Pre Announced
January 14th, 2009, 6:28pm by Mike
There’s been a lot of talk, maybe too much talk, about the Pre, Palm’s new smartphone, and the webOS operating system it runs.
A while back, when I was a Palm guy and a company called Apple introduced their phone, I wrote a blog post about how I liked my Treo 650 just fine, and the iPhone, though nice, probably wasn’t anything special for me. Two years later, I’m eating my words as a happy iPhone user, and I find myself in the same position — the Pre sounds nice, but in the absence of any hands-on experience, I’m not sold. Maybe that will change, but here are my thoughts.
Syncing with the Cloud: One of the things that’s most interesting, and potentially most disastrous, about the Pre is that it doesn’t use a computer as a repository of information, requiring an occasional “sync.” (Interesting to note that it was Palm that introduced us to the idea of sync.) Instead, Pre collects information from all over the web (gmail, Facebook, Google Calendar, Outlook, etc) and puts it all together on the device. Called Synergy, this concept promises to finally integrate all the bits of data you have strewn all over the net. Here’s my problem — I don’t have all my information in one place other than my computer. Instead of making my life easier, I now have to sync my Mac Address Book contacts with gmail or something to get them on my phone (if I understand correctly). While I see the potential advantages of the Cloud, I kinda like having my data on my computer, and being in charge of where it syncs.
Some other questions about “syncing”:
- Does it sync two-way? For example, if I change somebody’s phone number on my Pre, how would that get propagated to the internet? Where does it propagate? Could I somehow end up sharing phone number information by propagating my contact info from gmail to Pre to Facebook? If it doesn’t 2-way sync — let’s say somebody moves. Do I have to update that info all over the web or risk having both correct and incorrect info on my phone?
- How does it handle duplicates? I know my Palm used to get cluttered with duplicates sometimes, even if I were only syncing from one source.
Web standards for programming: Palm needed to do something to compete with Apple’s App Store, and the fact that Apple will have had an 18-month head start on them in app development and deployment. It’s no secret that Apple hasn’t treated their iPhone developers too well, but that hasn’t stopped a lot of great apps being written for the iPhone — most of them by talented Mac developers who were already familiar with Objective C and the XCode development environment to more easily leverage work they’d already done. Palm’s strategy here was to appeal to an even broader developer population: web developers. There have been some good things said about Palm’s development environment, Mojo, and some developers who have written for both iPhone and webOS are big fans. Questions remain on how deep the hooks will go into hardware beyond the application layer, and whether Palm will exert any quality control. We’ll have to see how the 3rd party developer community reacts.
Osborne Effect: On their gdgt podcast (ep 20), Ryan and Peter brought up something that I hadn’t thought about, the Osborne Effect. Basically, Palm is a company without commercially strong products right now, and unlike other smartphone manufacturers who have been introducing paradigm-shifting handsets and OS’s (like Apple and RIM), they have a solid base of existing products that allow them to announce a product 6 months before it’s released. By preannouncing the Pre (no pun intended), they’re going to kill their revenue until then, since nobody who has heard of Pre will be buying a Centro or Treo Pro, their only two other revenue-generating products. Even Apple knew not to kill their iPhone sales by announcing the iPhone 3G too early (1 month).
Other unknowns:
- Battery life. At least the battery’s replaceable.
- Keyboard. I hate the Centro keyboard, and unlike many people, I actually like the iPhone’s keyboard, and can type pretty fast on it. Guess this is going to be a matter of taste, and finger size. But I don’t buy the argument that physical keyboards are always better.
- Thickness: Sliders tend to be thicker than candybars.
- Rev. 1. No matter how you cut it, this is a Rev. 1 piece of hardware. You take your chances as an early adopter (but that’s why it’s fun, right?)
My final take: The Pre looks great, and all indications are that it will shake up the smartphone world to some extent. The ideas behind it are pretty innovative, and I’m happy to see Palm, a company from whom I’ve had many products, finally doing something worthwhile after a long break. I don’t sense that this is an iPhone-killer, but it could have been if it had been announced before the iPhone 3G (how often are “Palm” and “could have been” used in the same sentence recently?). I think Android-killer is more likely — hopes were high, and the G1 hasn’t really delivered — webOS offers an open development environment on flashy hardware, and may be easier to develop for. It’s likely that there will be better Android phones out soon, even before the Pre, and I think that’s Palm’s main competition. I’m not ready to trade in my iPhone just yet.
January 14th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
You know you’re too plugged in when you’ve already followed nearly every link in one of Mike’s epic posts. Nice round up! Don’t forget to join the fast-growing Palm Pre group on Flickr! We hope to have our first photos added soon.
