Palm: Pre, webOS & app discussion

[Kid_Eternity]

Things Palm fucked up:

- The huge lead time without giving a launch date
- Bugger all PR
- Finally releasing it close to an iPhone launch
- Going with O2 as a carrier
- Fuck all in the app store
- Crap tech support



Any more?

Going head to head with the iPhone without a proper PR campaign was insane, in fact beyond insane...hopefully HP will do a better job with the next devices (I expect the tablet WebOS to be a big deal if done right)...

 

[mauvais]

I just looked at what you can do with the webOS API, in considering whether it's a viable platform for developing a commercial app on. Well, no, it is not. It's crap.

 

[sumimasen]

O2 no longer selling Palm Pre Plus. What's all that about?

 

[editor]

O2 no longer selling Palm Pre Plus. What's all that about?

The somewhat underwhelming Palm Pre 2 is coming.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Rumours of an iPhone styled Pre:

Our editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn, writing for sibling site PreCentral.net lands an exclusive first look at an HP/Palm webOS slab device, potentially code-named Stingray.
While we are quite confident that the image is legit, unfortunately we don’t have a lot of confidence in any further information. Is the device coming or is it simply a prototype that has been canned? Our tipster described it as “an EVO with webOS” and suggests it simply has yet to be announced.
If real and if HP goes ahead and releases it, it will be their first phone without a keyboard, leaving webOS itself as their key differentiators. With more an more emerging about the tablet-specific webOS 3.0 (similar to how iOS 3.2 was iPad specific), it’ll be interesting to see what ultimately launches on the phone.

 

[editor]

I love Palm, but they're fucked. If they'd had the courage of their convictions and launched the Foleo, who knows where they could have been by now...

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Can't see any future for them either despite having been bought by HP. Perhaps they might carve out a small slice of the tablet market?

 

[editor]

Apropos of nothing, I stumbled across a band called The Weather Station who were rather a pleasant listen in a folkie kind of way. Turns out the singer (Tamara Lindeman/Hope) was the woman who appeared in the rather weird original Palm Pre ads. She has a lovely voice.



The ad agency responsible for the promo campaign went bust.

 

[Piers Gibbon]

nice, I like a bit of folk

Palm Pre..ahh that takes me back, thank god I didn't buy one and die hoping for an OS upgrade, or an app to be released

Amazing how Palm chucked away their early technological lead...I was very happy with my Treo, YEARS ahead of the first iphone

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Yeah...Palm....they're the reason I have an iPhone. Just couldn't hang on any longer once my wonderful Palm Centro died; there was nothing else that looked good at the time and they fucked about no end with pushing the UK release date of the Palm Pre (which I REALLY wanted) back. iPhone 3GS came out and it was that or what 6 months with a shitty old Nokia 'feature' phone (after a few months of torture as my Centro died)...

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

The whole Pre saga was just a massive facepalm from start to finish. They had a great OS but everything else Palm did was bonkers.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

The whole Pre saga was just a massive facepalm from start to finish. They had a great OS but everything else Palm did was bonkers.

It didn't feel as solid as the Centro build wise but the UX was sublime...

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

It didn't feel as solid as the Centro build wise but the UX was sublime...

OS was great. Hardware was crap. The launch and marketing were farcical. It was doomed from the very start.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

OS was great. Hardware was crap. The launch and marketing were farcical. It was doomed from the very start.

I really like the look of it, compared to what else was available at the time, but couldn't bring myself to buy a Pre.

 

[editor]

The whole Pre saga was just a massive facepalm from start to finish. They had a great OS but everything else Palm did was bonkers.

The OS interface still stands the test of time too. I occasionally fire up my Pre and the card multitasking system is still miles better than anything Apple or Android have managed (although Apple have had a pretty good stab at ripping
it off recently).

 

[Kid_Eternity]

OS was great. Hardware was crap. The launch and marketing were farcical. It was doomed from the very start.

Yup, in hindsight their utter fuck up saved me wasting a lot of time and money in a dead in platform...

 

[editor]

OS was great. Hardware was crap. The launch and marketing were farcical. It was doomed from the very start.

All that faffing about selling off parts of the company and buying them back was like a rerun of the Commodore/Amiga catastrophe.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

The OS interface still stands the test of time too. I occasionally fire up my Pre and the card multitasking system is still miles better than anything Apple or Android have managed (although Apple have had a pretty good stab at ripping
it off recently).

iOS 7 pretty much rips the card system off entirely

 

[elbows]

The card multitasking system was so good that it made people gush over WebOS despite the rest of that OS being nothing really special as far as I could tell. I'm not surprised, that stuff matters, and I'm glad its been copied since its a design worthy of living on well past the rest of the debacle.

 

[editor]

The card multitasking system was so good that it made people gush over WebOS despite the rest of that OS being nothing really special as far as I could tell. I'm not surprised, that stuff matters, and I'm glad its been copied since its a design worthy of living on well past the rest of the debacle.

Actually, the OS was pretty good all over. The notifications were years ahead of the iPhone, for example.

 

[Piers Gibbon]

well, selfishly I guess I am glad that ios7 is ripping of the Palm OS...good tech shouldn't just languish unused for years (and doesn't tend to - despite what some people think about Tesla having invented free electricity machines...)

 

[Kid_Eternity]

well, selfishly I guess I am glad that ios7 is ripping of the Palm OS...good tech shouldn't just languish unused for years (and doesn't tend to - despite what some people think about Tesla having invented free electricity machines...)

Have to agree, all companies rip off other companies. Google originally ripped off the Blackberry design for its Android phone until they saw the iPhone and then ripped that off. Apple ripped off Xerox, on and on...

I really don't care as long as good ideas remain available on platforms I want to pay for.