Palm Pre a ?Threat? Thoughts?
Me, like quite a few around here, believe the Palm to be a threat to the iPhone.
One has to wonder with the millions of subscribers coming up on their 2 year contract renewal, might jump ship and try out the palm. Wondering what everyone thinks.
There is a new story on Mac Rumors that addresses this threat.
http://www.macrumors.com/
I find it ironic that Palm Pre is to Apple what AMD was (at one time), to Intel. Sure, some will retort, "well look at where AMD is now" so will nib that in the butt right away, but you have to wonder, if Palm didn't have all these features, would we see VIDEO, MMS with graphics, tethering (works jail broken), from Apple. We can only hope flash makes it as the Palm is rumored to have a full fledged FLASH player which will allow users to watch Hulu, something you can't do on the iPhone and still unsure if it will happen on the 3.0 version. More than likely, it won't work on present versions as I think the battery would die whereas newer phones will have a different battery.
Anyway, check out the story, seems to imply that there is indeed, some panic and worry. How many people bought the iPhone? I predict that unless Apple drops prices, ATT cuts prices, that the PALM PRE is really going to do some damage to Apple.
One has to wonder with the millions of subscribers coming up on their 2 year contract renewal, might jump ship and try out the palm. Wondering what everyone thinks.
There is a new story on Mac Rumors that addresses this threat.
http://www.macrumors.com/
I find it ironic that Palm Pre is to Apple what AMD was (at one time), to Intel. Sure, some will retort, "well look at where AMD is now" so will nib that in the butt right away, but you have to wonder, if Palm didn't have all these features, would we see VIDEO, MMS with graphics, tethering (works jail broken), from Apple. We can only hope flash makes it as the Palm is rumored to have a full fledged FLASH player which will allow users to watch Hulu, something you can't do on the iPhone and still unsure if it will happen on the 3.0 version. More than likely, it won't work on present versions as I think the battery would die whereas newer phones will have a different battery.
Anyway, check out the story, seems to imply that there is indeed, some panic and worry. How many people bought the iPhone? I predict that unless Apple drops prices, ATT cuts prices, that the PALM PRE is really going to do some damage to Apple.
Comments
Palm will get some users that were considering purchasing their first iPhone, but there will only be a small percentage that will dump their iPhone for a Pre.
I'd consider the Palm Pre but in order for me to choose the Pre over the iPhone
it would need to be not only the iPhone's equal but significantly superior in most
ways.
So my question is to those fee it's a threat (and any new phone is a threat to the iPhone as
far as the media is concerned)
What's my motivation for choosing Palm over a now established iPhone platform? I know what
apps are available and i've now gotten a glimpse about the features of the next platform.
It is somewhat amusing how closely people identify with the brands they purchase. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
But I try to take a slightly different approach. I hope that the iPhone has as much competition as possible. A successful competitor is a good thing for iPhone owners. It means that Apple will have to work even harder to improve their offering.
So as an iPhone owner who absolutely loves his iPhone, I still root for Palm and the other guys to catch up with or even surpass the iPhone.
"Threat" ?
It is somewhat amusing how closely people identify with the brands they purchase. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
But I try to take a slightly different approach. I hope that the iPhone has as much competition as possible. A successful competitor is a good thing for iPhone owners. It means that Apple will have to work even harder to improve their offering.
So as an iPhone owner who absolutely loves his iPhone, I still root for Palm and the other guys to catch up with or even surpass the iPhone.
Yes ...I'm a fan of technology and if Palm can deliver undeniable techlust worthy hardware hell I'm happy. But I grow tired of the astroturfing and viral marketing fluff that happens on boards.
"XXX product is a threat to yyyy product? What is yyyyy product gonna do?"
That's about an uncritical as you can get.
With the iPhone I have
1. Support of my music collection and iTunes an app i'm very comfy with.
2. More apps than I can ever hope to download
3. Cachet ---hey it accounts for something
4. Active development. Apple hasn't stopped improving this phone.
5. MobileMe syncing and Cloud goodness
For a competitor it's going to take them being superior in %75 of the aformentioned attributes for me to look at them.
It's going to take more than "it has background processes" or "a physical keyboard" for me to ooh and aaah.
