iPhone rival Palm Pre to sell for $199 after rebate on June 6th - Page 11

And I meant we had not to talk about iPhone here. We have to admit, Palm can't watch their mouths. And they don't want to learn to.


Palm guys show us clearly Pre is failure. "Let's not show it to technically literate people" Oh, yeah... You must be kidding me... Unfasten your belt. There will be no surprises.

Don't set your expectations too high. The Pre might be faster in Web browsing compared to the current iPhone, but I don't see any reason for it to be perceived as faster compared to the new iPhone, whenever it comes out. In many areas you will have no base for comparison, e.g. games/OpenGL. There were numerous leaks suggesting that the new iPhone will have video editing capabilities but Pre is way behind in this department. I looked through the leaked Palm sales guide and noticed that they don't stress on performance the way they did few months back. Their remaining pros are the physical keyboard (not an advantage IMO) and multitasking (a feature Apple can add to the new iPhone if they decide to). But they will lag behind in many areas. I still have no explanation on the shortage issues. It seems that Palm was really late with production and could not stock enough devices.

My expectations:
Palm already lost the opportunity to win against the iPhone. Their best hope is not to be smashed by the new iPhone.

We'll see real soon

It's very possible, if not likely, that they were having difficulties in production, or pre-production.

It's also possible that due to some people who tried the phone talking about the difficulty with that top row of keys being too close to the overhang of the top part of the phone, that they tried to do a slight re-design. That certainly would have held production back, successful or not.

They also seemed to commit themselves to a launch before the iPhone.

I don't like the idea of that.

While Apple no doubt had the same problem with the initial launch; remember the problems?, they weren't in contention with other phones at the time. The Pre is.

I'm not sure what would be worse, a botched launch right before the new iPhone, or a better launch a month or two after, when all the iPhone hype has died down somewhat.

I would think it would be the latter, but possibly, they are hoping their launch isn't botched, and that coming out before is too important to their plans.

To me, even if the launch goes well, it's too close. I can't imagine anyone not wanting to wait until the iPhone launch is here, whether it's just announced at the ADC, or released during the ADC.

The reportage will all be saying to wait until the iPhone is announced, no matter how good the Pre may look. They wouldn't say that later.

They aren’t high, I think they are quite realistic. We know the iPhone is running about a 412MHZ ARMv6 CPU with 128MB RAM which needs 64MB for the OS and we know the Pre will use a 600MHz ARMv7 with 256MB RAM. We also know that WebOS is a slimmer than OS X.

As I stated previously, the comparisons will come in as soon the devices are launched, perhaps even earlier if given to tech sites. This means that all initial comparisons will be the Pre to the current iPhone, not the future iPhone that we know little to nothing about.

As for OpenGL and games, the iPhone will win hands down, just as it will for any complex app development, but simple apps are a focus for most consumers for most tasks, which is what the Pre is going for.


The physical keyboard doesn’t appeal to me, either, but to many it does, though it wold be much more useful for the slide-out keyboard to be in landscape mode, like the Android G1.

The multitasking, as we’ve discussed isn’t really true multitasking, but it’s good enough for most people’s needs. I think Apple will add limited proper, background apps, but only to their new device as the current and past iPhones don’t have the HW to support it. The current WebKit builds in Safari betas for both the mobile and desktop platforms do support HTML5’s DB functions, so Apple could offer a stop-gate option of allowing local Safari-based apps, like the Pre, but would they want to look like they are chasing Palm at this point?

The problem is non-IT-centric customers have absolutely no idea of all that.

Nor should they. Palm and Sprint will do well to quickly compare the current iPhone to the Pre in terms of speed as soon as possible. There is no need to quantify and explain why the Pre is faster and how this short-term benefit is a longterm problem.

In a 30-sec commercial just show some basic comparisons. Id guess that powering the devices on would be faster on the Pre than the iPhone since it has better HW and the OS is lighter. Id also think opening up a webpage on the Pre would be faster than the iPhone because it already has WebKit running and its using a newer version of WebKit with the improved JS engine. After the commercials about background apps streaming music and whatnot, Id start there for comparisons.

Khgm... But they can not show it in ads. It's illegal to advertise shortcomings of a competitor. Everything they're allowed to say is "faster than other phones".

Perhaps in France, but in the US we compare products all the time in ads. As long as you are technically truthful its okay.

Not illegal, actually, just a bit of advertising conventional wisdom (don't give the competition free advertising by mentioning them by name).

You can't lie outright and say things about the competition which aren't true-- Palm can't run ads that say "And unlike the iPhone, the Pre will never explode in your face and kill you."

OMG. I simply can't believe that! It just can't happen!

The first article of the European law on comparative advertising says:
"if it is not deceiving a competitor"
N-th article of the law says: "if a competitors commercial brands, commercial names, other distinctive signs, goods,services, activities or circumstances are not discredited or denigrated"
etc. No, it wont work.

That has absolutely no barring on the Pre being released in the US. So far, I have only heard about a US release with Sprint.

Lanham Act says the same. In American English.

So the Get A Mac ads don’t exist? And where does it state that you can’t compare your product to another?

Mac is a business identifier of Apple Corporation. PC is not. No PC brand was mentioned in Get A Mac ads.


