I think the Pre's biggest problem currently has nothing to do with it's capabilities.
I think its biggest problem is marketing. I haven't heard anything about this phone anywhere outside of tech blogs. When the iPhone was coming out it was on the news, in the papers, in magazines, people were lining up in front of AT&T stores to buy it. It also had a ton of TV ads describing how useful the phone was (and I don't even watch much TV).
If they are going to compete with the iPhone they are really going to have to figure out a better way to market the Pre. The $100 rebate isn't going to help either. People hate mail in rebates.
Nobody said the pre has every feature the iphone lacks. The pre is a phone. Stop thinking of it as the "answer to the iphone." It's just another piece in the inevitable evolution of technology.
sorry istink, but plenty of sprint and Pre executives have been touting the Pre as an iPhone killer. They are asking to have their phone held up against the iPhone in every respect. If/when it falls short, they'll have some explaining to do.
Essentially, it is a web server running on the phone, and all the apps (including the built-in Palm apps) are written with HTML/Javascript. They are web apps running on the phone. I don't even know how it is different from the web apps on iPhone, other than they are local.
Note, those apps are WEB APPS! That's why they can run "multitasking". You can run multiple web pages on iPhone too. Web pages do not use that much memory.
It has limited access to the lower level stuff. For example, no 3D (forget about cool games). I don't even know if it orient the UI according to the accelerometer.... some apps are landscape, but it seems they are always landscape. They don't rotate based on the phone.
I doubt memory/processor intensive apps (like photo editing, or even good 2D games) are possible.
No video recording and no AUDIO recording.
And how are they going to manage the music library? Will they write an iTunes competitor?
How about unicode support? iPhone can switch to foreign languages from day one, and even if your OS is english, Asian language (Chinese, Japanese etc) websites work flawlessly. Apple has the Mac OS X to base on and everything works. Palm has to start from scratch. It will be interesting to see their language support.
How about P2P? Doubt it will happen on Pre.
lol it was just a smart Alic answer
I suppose it I HAD to bring real reasoning as to why WebOS is a feature no phone has, it would be the html5 and css3 support.
What gave you this notion other than to say a comment right now that makes anyone wanting a pre feel like a dumb dumb silly willy?
Nobody said the pre has every feature the iphone lacks. The pre is a phone. Stop thinking of it as the "answer to the iphone." It's just another piece in the inevitable evolution of technology.
And at least they said it will get it eventually. Kind of ironic that you would bash the pre for this method when the iphone is finally getting COPY AND PASTE from an update.
b/c Palm was once the market leader and fell from grace due to their own ineptness. Apple fell behind MSFT in market share b/c of a different business model (and some questionable business practices on microsoft's part, as well). In other words, Palm deserves their underdog status.
To be fair Apple screwed themselves up pretty good as well. You can't blame all their bone headed decisions on Microsoft. Apple could easily have been in a better position to compete with MS if they hadn't been so arrogant and stupid.
Regardless Palm doesn't deserve the same regard because they haven't earned it. Apple earned it by revolutionizing their entire business and bringing it back from the dead. Palm appears to have one good product that hasn't even launched yet. It will take more than that.
It's a marketing stategy to entice penetration. The price will probably drop in a year or less to match Apple's. And later they'll move over to Veriizon, which is pretty smart.
I had Palmphones for years, starting with the first color models around, the Samsung i300 and i330, then the Treo 700p, so I'm not hoping that Palm will drown. I still use my Treo for some non phone functions, and have it right here on my desk.
But a lot of what I'm reading so far is just speculation about how well this will work. It's ver 1 hardware, and a ver 1 OS.
Palm has some time to get this selling enough, and hopefully, work out the bugs. I hope it will keep them afloat. But we shouldn't be under any illusions. This is an absolute requirement for them. If it doesn't do at least fairly well, and quickly, they're gone. Elevation Partners won't keep throwing money down the hole if it doesn't look as though they will get a positive return for once.
They may not get a year if it doesn't sell well enough, something that's not guaranteed. Even though sales will likely look good at first, it's got to sustain itself over the next 6 months at least. If sales tail off too quickly, and they will tail off after the first "must have" buyers get it, they may not have time left to introduce in on Verizon, who may not even want it then if it looks as though it's not doing well.
I'm really skeptical about this rebate. Sprint hasn't been good about rebates, and even though our milage will vary as they say, Sprint customer service isn't known for it's quality. As I say, I was with them for years.