A lot of the advantage the Pre had over the iPhone when the Pre was first announced were address with the iPhone 3.0 sneak peak.
Umm.....some of the advantages were addressed.
Palm's WebOS's "synergy" and "cards" system for handling the Pre's TRUE multi-tasking hardware and OS is still superior. Nothing in the iphone 3.0 beta preview showed how it can beat that.
I'm hoping though that in June Apple will unveil a true multi-tasking iphone with the hardware specs to back that up. As well, I'm hoping this new iphone will have an OS that will fully take advantage of a multi-tasking mobile device.
Yes, this would mean new battery technology in combination with other energy saving techniques would have to be used.
I would rather that with "push" technology than "push" technology alone.
Umm.....some of the advantages were addressed.
Palm's WebOS's "synergy" and "cards" system for handling the Pre's TRUE multi-tasking hardware and OS is still superior. Nothing in the iphone 3.0 beta preview showed how it can beat that.
I'm hoping though that in June Apple will unveil a true multi-tasking iphone with the hardware specs to back that up. As well, I'm hoping this new iphone will have an OS that will fully take advantage of a multi-tasking mobile device.
Yes, this would mean new battery technology in combination with other energy saving techniques would have to be used.
I would rather that with "push" technology than "push" technology alone.
Multi-tasking on a 3.5" screen? It's a phone with limited display capabilities. You're sounding like a marketer who really isn't confident in the product that you speak about.
You claim superiority and toss out "synergy" and "cards" and while that sounds exciting you offer no insight as to what benefits these bring.
Palm
Synergy
Pre uses the Palm® Synergy? feature to bring your Outlook®,2 Google, and Facebook® calendars together for one logical view of your day. And if you have the same contacts in different places, Pre can link them together, making it easy to find the information you need.
Why on God's Green Earth (GGE) would I disperse my calendar info across 3 or more services? Why would I do the same with my contacts when Addressbook allows me to group contacts by arbitrary values I decide. I can create a Facebook group and easily view this content without stranding my data across services and hoping for some aggregation tool to piece it back together for me.
A iPhone with a MobileMe account backing it up removes the need for Synergy based on Palm's definition of the technology.
Cards
Keep multiple applications open and move easily between them?email, maps, photos, websites, whatever.3 Pre thinks of your applications as "activity cards," and lets you flip through them, move them around, or throw them off screen.
Sounds great but I need to know what the underbelly of running apps brings me. What's my battery life going to be like? For me personally I doubt that i'm going to need maps or photos available at a moments notice. Having the web available is something I could see as well as email. The only limitation I can see with push notification in the place of background processes is wanting to stream music whilst you surf.
Multi-tasking on a 3.5" screen? It's a phone with limited display capabilities. You're sounding like a marketer who really isn't confident in the product that you speak about.
You claim superiority and toss out "synergy" and "cards" and while that sounds exciting you offer no insight as to what benefits these bring.
Palm
Synergy
Pre uses the Palm® Synergy? feature to bring your Outlook®,2 Google, and Facebook® calendars together for one logical view of your day. And if you have the same contacts in different places, Pre can link them together, making it easy to find the information you need.
Why on God's Green Earth (GGE) would I disperse my calendar info across 3 or more services? Why would I do the same with my contacts when Addressbook allows me to group contacts by arbitrary values I decide. I can create a Facebook group and easily view this content without stranding my data across services and hoping for some aggregation tool to piece it back together for me.
A iPhone with a MobileMe account backing it up removes the need for Synergy based on Palm's definition of the technology.
Cards
Keep multiple applications open and move easily between them?email, maps, photos, websites, whatever.3 Pre thinks of your applications as "activity cards," and lets you flip through them, move them around, or throw them off screen.
Sounds great but I need to know what the underbelly of running apps brings me. What's my battery life going to be like? For me personally I doubt that i'm going to need maps or photos available at a moments notice. Having the web available is something I could see as well as email. The only limitation I can see with push notification in the place of background processes is wanting to stream music whilst you surf.
So, if you IM, SMS, MMS, email all of the time, I think the Pre and iPhone will be neck and neck there, along with Blackberry and the Samsung/LG du jour.
