Pre-paring for Palm's last gasp - Will the company survive?


The rabbit comes out of the hat. Will it be in time?
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Let's see how much of this I can get through.

Of course, one really big free market story this last week was the introduction of the Palm Pre.

I use a Palm TX myself, and I have used Palms for years. I've also drooled over the iPhone.

First, I am excited to see Palm finally deliver something, anything that might sell. Palm has been trying for years, and their last savior product flopped. I'm very surprised that they lasted this long.

But the Palm Pre is not the iPhone killer. Nor should it try to be. Remember what I said about competition? It's me so I get the technopagan green.

The free market makes it possible. Unburdened by regulation and unshielded by special exemptions, companies HAVE to develop ways to make it better, cheaper, faster, or more desirable than the competition can. If a company can't deliver something unique to the buyer for the price, the company goes under because the buyer goes somewhere else.

While the Pre is an exciting product, it's also flawed. It has less memory than the iPhone and the memory is not expandable. Palm says that's because OS X is too fat to run on phones. I do see the lack of expandable memory as a major flaw, just as it is on the iPhone.

Here's Gizmodo comparing the Pre and the iPhone and the G1 Android.

Here's a PCWorld article that expresses reservations.

And here's a piece that examines reaction to the Pre and iPhone compared with what each delivers.

All in all, I think the Pre is a potent product that could really add to customer choice. Because that is what I am really interested in. I want better products, and we weren't getting them when the American cellphone carriers were calling the shots on the feature lists.

None the less, I think the Pre is fatally flawed and I won't be getting one unless something changes. It has to do with that "cloud" thing they tout so much.

I don't want my calendars and contacts to live somewhere I don't control on my own computer.

Now I personally don't care if someone knows I have a doctor's appointment, but I would rather be a little discreet with my rituals. And when it comes to my relationships, well, I am not dating exclusively but it works better if one lady doesn't know exactly what I do and how long it takes with the others.

When it comes to my contacts, it doesn't matter to me if you know who my sex toy supplier is, or where I buy my groceries, but some of my professional and networking contacts have personal information attached to their records. It works great to remind me before I talk to them or write them. If I have to "purge" that information so I can put it on the cloud, what's the point?

Also, there are some of my contacts who would rather people not know that they are friends with a (pick one) naked Pagan libertarian troublemaker.

With the "cloud," you do not know who has access to your data, or even if it's going to be there tomorrow. AOL just dropped their file sharing. Yahoo is undergoing a major seismic shift. LiveJournal just fired a whole bunch of their staff.

The iPhone, for all it's flaws, offers an alternative.

Yes I can see how the cloud can be massively useful. I just don't see it as secure.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - January 15, 2009 at 05:15 AM  Tag


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