design out before 2009.
> That "Folio" thing must be the last thing they "invented"
Funny that it was an aborted failure when Apple has under a parallel course done the same thing. MacBook Air + iPhone = Foleo + Treo/Centro?
As to a resurgence at Palm itself, I'm up for just about anything since the old Palm and its ecosystem of small developer apps is essentially dead, now emulated on Windows Mobile and Nokia. May as well make a clean break with the past both in software and hardware and function. Let's see if they have one more great invention they can give the world.
Hello someone in Palm management
I was a satisfied Palm customer goimg all the back to the 600 Treo and ending with the 700p. The reason I left and am now stuck with the AT&T system which is inferior to Verizon is because of the long delay in your company upgrading your OS5 operating system. I bought the very good iphone which does have some series drawbacks which your company take advantage of if your new system can upgrade. Here they are.
1 I want to return to Verizon.
2 Edge is not good.
3 Battery life is fair.
4 There is 'notes', not the much better 'memo's'.
5 There is no 'first initals' in the iphone to locate a phone number quickly. Very annoying.
6 Their is no recorder of quick notes.
7 Actually there are too many steps in the iphone to get to where you need to be
We know that Apple is working on a number of these items but their 5 year contract w/AT&T, renewable each year is a problem.
To be honest, on a leval playing field I ( and many customers I believe)would return to Treo. As you know iphone has many attributes I did not mention.
I'm looking forward to the natural competitor(Palm)to return to the frey to capture your place in the market.
Your hiring of Apple people should help. Hopefully someone in a high level of your management will read this an respond to me. [email protected]
Herb Lipton
I think your mock-up phone above is AWESOME and would love that to be the next version of treo/centro..
Andrew, no other bloggers, period, are optimistic about the future of Palm. you seem to be the only one who makes any positive comments. just curious as to why? do you(or this website) have any financial ties to palm?
thank you
The iTreo 800p idea does indeed looks exciting. The thinned down Treo with a flush crisp screen would be a nice improvement. I wouldn't mind a little rubber non-skid bummer as pictured along with a removable battery, AD2P BT and micro-SD. And although I wouldn't mind a larger screen, I'd rather have better battery life and a full keyboard similar to our existing Treo. (I don't mind the Centro keyboard ... but its a bit small) Improved hardware is always attractive, but we really need to see advancements in the OS -- let's hope Nova OS is real.
Well, I'm not exactly a regular blogger, but I'm optimistic about their future. Not near-term, just long-term. Near-term's gonna be rough.
First, just a side-observation to DM and Andrew: a blog that centers around Treos and is connected to a store which sells Treo accessories could be considered plenty of financial connection, even if none of it is official. Myself, I'm plenty financially invested in Palm software, probably cumulatively over a thousand over the years (I started back with a hand-me-down Palm Pro, the first I bought myself was a Palm V). The cost of moving to a new OS would be not quite as drastic -- several versions of software were upgrades and I can't see replacing each and every Astraware game I've bought over the years with its equivalent in a different OS -- but it'd be a cost I'd have to review. So take this with that proverbial grain of salt.
I am, to put it bluntly, annoyed with a lot of my fellow technophiles and geeks as of late. The news article on MyTreo.net concerning the rumored Treo 800w (mostly in PodCast format which I didn't listen to) was followed by a lot of upset comments. There's a reason to be upset with Palm, maybe, but I'm surprised at the short-term attention span. (No I'm not, I'm just calling attention to it is all, who am I kidding!) Most of the comments lamented that it wasn't going to be a Treo 800p. Lamented is too mild, actually. Lambasted is more like it. Unusual for Palm, they actually publicly responded to the open letter/complaint/suggestion-box published a few months ago. A little later they clearly committed to releasing a next-gen Palm-OS device, and admitted that to do so would take until at least early 2009.
Some people in the audience haven't caught on that time-to-market for a WinMo device is going to routinely be faster. Faster because Microsoft has already done most of the deeper parts of any OS revisioning. Redoing PalmOS up to version seven, or going with an adapted version of Access Linux Platform, isn't going to be done quickly, cheaply or easily. (Or maybe you want it to be done quickly and cheaply? I can tell you what the quality will be then, and then you'll be trashing it for different reasons instead.
And now I read the comments here. More upset and impatience. Again, I'd like to point out that there is good reason to be disappointed with Palm. There will be people who can't wait and must jump to a new OS, there will be people who have to -- like me -- figure in some additional cost factors into that. Or some wait time for a little while to see exactly how soon a Treo 900n (Nova OS? OK...) comes out and how it compares with whatever goodies Samsung or HTC or whoever else cooks up using Android by the time it is finally released.
