Palm Inc., the maker of hand-held computers, has hired a top Silicon Valley software designer as it seeks to respond to the challenge posed by Apple’s new iPhone. The designer, Paul Mercer, a former Apple computer engineer, began work three weeks ago at Palm on a line of new products…
Apple’s iPhone is still [at least three] months away from being available, but its flexible interface is already shaking up the cellphone industry, including Palm, which makes the hybrid phone-organizers known as smart phones.
Although Palm pioneered the market for hand-held computers, the company has found itself under pressure in recent years by some of the most powerful names in consumer electronics, including Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Microsoft.
The company’s own Palm OS software is widely seen within the industry as aging and in need of a fundamental revision.
Mercer has a good rep. Whether or not he can bail out Palm will be an adventure.
I’m just thrilled to hear Palm is doing something. I’ve owned various Palm devices over the years. My current device is a Palm TX and I’d tell you all the reasons I like it except it would sound like spam.
Rumors of Palm’s slow death have been around for years but lately I started to believe the rumors were true. Now maybe there’s hope. The industry needs the competition anyway.
Unfortunately for Palm theres no Handpring to buy this time. And they’ve gotten all the mileage they can on the Treo without some major revisions.
“The company’s own Palm OS software is widely seen within the industry as aging and in need of a fundamental revision.”
Does this means we’ll see PalmVista?
You know what? Screw Palm. I have loved and used their products for years, including the Treo 600. But the Treo 650 was too little too late, and the Treo 700 initially was a Windows-only platform. That’s just sad. The Treo 700p (the Palm OS version) is still not available in GSM, just punishing their loyal customers. I’m sick of them.
Having said that, I’m not going to buy an iPhone any time soon, although I’m a happy Apple user. When it’s available unlocked and not tied to a certain carrier, I’ll probably buy one. But as a former customer of both AT&T Wireless and Cingular, I had nothing but bad experiences with them, and will not go back.
3, I’m a PC guy but let’s hope it’s more along the lines of PalmOSx
4, Understood. Many users share your sentiment. That’s some of the reasons behind the rumors of Palm’s demise.
Ditto on ATT/Cingular. I will not go there EVER AGAIN!
#5, et al – ALL Telcos and Cellcos suck. YMMV.
Palm has this one LAST chance to pull their butt out of the fire. The iPhone will NOT be a raging success, but will get a lot of attention. I have a Treo 650 and LOVE it specifically because it has a hard keyboard (I do work email on this thing as a contractor) and it’s very open and expandable. I have everything from basic apps to a Commodore 64 simulator on it. The iPhone like most other ‘smart’ phones will be completely locked down and have very little 3rd party, user, or open source support. Nothing has quite the pile of applications like Palm. But their hardware is just too old now. If they can’t pull out a new slick phone this year, I’ll give up on them, even though I like the Palm platform.
The iPhone is silly. Sorry. It’s a great ‘concept’ phone, but like cars with gull wing doors, it seems cool until you actually try to use it. No hard keys? Guess why remote controls that have ONLY touch (no hard keys) failed…same reason this will. Humans need tackle feedback. I can run my Treo and make a call with one hand, not even looking at the phone. With only ‘on screen’ virtual buttons, can’t do that (reliably). Also, imagine the smear, smudge and scratch factor of one giant single touchable surface. I LOVE the iPhone as concept, I love it as art and experimental tech, but in actual daily use…ugh.