If AT&T decided to do an iPhone Ad mentioning that the 8 GB iPhone cost $199 without a rebate as opposed to one for the Pre from Sprint, that could hurt the chance of the Pre. Many people are rightly skeptical about rebates of any kind these days.
If Apple comes out with new phones this summer, as expected, with double the memory for the same money, both Palm and Sprint will have a major problem.
You mention that the price will come down after a while, and normally, I'd say that is sounded about right. But it may have to drop 50% in the mid summer. That would kill any change of getting a profit from it for Palm, and possibly from Sprint as well.
I think this is really bad timing. The Pre should have been out for at least a couple of months already so as to not have to knock at the iPhone's door in June. A lot of people who might consider the Pre will wait instead to see what a new iPhone will be with its new OS upgrade. This could sharply cut into the Pre's first sales, which wouldn't have happened a couple of months ago.
I'm talking about 3G. Not regular coverage. With them rolling out 4G, they have the stronges and you get a hell of a lot more featues than AT&T or Verizon. Look at the tests, Sprint's 3G is faster.
That's because the rebates are being offered by someone else...
Originally, rebates were a way to clear out old inventory. A company would ship their product to their retail chain in advance, who would stock them in their warehouses. If the price dropped, the retailers would end up in the uncomfortable position of having paid more for the item than they could sell it for. In this case, the manufacturer would offer a rebate, so the retailer could keep selling the item for "full price" while the user would still get the new, lower price.
This problem has largely gone away due to better supply-side management. Retailers carefully control their stock levels and rarely end up with product backlogs (at least not on the "wrong side"). Manufacturers have also become far more efficient, so they can supply the products when the retailer needs them. The result is that there aren't these huge stockpiles in the channel any more, so the need for manufacturer rebates has fallen dramatically.
Sprint's rebate, you'll note, is NOT a manufacturer's rebate. Obviously, because the item isn't even available yet. This is simply a way to lower the sticker shock of the item, but hopefully get some percentage of the people to not receive the rebate, and thereby increase the per-unit profit averaged over all the sales. It's a dastardly sales method, and should, IMHO, be illegal (and is in many similar cases).
Maury
I'm very familiar with Sprint's rebate policies, as you can tell from my post.
I don't trust them. They don't have a good history with them.
Almost everybody seems absolutely sure that physical keyboard is a big advantage. I doubt it, at least for my needs. If the Pre does not have an on-screen keyboard this sucks. The advantages of on-screen keyboard:
Take a look at this first! Note that the iPhone keyboard is compared against a relatively large netbook keyboard.
LOCALIZABLE. Will Palm make a german keyboard for the German market? Or Russian for the Russian market? Also, you can switch between several keyboards.
Context-sensitive. It has customizable appearance depending on the contexts.
You can move to the next key if needed. Some folks are really good at that. Check out the link above.
Easy way to type accented characters.
Touch areas are adaptive (not equal for all letters), more chances to click the right key.
It has portrait and landscape mode.
Let's wait for the reviews to see how the users will like the keyboard in real life!
To be a successful iPhone killer, the Pre needs either to be superior phone by a big margin or deliver more or less the same but at much lower price. None is true. My prediction: the Pre will not affect the iPhone sales in a measurable way. The best Palm can hope for is to save the company, but that's going to be a challenge.
WebOS is not a feature, it's a basic part of the system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by johnqh
Please read up on WebOS.
It?s not a feature of the OS, as it is the OS, but it is a feature of the device. Mac and iPhone users use Mac OS X as a legitimate reason to buy their HW, so it should hold in this case, too.
The only issue I have with iStink?s comment is that we don?t know how well WebOS will fair at this point, but it?s been in development since 1999, it?s use of open web technologies it would appear to be very lightweight compared to other mobile OSes, most of which are more antiquated, and it?s development platform is more easy to code for. These are all features that could make it a winner for Palm and Sprint, but we?ll need to see some independent testing to be sure.
I beg to differ. Any review of iPhone or any product for that matter show both pros and cons.
Always - ALWAYS -in the con column is "NO REPLACEABLE BATTERY".
I'm not saying that having no replaceable battery is the best thing always, though it does offer advantages as well. But you were talking about "crying out" for one.
That's a heck of a bit different than a mention that it doesn't have one, and that it might make a difference for some people.
And the iPhone gets, by far, the best satisfaction numbers even without that replaceable battery. Most people don't need it at all. And there are other ways of getting a field recharge if needed.
So where are the "2-year contract" complainers? Wow, and it includes a keyboard for midgets, and the slide out keyboard is not even in landscape mode.