January 14th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Done, on the first contributions to the flickr pool, although maybe not quite on topic. I think Mike’s right to be a bit skeptical– I’m not ready to throw away my extensive history with Windows Mobile yet :). I continue to believe that my Q is the best tool for the way I use my phone, but that doesn’t mean it’s as fun as a phone could be. Pre looks like it will be a lot of fun to play with, but I’ll be looking out for some gotchas.
As for Palm as an investment, I’ve added some shares. I’m a lot more comfortable holding Palm at $5-6 now that I was at $2 last month. I think no matter what, Pre gives Palm a horse in the race, and with the smartphone world growing, that’s no trivial matter. Not too worried about an Osborne effect here– Pre is not any more a direct competitor to the Centro or the Treo Pro than any other smartphone already available (iPhone, G1, etc). No one is only in the market for a Palm device. Plus existing sales already suck.
January 14th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Looks like some interested soul has already posted a picture to the group! Maybe the Pre is so easy to use that even that kid can use it!
January 14th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
You guys have any thoughts on the Touchstone wireless cradle? That seems a bit overhyped.
January 15th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Agreed, WAY overhyped.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a different (i.e., nonstandard) charging adapter. I would definitely prefer using the microUSB, which in a pinch can be picked up for $10 at Best Buy or the airport when traveling. With the iPhone, at least it uses the same connector as the iPod, which is pretty ubiquitous these days, but I would prefer a microUSB there, too.
I’m not impressed with the “wireless” aspect — for that matter, *all* devices that plug into a cradle are “wireless,” in that the wire is between the cradle and the wall (the Touchstone could better be described as “plugless”). So what?
Also, with the Touchstone (if I understand correctly), you actually have a different back on the phone as well — I would hope that doesn’t lock you into charging via Touchstone.
January 15th, 2009 at 9:55 am
I love the idea of inductive charging, if it’s implemented like a mat on my nightstand that I can throw all my devices on indsicriminately. The trouble is that this Touchsctone works no differently than any other Palm cradle– you have to mount the Pre on it (albeit magnetically), and it only works on the Pre. Plugless indeed.
I do like cradles better than plugs (one handed vs. two handed operation).
January 15th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
You mean like PowerMat, right? You can watch Natali Del Conte demo it here (skip ahead to about 1:55 in).
Sort sucks that you have to stick that ugly plate on your device.
January 15th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
I think it would look really cool sitting on an executive desk, and the “lift to answer” hearkens back to the early days of telephone. But yeah, I won’t be spending the $100 or whatever they “charge” to buy one.
January 15th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I “lift to answer” my desk phone all the time at work. Lemme tell you, it ain’t that cool.
Maybe if they had made the Pre look like an old-timey crank phone? Or a red “USSR Hotline” type phone? I think that would be a better homage to phone history.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
But how is it any cooler than the old cradles, say for the Treo 600? Functionally, it’s even worse, because you don’t have the data connector. Haven’t heard about this “lift to answer,” but it sounds like something I’d disable if it defeats the purpose of caller ID.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
On a related note, did you guys see the report of 500 million apps downloaded from the App Store? Crazy. There are probably 15 million iPhones in existence, and who knows how many iPod touches, but it’s probably close to an attach rate of 15-20 apps per device.
January 17th, 2009 at 12:53 am
Not saying I’m typical, but I have 50 non-iPhone standard apps installed. If everyone were like me, the number you cited would be a gross underestimate.
January 17th, 2009 at 3:16 am
Wow, 50 apps? I’d expect you to be higher than average, but that still seems higher than I’d expect. How many Palm OS apps did you ever install on your Treo? I remember you were fairly reluctant to try out new apps. I recently reinstalled Windows on my phone, and put on only 6 3rd party apps: Yahoo Go, Windows Live Search, Google Maps, PocketTwit, Smartphone Notes, eWallet.
January 17th, 2009 at 3:41 am
I have about 20 apps on the iPod Touch. I paid for one of them, and that was by accident. On the Centro, I hardly have any. Google Maps being the most notable, then a few games & a dozen apps I never use. I’ve had more stuff on Treos in the past, but I have fewer time killers on there than I used to since I often have the Touch when I need to kill time.
January 17th, 2009 at 9:30 am
You’re right, I was pretty reluctant to download new apps for the Treo. On the Treo, I felt like I had experiences where crummy apps would slow the entire phone down. Though the lack of multitasking on the iPhone is usually described as a negative, the fact that only one program is running at a time actually means that the apps don’t slow the entire phone down. Yes, they crash occasionally, and once or twice have taken the entire phone down, but generally they work or catastrophically fail — they don’t sorta work and generally slow the phone down. I’m interested to see if Palm has figured this one out for multitasking on Pre. The Palm/Treo always worked well with built-in apps, it’s the 3rd party, memory-leaky, non-optimized apps that were problematic.