If you mainly want a handheld for entertainment, the iPhone is king there with music, movies, TV, and games galore, all slickly managed and synced through iTunes or downloaded/viewed OTA. The Pre doesn't sync with your computer, so you'll have to manage media through drag-n-drop and rely on the Pre's cloud sync for your contact, calender type info.
Corporations will continue to use RIM as that ship doesn't turn unless RIM crumbles from the inside.
I expect about 300k to 400k units the first full 3 months its on sale from Sprint for a lot of business reasons. I'm thinking the Pre will cost Palm upwards of $250 to $300 to make due to the new hardware it has (TI 3xxx Cortex A8 blah blah) combined with an inability to get large volume discounts from suppliers. This will mean Palm will want to get about $600 to $700 per Pre from Sprint. Not helping is that Sprint isn't financially in a position to give an almost bankrupt business a nice deal, and I'm thinking they don't want to give Palm that much for the Pre. This will be bad for Palm. Not that bad for Sprint as they've got other cheaper phones they can sell just as many high dollar contracts with. This is the reason why I think Palm and Sprint haven't announced a release date yet.
So, I expect the cost of subsidized Pre to be $300 to $400, with the Palm only getting around $500 to $600 for the Pre. At this kind of price point, unit sales will be self limiting to 300k to 400k unit sales for Sprint and Palm. I think I'm being generous here as I can see the new Instinct undercutting the Pre by half and doing 90% of the job, which would be very dangerous for Palm.
Also, I'm troubled by their software model still. If all the software is in HTML/JS, that'll mean all of a developers code can be viewed by other developers, thereby instantly giving the competition the secrets to all one's code. That doesn't sound like a good business environment to me. Also, I'm not sure about the security model either. Security from pirating and such. To counteract this, I suspect developers will put key code onto their web servers. If this happens, I think the 3rd party app market on webOS will be stillborn, as once this happens, it's really no different from a Web app strategy, which hasn't proven successful yet.
Totally unrelated to this is what Apple and ATT are going to do. If they sell a $99 to $149 iPhone on say a $20/month 500 MB/month plan, it's irrelevant how good the Pre is, Apple will sell 10m iPhones in the first 3 months of this "iPhone".
Ok, help me out here, what has screen size got to do with multitasking?
Multitasking efficiency overall is proportional to the screen size available which is why i'm on a 22" LCD right now versus a 17" CRT.
Also, I'm troubled by their software model still. If all the software is in HTML/JS, that'll mean all of a developers code can be viewed by other developers, thereby instantly giving the competition the secrets to all one's code. That doesn't sound like a good business environment to me. Also, I'm not sure about the security model either. Security from pirating and such. To counteract this, I suspect developers will put key code onto their web servers. If this happens, I think the 3rd party app market on webOS will be stillborn, as once this happens, it's really no different from a Web app strategy, which hasn't proven successful yet.
Totally unrelated to this is what Apple and ATT are going to do. If they sell a $99 to $149 iPhone on say a $20/month 500 MB/month plan, it's irrelevant how good the Pre is, Apple will sell 10m iPhones in the first 3 months of this "iPhone".
I'd love a cheap and limited iPhone. Would make for a nice family plan that's somewhat affordable. I still can't get over the 180 degree flip. The iPhone shipped sans SDK and it was "oh...web apps...when are the real apps coming?" vs "OMFG the Pre uses insanely cool web apps!!!111"
Hey the more the merrier as far as i'm concerned but I'm just resisting the hype. The iPhone's been out nigh two years and I don't have enough fingers to cover the amount of iPhone Killers that have trotted into the arena.
Multitasking efficiency overall is proportional to the screen size available which is why i'm on a 22" LCD right now versus a 17" CRT.
Sorry to point out the obvious here, but you do realise that multitasking on a phone is not referring to having multiple apps on the screen at once? Therefore the screen size is completely irrelevant.
Sorry to point out the obvious here, but you do realise that multitasking on a phone is not referring to having multiple apps on the screen at once? Therefore the screen size is completely irrelevant.
Doesn't really matter. The end game is having access to applications and data
without waiting. Does it matter to the end user if the application out of focus is
not running anymore? I suppose it does if that Application is streaming some
sort of data and not so important if it's sitting there laying in wait for the next task.