Replaceable battery, give me a break. No one stocks up on cell phone batteries, and most of you dump the phone after a year when something better comes out anyway. My Razr worked great, and I never had to replace the battery, and I had the phone for 2 years before I got the iPhone. The only problem: the battery cover would never sit right on the back of the phone. The iPhone battery lasts longer than the Razr battery. I had an old Nokia phone that had a slide-on clip battery that had enough play in it that it would disconnect power whenever it moved. The only solution was taping it to the phone. Replacement batteries had the same problem. So in my opinion, removable batteries suck.
And where are the "it won't do gaming and has no APIs for graphics and animation" whiners?
iPhone OS blows this out of the water, but because its non-apple, its the second coming.
For Christ's sake, its dev environment is nothing but Hypercard on a touch screen.
Almost everybody seems absolutely sure that physical keyboard is a big advantage. I doubt it, at least for my needs. If the Pre does not have an on-screen keyboard this sucks. The advantages of on-screen keyboard:
Take a look at this first! Note that the iPhone keyboard is compared against a relatively large netbook keyboard.
LOCALIZABLE. Will Palm make a german keyboard for the German market? Or Russian for the Russian market? Also, you can switch between several keyboards.
Context-sensitive. It has customizable appearance depending on the contexts.
You can move to the next key if needed. Some folks are really good at that. Check out the link above.
Easy way to type accented characters.
Touch areas are adaptive (not equal for all letters), more chances to click the right key.
It has portrait and landscape mode.
Let's wait for the reviews to see how the users will like the keyboard in real life!
To be a successful iPhone killer, the Pre needs either to be superior phone by a big margin or deliver more or less the same but at much lower price. None is true. My prediction: the Pre will not affect the iPhone sales in a measurable way. The best Palm can hope for is to save the company, but that's going to be a challenge.
Good points about the onscreen keyboard advantages. I can't believe it never occurred to me the iphone probably didn't come with one because of how it was released world wide and different keyboards for different languages would be an issue.
I have a phone with the slide out keyboard, and I honestly don't use it as much as I thought. The on screen keyboard in portrait mode works pretty good, and switching from different types of keyboards is nice too. But when it comes to writing email, or responding to a thread, I always use the physical keyboard. It's just so much nicer.
I love the way fanboyz on here are bitching at the Pre's unveiling $299 costs with a $100 rebate.
How much was the iPhone when it originally was relea$ed?
$600!!!!!!!!!
That's a very ill-informed, and pointless, statement. The first cellphone cost thousands of dollars. But you wouldn't price it at that if you were introducing a competitive product today.
b/c Palm was once the market leader and fell from grace due to their own ineptness. Apple fell behind MSFT in market share b/c of a different business model (and some questionable business practices on microsoft's part, as well). In other words, Palm deserves their underdog status.
Oh balogna. Apple spent a decade releasing utter crap and failing to do any serious development work.
Instead of striking out on their own, like they did with the Mac, they simply listened to what the pundits were saying and did that. Pundits said CORBA was the next big thing? Let's do SOM. Email? PowerTalk. 3D? RAVE. Database access? DAL and DAM. Typesetting? QDGX. All of these products sucked, because they (sometimes) didn't really understand them and (more commonly) didn't have the resources to make them complete.
Meanwhile all of this was being built on a single-user single-tasking OS that couldn't hope to do them justice. And every time they chased one of these "next big things" (which promptly disappeared) that was another minute they spent not working on the core OS. So by 1996 the OS is utterly hopeless, and Apple has a whole portfolio of garbage no one wanted in the first place. Geez, X.400 servers?!
What Palm lacked was direction, exactly what Apple was laking. What they still lack is "on their own". Lets face it, every single mention of the Pre has a mention of the iPhone.
To be a successful iPhone killer, the Pre needs either to be superior phone by a big margin or deliver more or less the same but at much lower price.
That's a great summarization of the Pre's dilemma (and that of every new smartphone). When you factor in the iPod Touch, the iPhone / iPod Touch combo could become the defacto smartphone much like the iPod is the defacto mp3 player. All other manufacturers will fight and quibble over the remaining market share. RIM is really the only hurdle to overcome before this becomes reality. With third-party attachments supported via bluetooth and the dock connector in the new iphone OS, we're gonna see an unbelievable burst of innovation which will make the iTouch/iPhone environment extraordinarily compelling.