But OH THE HORRORS of suffering through the indignities of not having the latest, sweetest cell phone. My 700p is twice the weight of a Blackberry Pearl. Believe me, my aching post-surgical back needs me to lose some of the weight out of my briefcase in some serious ways, but the extra three ounces ain't gonna kill me or help me one way or the other. The browser on the iPhone looks really fun to use and beats the snot out of Blazer, but I've also noticed that in the last six months the number of mobile-friendly (read: Blazer-friendly) websites has exploded. I've noticed that there are only about 10% of the developers there used to be writing for PalmOS these days, but I've still been able to fund an oversized software-buying habit for some time now. Spare me the whining. If you're that upset, figure your costs one way or the other and make your plans accordingly.
If Palm wins, despite the wait, you'll be waiting like I am, probably until March of 2009, maybe sooner if we're lucky, and maybe by then a few Android models will have emerged to also compete for attention. There'll probably be a second generation iPhone by then, maybe even a third. (Whee. Too many choices and no clear winner. Situation normal for technophiles! Congratulations, more to argue about!)
If Palm doesn't win in your calculations, then by all means get it over with and try another OS. I'm not such a die-hard Palm fan I won't tell that to you. (My girlfriend wants something she can fit in her pocket easy, and I've told her to go compare a Q and a Centro. Until her contract renews she's got my old 650 to use as a spare organizer. She won't activate it because she prefers her slim RAZR as a phone, she just wants to switch to using a single device on her own terms and timetable. See? Candid advice, even from a die-hard Palm owner.) I can tell you Palm will have to take its lumps in the market for poor strategic and tactical decisions in the past, increasingly absent technical support (not that they stand out in that regard -- MOST technological products suffer from this these days) and time lost invested in a completely failed product launch.(*) I can, in fact, go on to tell you that I'd be GLAD -- so long as it doesn't kill the company -- to see Palm take a few lumps for their bad choices. That's how companies LEARN. So TEACH them. You're unhappy about being the one to teach them? Fine. Be unhappy about it. I would be.
But here's a longer term lesson for technophiles. Occasionally, the brand that sells the latest, sweetest gadget is going to change. And it'll change again. Either because someone ELSE comes up with a latest and greatest whatever. Or because some other company entirely invents an entirely new whatever-else (or perfects a previously unviable something-else-entirely). If those aren't compatible, there's a switching cost. If they are compatible, there isn't. But there's always a bragging-rights cost. And when models evolve and revolutionize faster than you can buy them, you're not going to have the latest, sweetest model for very long. Cry me your bitter tears about something else. The market will shift again, maybe towards Palm, maybe HTC, maybe Apple, maybe Motorola, maybe someone else. It's almost as comical as debating which comic-book hero can beat the snot out of the other comic-book hero, because the super-powers revealed may include entirely new super-powers in next month's issue, and so might a few new super-weaknesses and super-villains be revealed. It ought to matter more (a) what it costs your wallet and (b) how much use you get out of it. Which, I suppose, includes amusement value -- and if it really is worth $100 a month for bragging rights to you then by all means buy a new $600 phone every six months. Takes all types, I suppose. What I really don't get, though, is this sense of betrayal some of you seem to espouse. It's almost like you'd been supporting Superman for years and were secretly afraid Spiderman could whup 'em. Eventually one of those comics with Superman versus Spiderman comes out and Spiderman really does give Superman a good pasting, and all those hours spent bragging up Superman's abilities to your friends are for naught. Maybe, instead, I suggest you switch to reading the stories on their own merit and not invest your own power-envy in them?
*(As another commenter mentions the MacBook Air above, I'll chime in and say the Foleo wasn't such a bad idea, in principle. But the public launch execution completely over-hyped it as the latest and greatest bread-slicer of the decade. It helps that the MacBook Air is also a MacBook and implies full Mac functionality. It also helps that it isn't easilly renamed Fooleo or Folly for the sake of bad-review headlines. Finally, it also helps that the XO project finished before the MacBook Air was released, so that we could see what a really, really clunky solid-state wireless-capable laptop looks like. [Good for kids, excellently engineered for eco-sensitive adults, ... bad for most briefcases and totes.])
DM - I disagree completely with your statement. There are PLENTY of bloggers who are very wishfully optimistic and enthusiastic about Palm and would like the Treo to regain the leading position that it once held (Engadget is but one for example).
As I have stated many times before, I have no financial ties to Palm whatsoever (although I am currently thinking about buying some stock).
Cheers, A.
This one of the stupidest article on Treonauts in a long time (and there have been quite a few stupid articles here).
Saying that Palm's ex-Apple hires are going to magically transform Palm into something better than the pitiful sucking company it has become is like saying Jean Louis Gasse is going to reinvent the computer industry with his new operating system.
Not gonna happen. Ever.