I think Apple's strategy, if it works, is sound. The applications that that don't need
focus quiesce but should be able to be recalled and brought "up to speed" upon launch by the filesystem. I suppose this requires apps to launch an be available without much delay.
I'm just not sold on the idea that background tasks are the only way to deal with running multiple applications. In fact I wish that Mac OS X had a better system of dealing with apps so that I didn't have to see 15 apps in Activity Monitor running their agents and taking up 60-100MB of my RAM.
Doesn't really matter. The end game is having access to applications and data
without waiting. Does it matter to the end user if the application out of focus is
not running anymore? I suppose it does if that Application is streaming some
sort of data and not so important if it's sitting there laying in wait for the next task.
I think Apple's strategy, if it works, is sound. The applications that that don't need
focus quiesce but should be able to be recalled and brought "up to speed" upon launch by the filesystem. I suppose this requires apps to launch an be available without much delay.
I'm just not sold on the idea that background tasks are the only way to deal with running multiple applications. In fact I wish that Mac OS X had a better system of dealing with apps so that I didn't have to see 15 apps in Activity Monitor running their agents and taking up 60-100MB of my RAM.
The biggest sacrifice I've had to make with the iPhone is how quickly I can get things done because of the lack of multitasking. It's such a fanny to have to go back to the main menu, swipe through numerous pages of apps to find the one you want, wait for it to load, use it, then repeat over and over for every app you want to use. It would be soooo much quicker and efficient to allow apps to remain open in the background and have a task switcher to get back to them quickly. Having used the backgrounder app on a JB iPhone, I know how quickly the phone runs out of memory doing this. However, that just means the iPhone either has too little RAM, or the OS isn't very well optimised for the hardware it runs on - after all there are smartphone OSs out there that show it's perfectly possible to multitask with 264mhz processors and 128mb RAM.
The biggest sacrifice I've had to make with the iPhone is how quickly I can get things done because of the lack of multitasking. It's such a fanny to have to go back to the main menu, swipe through numerous pages of apps to find the one you want, wait for it to load, use it, then repeat over and over for every app you want to use. It would be soooo much quicker and efficient to allow apps to remain open in the background and have a task switcher to get back to them quickly. Having used the backgrounder app on a JB iPhone, I know how quickly the phone runs out of memory doing this. However, that just means the iPhone either has too little RAM, or the OS isn't very well optimised for the hardware it runs on - after all there are smartphone OSs out there that show it's perfectly possible to multitask with 264mhz processors and 128mb RAM.
It'll be interesting to see what bothers me more when I get my smartphone this summer. The battery life or switching amongst a bunch of apps. I know I'm sensitive to crappy battery life because I tend to be lazy about plugging phones in and paying the consequences. This is one battle that is going to be interesting to me.
Background processes vs Push Notifications.
Apple has been hesitant about background processes in other areas as well (like Final Cut Pro where people have asked for background rendering forever).
It'll be interesting to see what bothers me more when I get my smartphone this summer. The battery life or switching amongst a bunch of apps. I know I'm sensitive to crappy battery life because I tend to be lazy about plugging phones in and paying the consequences. This is one battle that is going to be interesting to me.
Background processes vs Push Notifications.
Apple has been hesitant about background processes in other areas as well (like Final Cut Pro where people have asked for background rendering forever).
Well the one smartphone I do have that allows background apps still lasts longer than the iPhone 3G, so background apps aren't inherently battery hogs. There's just something off about the iPhone battery.
(The Pre is awesome, by the way. Palm really is thinking this thing through.)
The biggest sacrifice I've had to make with the iPhone is how quickly I can get things done because of the lack of multitasking. It's such a fanny to have to go back to the main menu, swipe through numerous pages of apps to find the one you want, wait for it to load, use it, then repeat over and over for every app you want to use. It would be soooo much quicker and efficient to allow apps to remain open in the background and have a task switcher to get back to them quickly.
I don't think the Pre app switching technique will buy you anything in terms of speed here. It does the same kind of thing. If you remember that the app on the Pre is open, you press the ball button thing, the mobile Safari tab-esque app switching interface pops up, swipe to find the app you want, select, and do stuff. If the app isn't open, you swipe to the home screen, swipe to find the app you want, select, wait for it to open, then do stuff. That's pretty much just like the iPhone where you press the home button, swipe to find app, select and use the app.