Comments
I think its biggest problem is marketing. I haven't heard anything about this phone anywhere outside of tech blogs. When the iPhone was coming out it was on the news, in the papers, in magazines, people were lining up in front of AT&T stores to buy it. It also had a ton of TV ads describing how useful the phone was (and I don't even watch much TV).
If they are going to compete with the iPhone they are really going to have to figure out a better way to market the Pre. The $100 rebate isn't going to help either. People hate mail in rebates.
Nobody said the pre has every feature the iphone lacks. The pre is a phone. Stop thinking of it as the "answer to the iphone." It's just another piece in the inevitable evolution of technology.
sorry istink, but plenty of sprint and Pre executives have been touting the Pre as an iPhone killer. They are asking to have their phone held up against the iPhone in every respect. If/when it falls short, they'll have some explaining to do.
Please read up on WebOS.
Essentially, it is a web server running on the phone, and all the apps (including the built-in Palm apps) are written with HTML/Javascript. They are web apps running on the phone. I don't even know how it is different from the web apps on iPhone, other than they are local.
Note, those apps are WEB APPS! That's why they can run "multitasking". You can run multiple web pages on iPhone too. Web pages do not use that much memory.
It has limited access to the lower level stuff. For example, no 3D (forget about cool games). I don't even know if it orient the UI according to the accelerometer.... some apps are landscape, but it seems they are always landscape. They don't rotate based on the phone.
I doubt memory/processor intensive apps (like photo editing, or even good 2D games) are possible.
No video recording and no AUDIO recording.
And how are they going to manage the music library? Will they write an iTunes competitor?
How about unicode support? iPhone can switch to foreign languages from day one, and even if your OS is english, Asian language (Chinese, Japanese etc) websites work flawlessly. Apple has the Mac OS X to base on and everything works. Palm has to start from scratch. It will be interesting to see their language support.
How about P2P? Doubt it will happen on Pre.
lol it was just a smart Alic answer
I suppose it I HAD to bring real reasoning as to why WebOS is a feature no phone has, it would be the html5 and css3 support.
Nobody said the pre has every feature the iphone lacks. The pre is a phone. Stop thinking of it as the "answer to the iphone." It's just another piece in the inevitable evolution of technology.
And at least they said it will get it eventually. Kind of ironic that you would bash the pre for this method when the iphone is finally getting COPY AND PASTE from an update.
(edited for potty mouth)
b/c Palm was once the market leader and fell from grace due to their own ineptness. Apple fell behind MSFT in market share b/c of a different business model (and some questionable business practices on microsoft's part, as well). In other words, Palm deserves their underdog status.
To be fair Apple screwed themselves up pretty good as well. You can't blame all their bone headed decisions on Microsoft. Apple could easily have been in a better position to compete with MS if they hadn't been so arrogant and stupid.
Regardless Palm doesn't deserve the same regard because they haven't earned it. Apple earned it by revolutionizing their entire business and bringing it back from the dead. Palm appears to have one good product that hasn't even launched yet. It will take more than that.
It's a marketing stategy to entice penetration. The price will probably drop in a year or less to match Apple's. And later they'll move over to Veriizon, which is pretty smart.
I had Palmphones for years, starting with the first color models around, the Samsung i300 and i330, then the Treo 700p, so I'm not hoping that Palm will drown. I still use my Treo for some non phone functions, and have it right here on my desk.
But a lot of what I'm reading so far is just speculation about how well this will work. It's ver 1 hardware, and a ver 1 OS.
Palm has some time to get this selling enough, and hopefully, work out the bugs. I hope it will keep them afloat. But we shouldn't be under any illusions. This is an absolute requirement for them. If it doesn't do at least fairly well, and quickly, they're gone. Elevation Partners won't keep throwing money down the hole if it doesn't look as though they will get a positive return for once.
They may not get a year if it doesn't sell well enough, something that's not guaranteed. Even though sales will likely look good at first, it's got to sustain itself over the next 6 months at least. If sales tail off too quickly, and they will tail off after the first "must have" buyers get it, they may not have time left to introduce in on Verizon, who may not even want it then if it looks as though it's not doing well.
I'm really skeptical about this rebate. Sprint hasn't been good about rebates, and even though our milage will vary as they say, Sprint customer service isn't known for it's quality. As I say, I was with them for years.
If AT&T decided to do an iPhone Ad mentioning that the 8 GB iPhone cost $199 without a rebate as opposed to one for the Pre from Sprint, that could hurt the chance of the Pre. Many people are rightly skeptical about rebates of any kind these days.
If Apple comes out with new phones this summer, as expected, with double the memory for the same money, both Palm and Sprint will have a major problem.