Note that this is a problem with basically all multitasking computers, too, not just Palm phones. Windows and Macs can get pretty bloated, too.
My true hunch is that Apple didn’t know how to do multitasking well on the iPhone, but this may have led to an unintended good consequence.
Also, the field has changed:
— It wasn’t easy to download over the air on the Treo. The App Store just makes it so easy. That was a real novelty when you could finally do that with Palm (through handango, I think), but with data speeds much higher now, it’s just great. If I’m bored, I’ll often head over to the App Store to see what’s new.
— The apps are much better than they ever were on Treo (as I’m sure they will be on Pre), and they behave more like desktop apps.
Also, for the record, I probably use 10 of those apps on a regular basis. I have several apps that have duplicate functions (e.g., 3 twitter apps, a couple of flickr apps, etc), and several that I downloaded for specific purposes (NYC subway map, Italian-English dictionary).
But, to bring the point back to money and the App Store, I’ve found that I don’t mind spending a couple bucks on an app. I don’t know why that is — I HATE spending a couple bucks on a song or TV show, but I don’t have a problem with an app. Maybe because I think I’ll use it more going forward than if it were a song? I’ve probably spent in the neighborhood of $60-70 on apps in the year I’ve owned the phone.
January 17th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
That’s totally the opposite of me. I think I’ve spent maybe $30 lifetime on software, personally. I guess I’m usually able to find a free alternative, if not an alternative that’s free.
January 18th, 2009 at 1:33 am
I just paid $0.99 for an application called TiVoRemote which controls the TiVo from the iPod Touch. Pretty pointless, except… it lets me do text entry with a keyboard! Huzzah! There must be a similar application that runs on the Mac, too, but it definitely makes more sense on an iPod Touch.
Entering text on the TiVo just got a WHOLE lot easier.
January 18th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Perfect example of an app that does something pretty small, but seems worth the very small price. Welcome to the world of App Store purchasing!
Apple’s remote app does the same for me for AppleTV — allows keyboard input for searches, etc.
January 18th, 2009 at 10:31 am
I should add that while Apple’s “Remote” app is free, their Keynote Remote app, which was just announced at the recent MacWorld Expo, costs 99 cents.
I read a post on a board somewhere talking about how ridiculous this is: in order to even use the app, you have to own:
And then Apple slaps you with a 99 cent charge! Once a customer buys all this stuff, I think they’re entitled to some free stuff.
January 18th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I’m guessing the nominal charge is a way of trying to figure out what the real demand is.
January 20th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Here’a good article on the pre from Mike Mace, formerly the chief competition officer of Palm. I like how he analyzed the target market for the Pre:
the Pre is a better e-mail device than the iPhone and a better consumer device than a Blackberry… it’s probably a worse entertainment device than the iPhone (because it doesn’t have iTunes) and probably a worse e-mail device than RIM (because it doesn’t have RIM’s server infrastructure). So who exactly is it best for?
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:09 pm
So as comprehensive as this post was, it hasn’t mentioned what I consider to be the best feature– the “cards.” Basically, you launch the cards with the push of the button, and you get live thumbnails of the open documents/apps. Exactly like alt-tab in Vista (or mousing over the taskbar), or Expose in OS X. So not completely new, and the eye-candy element of it doesn’t add that much. In Windows Mobile, you can launch an app called Task Manager that shows open apps in a list form, where you can close/switch apps as needed. But while Windows Mobile wants you to leave the managing of apps to the OS (it will auto close unused apps as system resources require), the fact that the Pre dedicates its one button to launching the Cards signifies the importance of multitasking. Definitely a priority in the OS.
Anyway, I thought that Cards deserved a mention. Certainly more so than the cloud syncing, which I hate, or the touchstone, which is also lame.
March 10th, 2009 at 9:11 am
It occured to me that the Touchstone is a complete lark the other morning, when I realized that this technology is exactly how my several-year-old Sonicare electric toothbrush recharges.
Saw the photos Kelvin put up — thoughts on the Fallon segment?
March 10th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Well, I thought the Pre looked great– very smooth and nothing I saw made it look unready for release. Heck, if they are letting people carry it around and even show it on TV, Palm’s got to be pretty confident. Even more interesting is that they talked about it for over 10 minutes. I wonder if this is the first time a blogger/new media guy has been a guest on network TV. I guess Natali del Conte (of CNET’s BuzzOutLoud and Loaded) is a frequent contributor to the morning show, so in news magazine-type shows, it’s not unusual. But late night is traditionally for entertainment, so I think Fallon might be bringing the internet culture to the mainstream. Kevin Rose from Digg is also scheduled to appear this week.