Oh, oh, sorry! It's my English again! I wrote "you can not advertise shortcomings of a competitor"

They try to state any brand names when possible but plenty of the ads mentioned Vista by name because it was such an easy target after MS’ bungle. You don’t mention a competitor unless you have to, but with the Windows and the iPhone being so prominent in their respective circles the benefit of showing that your product is superior in comparison can outweigh the potential for free advertising.


You wrote, "It's illegal to advertise shortcomings of a competitor.” when it’s been stated that it’s not illegal, it’ been shown that it is not illegal, and Lanham states nothing about shortcomings of a competitor’s product. You can’t slander a product, but being truthful about a particular shortcoming is not slander. Logically speaking, there is no reason to compare two products in an ad if you are not pointing out that one is inferior to the other in some regard.

PS: Have you not seen a single US political campaign ad? They go for the jugular! They will take anything out of context and are still within their right to use it so long as it is technically truthful. It’s quite obscene, actually.

True, Vista was mentioned once. No comparison with Mac OS was done. No any evaluations, estimations, opinions, which might harm Vista, were sounded. Skip it, they all're much smarter with ads and legislation, than we are.


It is illegal. And the U.S. legislation strictly forbids any harm to competitor's reputation. They just allow charging incoming calls.

They mentioned it once and then many times after that.


Why do the French hate free markets so much?

No, no. Not they!


They /free markets/ are useless. They don't allow TV on iPhone. Socialism does.

It is possible that Palm's Pre would become a cheaper alternative to Apple's iPhone, just like Microsoft's Windows smartphone. However, it is unlikely it would gain market share at a rapid rate like the iPhone.

The Pre's functionality would mostly be Internet based and less so on the in-built operating system. Such an internet based functionality may end up being expensive for the end user, if it does, the iPhone would be a better alternative to the Pre.

May the best phone dominate the market.

Plethora of Palm Pre interface videos emerge from leaked emulator.




Curious of: how exactly is the user supposed to scroll screens by that small triangle at the bottom? Are they sure it's convenient?

Being pleased and surprised by: They develop on Mac. So, Mac becomes the standard in the area of mobile development.

So far, that is not the case. Best Buy has listed the retail cost for the device as $850, which still means its locked to Sprint and probably means that you still cant use a SERO plan with it since theyve seem to locked that out, regardless of the how you purchased the device.

On top of that, They are charging the same as Apple charges for the 8GB device now, but if Flash has come down enough in price we may see a 16GB iPhone as standard for that price, especially if Apple feels at all threatened. There is some evidence to suggest that Apple upped the capacity of the Nano to match the Zune awhile back.

If the Pre fails, Palm may have no alternative but to license WebOS to other device makers. Better than WinMo, that is for sure.



You use emoticons like crazy so its hard to tell what you are joking about and what you are serious about, but assuming that your comment above was not in jest the Pre uses jesture-based controls like the iPhone. The small arrow pointing down is merely indicating that there are other options below if you were to flick the page up.

You're absolutely correct. I was jeering Pre. And in general, I'm always mocking at something. There're very few my posts, which are serious.

Thank you, I see it clearer now (this is rare serious post).

P.S. I'm always serious when I thank people.

The political Ads in this country are mild compared to what is seen elsewhere.

Given that WebOS is one of the main features of the Pre, if not the main feature, if it fails, it will be mostly because of WebOS. Considering that, what company would want to license it?

Crazy! I cant even stand the campaigns we have so I cant imagine what other countries do.

In ads? Nothing much. There're debates for obscenities.

I think there are some other factors to consider with Palm. For starters, there is a potential lingering lawsuit over the IP they used, namely the capacitance touchscreen and gesturing. Besides that, if the Pre itself fails because Palm can’t afford to R&D the complete widget they still have what looks like a quality, modern, lightweight mobile OS to license. At the very least, I’d think they would be sell WebOS to another mobile vendor. It may even work out well for a company like HTC or Nokia. Symbian and WinMo aren’t scaling up well these days, this may be what is needed alongside the other options.

Interesting read…

•

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/22/tech...tune/index.htm

Well scrolling will be a flick of the finger. If you mean how will they view notifications, I think it'll be fine. I can easily click smaller things on my wm phone.

What gives you the notion that Mac is the standard in the area of mobile development? The videos come from a guy with a mac, big deal. The developer's kit was made for osx, windows, and linux.

It's interesting. But there is nothing that article that we haven't known for months to years. It doesn't give a single reason why the Pre will sell. It hardly even mentions WebOS. Actually, they didn't mention WebOS at all in there. They just said that Palm needed a new OS.

But I really have to disagree with you here.

I said it in my last post, and I'll say it again.

WebOS is the main feature of the Pre. If the Pre fails, or doesn't do as well as it needs to do, the main reason given will be the failure of WebOS. The physical part of the phone is obviously important, but it's the OS that matters the most.

So if the phone has poorer sales than hoped for, and the OS doesn't live up to its pre-market hype, not one will want it.

There is no point in licensing a failed OS. And a failed OS with nothing going for it, such as a successful store, which it won't have if developers see it isn't going anywhere.

In that case, the OS is dead.

I don't know why you think other companies will be in such a hurry to license a dead OS.

And, by the way, Nokia is moving to Linux, and away from Symbian.

Win mobile needs a major overhaul. The one thing it's got going for itself it is its owner, MS. They will, if they feel they have to, pour as much money into it as they need. We don't really know what they're doing with 7, because it's been pushed back so much. But some believe it's to make it more iPhone-like. If so, and it's done well enough, it may even gain some marketshare back.