You mention that the price will come down after a while, and normally, I'd say that is sounded about right. But it may have to drop 50% in the mid summer. That would kill any change of getting a profit from it for Palm, and possibly from Sprint as well.
I think this is really bad timing. The Pre should have been out for at least a couple of months already so as to not have to knock at the iPhone's door in June. A lot of people who might consider the Pre will wait instead to see what a new iPhone will be with its new OS upgrade. This could sharply cut into the Pre's first sales, which wouldn't have happened a couple of months ago.
I'm talking about 3G. Not regular coverage. With them rolling out 4G, they have the stronges and you get a hell of a lot more featues than AT&T or Verizon. Look at the tests, Sprint's 3G is faster.
I'm talking about 3G as well. It wasn't so hot.
That's because the rebates are being offered by someone else...
Originally, rebates were a way to clear out old inventory. A company would ship their product to their retail chain in advance, who would stock them in their warehouses. If the price dropped, the retailers would end up in the uncomfortable position of having paid more for the item than they could sell it for. In this case, the manufacturer would offer a rebate, so the retailer could keep selling the item for "full price" while the user would still get the new, lower price.
This problem has largely gone away due to better supply-side management. Retailers carefully control their stock levels and rarely end up with product backlogs (at least not on the "wrong side"). Manufacturers have also become far more efficient, so they can supply the products when the retailer needs them. The result is that there aren't these huge stockpiles in the channel any more, so the need for manufacturer rebates has fallen dramatically.
Sprint's rebate, you'll note, is NOT a manufacturer's rebate. Obviously, because the item isn't even available yet. This is simply a way to lower the sticker shock of the item, but hopefully get some percentage of the people to not receive the rebate, and thereby increase the per-unit profit averaged over all the sales. It's a dastardly sales method, and should, IMHO, be illegal (and is in many similar cases).
Maury
I'm very familiar with Sprint's rebate policies, as you can tell from my post.
I don't trust them. They don't have a good history with them.
Take a look at this first! Note that the iPhone keyboard is compared against a relatively large netbook keyboard.
- LOCALIZABLE. Will Palm make a german keyboard for the German market? Or Russian for the Russian market? Also, you can switch between several keyboards.
- Context-sensitive. It has customizable appearance depending on the contexts.
- You can move to the next key if needed. Some folks are really good at that. Check out the link above.
- Easy way to type accented characters.
- Touch areas are adaptive (not equal for all letters), more chances to click the right key.
- It has portrait and landscape mode.
Let's wait for the reviews to see how the users will like the keyboard in real life!To be a successful iPhone killer, the Pre needs either to be superior phone by a big margin or deliver more or less the same but at much lower price. None is true. My prediction: the Pre will not affect the iPhone sales in a measurable way. The best Palm can hope for is to save the company, but that's going to be a challenge.
WebOS is not a feature, it's a basic part of the system.
Please read up on WebOS.
It?s not a feature of the OS, as it is the OS, but it is a feature of the device. Mac and iPhone users use Mac OS X as a legitimate reason to buy their HW, so it should hold in this case, too.
The only issue I have with iStink?s comment is that we don?t know how well WebOS will fair at this point, but it?s been in development since 1999, it?s use of open web technologies it would appear to be very lightweight compared to other mobile OSes, most of which are more antiquated, and it?s development platform is more easy to code for. These are all features that could make it a winner for Palm and Sprint, but we?ll need to see some independent testing to be sure.
I'm very familiar with Sprint's rebate policies, as you can tell from my post.
I don't trust them. They don't have a good history with them.
That sucks man. I've only had to do it twice. First time was a little long, but the second time took about 3 weeks. I guess I got lucky.
I beg to differ. Any review of iPhone or any product for that matter show both pros and cons.
Always - ALWAYS -in the con column is "NO REPLACEABLE BATTERY".
I'm not saying that having no replaceable battery is the best thing always, though it does offer advantages as well. But you were talking about "crying out" for one.
That's a heck of a bit different than a mention that it doesn't have one, and that it might make a difference for some people.
And the iPhone gets, by far, the best satisfaction numbers even without that replaceable battery. Most people don't need it at all. And there are other ways of getting a field recharge if needed.
So where are the "2-year contract" complainers? Wow, and it includes a keyboard for midgets, and the slide out keyboard is not even in landscape mode.