Palm management has a notorious history of bleeding the company dry time and again, restructuring at every turn in order to hijack more money from shareholders and leave customers with no support resources.
Foleo was not invented to give customers they need, it was invented because stupid Palm management thought it was a missing product niche they could sell into. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about Palm management, then stop right here and go buy more Palm shares.
More intelligent people will research further and find Culliigan's famous words about Apple and the iPhone. Google it if you are interested, it's good for a laugh.
Someone posted about mobile user-oriented websites on the rise. Guess what? Apple iPhones already account for more than 70% of all browsing by mobile users.
Palm is the buggiest platform in the market. It's even worse than Windows, which says a lot. Palm failing to deliver a reliable operating system for years shows how far behind they are, and no new replacement vaporware is ever going to change the fact that Palm will never recover all its lost ground.
The only thing good on this page is Apple, and Palm ain't Apple.
[[Apple iPhones already account for more than 70% of all browsing by mobile users.]]
Really?
Cool!
That might give Palm even more of a KICK to get their butts in gear! (That was what Palm was HOPING to be. They USED to be a near monopoly in PDAs way back when. Lost that position long time ago...)
Actually, the more shocking thing to me which told me Palm wasn't paying very good attention was when I found out the way in which NVFS was originally rolled out.
Air-tight garbage-collection and cache-management algorithms have been around for a long time. Years before NVFS.
It took, what, how many re-releases of the images for a Treo 650 before they revised PalmOS to include that code? They were, uh, sort-of making guesses before.
Speaking as a computer scientist, if I were working on an embedded device, I would be embarrassed at not having done my background research on that subsystem.
Seriously, though, "No Way Jose", I disagree about the article's stupidity. You're spot on in as much as why Palm made Foleo. That hardly sets them apart with respect to just about every other tech company out there, once they're old enough to care about finances more than just "making cool stuff". But stupidity? Naw. Just optimism and speculation. And in the realm of optimism and speculation, there's some logic in it, even if Palm has a history of disappointing over the last few years. Palm's in a literal innovate-or-die position. Being a customer, that's a very interesting position to watch a company be in. They'll either come up with something really surprising. Or they'll implode. It's actually kind-of hard to figure which it'll be or what factors into the formula for success. One thing which does factor is talent. So, seeing some new faces that have had some success is a good sign. Being this far out, though, I can't tell you whether those were the faces who were instrumental in the success that was on their resume or whether they're just the managers who got to take the credit. *I* won't be able to tell you that, but that might be plenty apparent in, oh, about six to nine month's time.
I'm just hoping they actually do some research on the computer science end of things this time. A flashy product which is buggy is one thing. A flashy product which has a documentably avoidable bug is quite another. Which is why I'll be strategically hesitating about three months before actually committing to buying whatever comes out of this effort. I'm not getting burned with another Treo 650 again. That was a $600 Lemony-scented toy. Did some things great, but for a long-time power-user it kept crashy-crashy-fell-down-go-boom-crashing. My 700p is a bit better. But it still resets every few days, usually in a spate of a few resets at a time. (I think Chatteremail pushes the multi-tasking past its limits sometimes.)
But, seriously, that is kinda cool. That means that more and more companies are going to try to go after making a really GOOD smartphone now. Maybe a few of them will be worth my look. MAYBE (I'm being guardedly optimistic here) one of them will be PALM. I'm not counting them out yet.
No Way Jose - if only I could have received one dollar over the past five years for every person that has bashed Palm and told me that "the company is dead" I would be a very happy millionaire today...
There's no doubt that Palm completely dropped the ball over the last couple of years but a new team, strategy, products and OS certainly means that they will soon be able to start playing aggressively again - hopefully they'll play to win this time...
Cheers, A.
The only thing that bothers me about waiting until 2009 is that I need a new Treo now! My carrier is T-Mobile and I have a 600 from the days that they were selling off 600 because they had removed Treos from their product line. I don't want any other carrier, and I don't want to pay such an outrageous price for a potentially buggy 680. I bought an unlocked 680 on eBay and it works great, as long as I don't turn on the phone electronics. Then it constantly freezes up. After googling the problem, I see that the 680 has had lots of issues similar to mine with no reliable fix. I've done everything I can and it still doesn't work right. Based on the number of problems I've seen, I'm not sure that I want to even go directly through Palm to get an unlocked version. Even with Palm support (or non-support as it seems).
Now there are rumors of a Centro coming to T-Mo, I'd be willing to consider $99 for a phone supported by the carrier, but I need a replacement sooner than later. And I'm not crazy about the Centro's smaller display. And an unlocked Centro is not much less than an unlocked 680.