What you are looking for is a gesture for expose like functionality, or gesture for scrollable list of apps with alphabetic shortcuts, or a pop-up menu of applications or open applications. That'll save quite a few swipes if you have a lot of apps. The more apps you have, the worse it gets off course. Fortunately for phone makers and computer markets, people don't use no more than say 10 apps consistently.
Having used the backgrounder app on a JB iPhone, I know how quickly the phone runs out of memory doing this. However, that just means the iPhone either has too little RAM, or the OS isn't very well optimised for the hardware it runs on - after all there are smartphone OSs out there that show it's perfectly possible to multitask with 264mhz processors and 128mb RAM.
Yeah, 15 years ago, people were multitasking on 32 MHz processors with 16 MBytes of RAM let alone what's in phones today. However, back then, programmers did assembly, had limited graphics, didn't practice OOP for the most part, OS were smaller with less capability, less refinement, less stuff and apps were smaller too. If you want the phone to look pretty with shadows, blurs, compositing, OOP APIs, networking, HTML/JS interpreters and renders, sand boxing, VMs, security, and on and on, you'll need more memory and processor performance.
Apple has chosen Mac OS X to base iPhone OS X on, so it likely occupies more memory than say Blackberry OS or Windows Mobile or Symbian, but it ain't that much more as we can tell that one pays a penalty for performance (CPU and battery) and user experience. Ie, try multi-tasking on an N95-1 (the version with 64 MB) or Windows Mobile with 64/128 MB. It ain't a pleasant experience. The hiccups I have on my work Blackberry 8800 suck. It pauses the trackball! The trackball!
So, they've willingly given up a few point usage cases such as listening to a streaming radio app in the background, and will provide an alternative method for messaging type apps, in favor of having a more pleasant experience. This has not hurt them. Heck, multitasking does not seem to be a must have feature for Apple's consumer market either.
When the hardware catches up, say 512 MB of memory, I don't think they stick to the current strategy. They'll just allow multitasking. They probably bring garbage collection to CocoaTouch then too.
Cut and paste, MMS, global search, video, sure. But multitasking? Not so much.
So Apple addresses the better part of the List of Reasons Why the iPhone Sucks, and what happens? Folks just seamlessly switch to "multitasking" as being this obvious and absolutely essential thing that the iPhone looks stupid for not having, although prior to a few months ago it never crossed their minds.
And if Apple introduces multitasking in the iPhone? What's the next thing that some phone has that the iPhone doesn't that people can seize on as why it's actually not that great? Video chat? Integrated printer? Frickin' lasers?
Doesn't matter. It'll be something. Because this particular game never ends.
"Multitasking", the way it's being bandied about as of late, strikes me less as an actual feature and more of a kind of mindless drone.
Has anyone else noticed that, before the demo of the Pre, nobody much talked about "multitasking" as being a huge failing of the iPhone, or a super desirable feature for phones, in general?
Cut and paste, MMS, global search, video, sure. But multitasking? Not so much.
No, multi-tasking has been one of those features that's much talked about among the bloggers and mobile nerds. Along with a whole host of things not in your list too. A2DP, aka stereo bluetooth - and of course all of the other Bluetooth profiles such as AVRCP, DUN, HFP, OPP - hardware keyboard, microSD slot, video camera functionality, FM radio, encryption, front facing camera. It's endless.
Of course most of those complaints misses the point. The multitasking meme has gotten to the point that some think the iPhone doesn't multitask at all give examples such as not being about to listen to music and web surf at the same time, receive emails and do something else at the same time, which the iPhone can do. Apple does indeed seem to support multitasking for 90% of the usages out there, and many fail to realize that.
And if Apple introduces multitasking in the iPhone? What's the next thing that some phone has that the iPhone doesn't that people can seize on as why it's actually not that great? Video chat? Integrated printer? Frickin' lasers?
Doesn't matter. It'll be something. Because this particular game never ends.
"Multitasking", the way it's being bandied about as of late, strikes me less as an actual feature and more of a kind of mindless drone.
My bet is "open" App Store.