Replaceable battery, give me a break. No one stocks up on cell phone batteries, and most of you dump the phone after a year when something better comes out anyway. My Razr worked great, and I never had to replace the battery, and I had the phone for 2 years before I got the iPhone. The only problem: the battery cover would never sit right on the back of the phone. The iPhone battery lasts longer than the Razr battery. I had an old Nokia phone that had a slide-on clip battery that had enough play in it that it would disconnect power whenever it moved. The only solution was taping it to the phone. Replacement batteries had the same problem. So in my opinion, removable batteries suck.
And where are the "it won't do gaming and has no APIs for graphics and animation" whiners?
iPhone OS blows this out of the water, but because its non-apple, its the second coming.
For Christ's sake, its dev environment is nothing but Hypercard on a touch screen.
gimme a break.
I love the way fanboyz on here are bitching at the Pre's unveiling $299 costs with a $100 rebate.
How much was the iPhone when it originally was relea$ed?
$600!!!!!!!!!
And Apple fixed that problem.
What does that have to do with what is happening NOW?
Almost everybody seems absolutely sure that physical keyboard is a big advantage. I doubt it, at least for my needs. If the Pre does not have an on-screen keyboard this sucks. The advantages of on-screen keyboard:
Take a look at this first! Note that the iPhone keyboard is compared against a relatively large netbook keyboard.
- LOCALIZABLE. Will Palm make a german keyboard for the German market? Or Russian for the Russian market? Also, you can switch between several keyboards.
- Context-sensitive. It has customizable appearance depending on the contexts.
- You can move to the next key if needed. Some folks are really good at that. Check out the link above.
- Easy way to type accented characters.
- Touch areas are adaptive (not equal for all letters), more chances to click the right key.
- It has portrait and landscape mode.
Let's wait for the reviews to see how the users will like the keyboard in real life!To be a successful iPhone killer, the Pre needs either to be superior phone by a big margin or deliver more or less the same but at much lower price. None is true. My prediction: the Pre will not affect the iPhone sales in a measurable way. The best Palm can hope for is to save the company, but that's going to be a challenge.
Good points about the onscreen keyboard advantages. I can't believe it never occurred to me the iphone probably didn't come with one because of how it was released world wide and different keyboards for different languages would be an issue.
I have a phone with the slide out keyboard, and I honestly don't use it as much as I thought. The on screen keyboard in portrait mode works pretty good, and switching from different types of keyboards is nice too. But when it comes to writing email, or responding to a thread, I always use the physical keyboard. It's just so much nicer.
Having both seems perfect to me.
I love the way fanboyz on here are bitching at the Pre's unveiling $299 costs with a $100 rebate.
How much was the iPhone when it originally was relea$ed?
$600!!!!!!!!!
That's a very ill-informed, and pointless, statement. The first cellphone cost thousands of dollars. But you wouldn't price it at that if you were introducing a competitive product today.
b/c Palm was once the market leader and fell from grace due to their own ineptness. Apple fell behind MSFT in market share b/c of a different business model (and some questionable business practices on microsoft's part, as well). In other words, Palm deserves their underdog status.
Oh balogna. Apple spent a decade releasing utter crap and failing to do any serious development work.
Instead of striking out on their own, like they did with the Mac, they simply listened to what the pundits were saying and did that. Pundits said CORBA was the next big thing? Let's do SOM. Email? PowerTalk. 3D? RAVE. Database access? DAL and DAM. Typesetting? QDGX. All of these products sucked, because they (sometimes) didn't really understand them and (more commonly) didn't have the resources to make them complete.
Meanwhile all of this was being built on a single-user single-tasking OS that couldn't hope to do them justice. And every time they chased one of these "next big things" (which promptly disappeared) that was another minute they spent not working on the core OS. So by 1996 the OS is utterly hopeless, and Apple has a whole portfolio of garbage no one wanted in the first place. Geez, X.400 servers?!
What Palm lacked was direction, exactly what Apple was laking. What they still lack is "on their own". Lets face it, every single mention of the Pre has a mention of the iPhone.
To be a successful iPhone killer, the Pre needs either to be superior phone by a big margin or deliver more or less the same but at much lower price.
That's a great summarization of the Pre's dilemma (and that of every new smartphone). When you factor in the iPod Touch, the iPhone / iPod Touch combo could become the defacto smartphone much like the iPod is the defacto mp3 player. All other manufacturers will fight and quibble over the remaining market share. RIM is really the only hurdle to overcome before this becomes reality. With third-party attachments supported via bluetooth and the dock connector in the new iphone OS, we're gonna see an unbelievable burst of innovation which will make the iTouch/iPhone environment extraordinarily compelling.