As a Mac user also, I will not get a windows mobile phone, and a Blackberry is too closed a platform. I'm reluctant to reward Palm for their poor corporate decisions on reorganizations that stole precious resources from developing the platform, and if a decent ALP phone comes out before a new treo or centro. I'm gone from Palm platform, no matter how good it could be in 2009.
Andrew,
I wish Palm and you the best of luck, really. If you had a buck from every doom-sayer, perhaps you would be a millionaire. Trying to get a buck from each of them seems to be a less risky strategy than buying shares of Palm.
I had several Palms over the years ending with the Tungsten C. I'm still pissed about that one, though I sold it a year or 2 ago.
The next PalmOS might be great, but it will be competing against what will by that time be fairly mature development platforms with lots of developers, those being Android, iPhone, and RIM. It might seem unjust, but by that time being technically better won't really matter that much. Odds are it won't be better anyway. Look how things worked for Apple for so many years, claiming to have the easier and better OS but no matter. Even with Apple's current smashing success, they're not about to take Microsoft out of first place.
If you've been around for 20 years or so, you might remember the Amiga back when it was new, cool, and superior. Every so often we read about another company that bought Amiga and some new Amiga hardware or OS. yeah, I know Amiga was huge in Germany back before the wall fell. Who cares about Amiga anymore? How pathetic is it to still think Amiga is going to make any difference? Do you want to fill that niche for Palm?
Andrew -
I can respect your loyalty to Palm, but could you please go through your archives and count the number of times you've said "wait 12 months" regarding a new operating platform. How many times are you willing to restart this clock?
You are missing out on lots of great technology from RIMM, Apple, etc. waiting on Palm to figure out their next move or deliver anything radically different (Centro doesn't qualify as radically different).
Centor is the only thing keeping Palm alive. Expect more of the same. Innovation? I will believe it 6 months after its release (re: 600, 650 problems). Best wishes Palm, my next phone will be Blackberry or possibly Android.
Marc - my loyalty is neither to Palm nor to the Treo or even Centro (which I now use daily) but simply to the "best" device for my needs. It would be nearly impossible for me to continue to write with the passion that I have if I didn't truly believe in the product.
I own an iPhone, a BlackBerry as well as a vast collection of other smartphones and the simple fact (call me crazy) is that I still _choose_ and _prefer_ my Treo/Centro over any other device out there today.
Yes, both RIM and Apple devices are ahead on some fronts but the combination of full keyboard + touchscreen + simplicity + software availability + overall speed and functionality means that I am still happy as a bunny with my Palm smartphone.
Having said this, like most I am indeed upset at the seemingly interminable "wait" that Palm has frustratingly put all of us through and it's clear that the next 12 months will prove to be a "do or die" period for the company.
However, as has happened before in Palm's history, I am optimistic that they will be able to "reinvent" themselves with new products and OS.
The only smartphone that would remotely make me consider a move from the Treo/Centro is one closely resembling the mockup image in my post - which unfortunately does not "yet" exist but that I hope Palm will have the courage and determination to deliver...
Cheers, A.
Let's look at the calendar and do some math here...
In the next few weeks, Apple's expected to release their second generation 3G iPhone which - among other things (like opening the door to developers) - heralds their full-on assault on the enterprise market...
Fast-forward a year from now, when Palm hopes to finally release their long-overdue "powerful next-generation operating system" running on "a completely new smartphone hardware platform", and guess what? Apple will likely be preparing to release their _third_ generation iPhone.
Think about that. Long and hard.
Palm would be lucky to catch up with the _current_ generation iPhone. But does anyone here really think they're capable of catching up with the next generation iPhone? Hey, how about the generation after that? Because they don't merely have to catch up with _three_ generations of iPhone product development in one year's time, they have to _leapfrog_ it if they have any hope of catching up with the iPhone juggernaut.
Heck, investment bank Piper Jaffrey now projects Apple will sell 45 MILLION IPHONES IN 2009:
Meanwhile, the Palm brand continues to self-destruct...
Oh, and as of January, Apple had already sold 4 million iPhones in about the same amount of time it took Palm to sell 1 million Centros at a fraction of the cost.
Bringing on four people from Apple - only two of which ever actually worked on products, and apparently none of them worked on the iPhone - is not going to solve Palm's problems.
It's way too little, way too late.
And at this point it's just sad.
Gee, all that is great. But if Palm is not going to support Vista 64 (granted it's a small demographic), I'm likely to jump ship for a baby windows device and hope the Palm emulator software for W. Mobile will still allow me to use my favorite POS apps.
But, hey, Palm seems to have plunked some change down for new blood (wish they'd paid their in house geeks a relative penny to integrate w/ V64 instead), so I'll certainly be curious to see what they come up with.
If it has a touch screen AND a keyboard, I might even try it out. I;m a techno geek. I can't help it.
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