
Palm did it: better experience than Apple - MaysonL
http://scobleizer.com/2009/01/08/palm-did-what-nokia-rim-and-microsoft-couldnt-build-a-better-experience-than-apple/
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swombat
I hate to sound like an Apple fanboy, but you need more than a pretty phone to
dethrone the iPhone. The App store is the best thing since sliced bread. The
ever-growing developer enthusiasm for the iPhone is a huge factor too.

And if webOS is basically web-based, that means that all of Palm's apps will
be available on the iPhone, but none of the iPhone's apps will be available on
the Palm Pre. Not exactly a winning proposition.

Well done for getting the design close to Apple's standards (though they had
to poach a team of Apple people to do that, all the way down to the packaging
that looks just like Apple's), but being a second fiddle won't win this war...

This is not to say that it won't be successful. This Pre is clearly a slick
piece of kit. But it won't be anywhere as successful as the iPhone, and
certainly won't do "better" than the iPhone.

~~~
halo
They don't need to "dethrone the iPhone" to succeed, in the same way Apple
didn't need to "dethrone Windows" to succeed. There's no reason why multiple
manufacturers can't all have viable businesses in the same market space.

~~~
stcredzero
If the call quality is good (read: way better than Apple/AT&T) and if the
network access is good (read: way better than AT&T) and if they address some
annoyances that Apple creates with its highly restrictive user experience
control policies, then they will give Apple a real run for their money.

BUT, if they can unify Facebook apps with a mobile device, this could be the
start of something really huge. If someone (or someones) manages to unify all
of the social networks with a mobile device, this would clearly leapfrog
Apple's iPhone. We can access Twitter, Facebook, our blog, and location-aware
social networks on the iPhone, but this experience is currently somewhat
fragmented, and that aspect definitely sucks. If something enabled by the Palm
Pre manages to unify all of the above, then this would be a huge game-changing
win.

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jemmons
"Palm’s bet on social networking integration is a game changer ... That is
huge and not many people will get it."

Umm, how can a social _anything_ be huge if not many people get it? The Zune
wasn't just social, it was The Social -- and no one got it.

~~~
wavesplash
"not many people" are the writers/reviewers. Scoble has a good point. The Zune
network assumed you were within proximity of another Zune user. That would be
cool if everyone had a Zune, sort of. If you're under 35 most of your friends
have Facebook accounts and the network doesn't partition when you move 30 feet
;)

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redrobot5050
Um, while a product is still vapor (hasn't shipped yet, genius) its a little
hard to declare it a winner. How many concept cars has GM made that would own
ALL other cars out there, only to have them produce a Pontiac Sun Fire with a
different body kit? (Original re-make of the GTO, I'm looking at you.)

(Disclaimer: Some of my friends from college work at Palm now. If you're
reading this this, Matt, good job, I think your product kicked ass.)

~~~
tptacek
Read it as if he's evaluating the product on the merits, not as if he's
predicting the market. The iPhone is going to crush this thing, but it's still
a nice looking device.

~~~
redrobot5050
I know, I'm just saying, sometimes features get pulled at the last minute on
behest of the carrier or because they're not "stable" enough -- or cost. Until
it ships, its hard to judge.

But competition is good, tho. I'm in favor of Palm kicking ass and taking
names.

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mdasen
I hope so. As a Sprint customer, I've been waiting for such a device. As a
general consumer, I'm glad that others are challenging Apple. I love Apple,
but I also like others to be able to challenge them. In my opinion, no one was
able to match the iPod for ease of use and size. The Palm pre is at least
dimensionally competitive at a mere 2grams heavier and only 15% greater volume
(a real keyboard takes up some space).

It's nice to see someone who hasn't decided, "we can make it kinda appear to
be an iPhone" in the way that the G1 disappointed with its lack of multi-touch
capabilities.

Hopefully Palm will pull it off!

~~~
anthonyrubin
There are numerous Android devices planned for the near future. I own a G1 and
I see it as a development platform. The hardware leaves something to be
desired, but Android is actually quite nice.

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bprater
I love my iPhone. But giving developers the option to cook up apps in HTML/JS
is a very slick move.

I don't know how it'll play out, but any average web developer will be able to
immediately pump out an app without breaking open a iPhone SDK tome.

I don't know if it's possible to advance against the AppStore line of offense,
but it's a seriously smart move.

I think their next coup should be to create an "open framework" so that other
phone designers can latch on to whatever OS-specific hooks Palm plans on
using.

I feel like this is critical. It can't be a closed framework.

~~~
anatoli
While I don't disagree that there is something nifty about HTML/CSS/JS apps, I
think we've all seen that this is not enough. Remember, first iPhone was in
the same position - no SDK, just "widgets" and that didn't exactly fly with
the developers. As somebody who's developed some widgets, I can say that there
just isn't enough to go on in JavaScript to create full-powered apps, such as
the ones available on iPhone now.

More importantly, in regards to this:

"any average web developer will be able to immediately pump out an app without
breaking open a iPhone SDK tome."

Any average web developer can pump out a widget for iPhone, afaik, so I would
disagree that this is an advantage that the Palm Pre has.

~~~
bprater
Widget, maybe. I was specifically talking about something akin to a "native"
app. You need hooks to the OS, period, for developers to be happy.

Maybe we need a new word for HTML/JS/CSS apps that have OS-specific hooks.
Widget is a horrible word.

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timae
But Apple did it first, that counts for a lot. Palm's UI looks awesome, but it
wouldn't be as cool if Apple didn't pave the way a bit. Not taking anything
away, they did a much better job at building off of Apple's innovation than
RIM did with the Storm (the phone I currently have - forced to stick with
BlackBerry for work).

~~~
chedigitz
I agree. I'm extremely happy that Palm is back in the game. However you can't
count apple out, the current iPhone is still 2 year old technology, and I
expect the new incarnation to blow everything out of the water.

I still want a pre, since its a gorgeous UI.

~~~
rbanffy
Apple is swimming in money. You really can't count them off. On the bright
side (for Palm), Microsoft is swimming in money too and they accomplished
little more than licensing a sub-par Windows CE thing to just about every
maker of quasismartphones and crushing Palm in the process.

Never forget Palm owned the PDA market after crushing Apple out of it and
created the smartphone market with the first Treos. They did a lot of things
wrong, but with adequate funding and adequate brains, they can do a lot.

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pclark
nothing drives traffic harder than an "x > Apple at y!" post!

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gojomo
The Palm Pre looks great -- but has Scoble touched/used one? Until then,
definitive judgments are premature.

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adk
I am very interested in all this talk about third party apps for the phone
being written in Html + Javascript.

If executed well, it means an army of developers ready to start coding away
and tons of libraries and existing apps ready to be plugged in.

If executed the iPhone way, it means mostly crappy mini websites, masquerading
as apps, for a while and then a decent native SDK a year later.

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Dauntless
Now it's down to better marketing...

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timothyandrew
I think it took an iPhone for the other guys to get innovative like this. I
really like this interface, though unfortunately it'll take more than that to
dethrone the iPhone; though I don't think anyone can be sure until they've
actually used it.

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Tichy
What he writes sounds good actually. I hope very much that he is right,
because I couldn't yet bring myself to buy an iPhone, but there are no real
alternatives yet, either.

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rms
It certainly sounds good enough, and I'm stuck on Sprint, so I think this will
be my phone unless an interesting Android phone hits around the same time.

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ahoyhere
Palm has never been as cool as Apple.

Palm hardware has always been "organization pr0n," which only appeals to a
small subset.

The iPhone is seen as cool; it is the most desirable phone. People are bending
over backwards to afford one (the most iPhone growth over the past 2 quarters
has been in low-middle and low class income groups). Apple paved the way with
iPods.

I think Palm will have a very hard time selling the Pre to people outside the
geeky / careering groups where orgpr0n still appeals.

Even if the user experience is better, the market hasn't been conditioned fr
it.

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TweedHeads
What is scoble smoking lately?

