After the love has gone
by Volker Weber
Ever since the Pilot came out, then Palm Pilot, I was in love with this simple and welcoming interface. At the time, I was a heavy Newton users - I still own five of them. Going from the Newton to a Pilot was not easy, but the company was smart enough to let me win one at a CeBIT press conference. The Pilot had one unique selling point: simple synchronisation with a PC. The Newton always sucked badly at this task. So, out with all the bells and whistles, in with simplicity and speed.
I replaced my original Pilot a few years later with a Palm III and then again with a Palm V. A few years pass and I meet the Palm CEO in Firence, Italy, and he personally upgrades me to a new Tungsten, which later gets replaced by a Tungsten 3. All of these devices were basically the same. More memory, better screens, newer software versions, but they had the same basic function. And the same instant interface.
Then, when the Treo came out, I so wanted one. A Palm with a GSM phone. No longer two devices to carry. I had to have the 600 and later the 650. This was the first Palm OS device which failed me. Crazy reboot loops, sudden failures, the operating system was showing its age. So I started looking elsewhere. The Nokia 9300, the CrackBerrys, Nokia S60 smartphones.
Then a few months ago, at CeBIT Palm was giving away one Treo 680 and I found myself standing there with my fellow colleagues, and I did not want to win it. Sure, I wanted somebody to win it, but I personally did not want it. That was quite a strange feeling. Here was a chance to get a perfectly good, free smartphone, and I didn't want it. The love had gone.
Today I wanted more than a couple of years ago. Wifi, instant email, over the air sync, in a better looking enclosure. Palm was no longer sexy. The unique selling point was gone. Let alone putting down money for it, I did not want it for free.
Yesterday's news was that Palm is letting people go. Maybe in the hundreds, out of 1200 current employees. This has to be done, when you want to save the company. And they need time. Their new platform won't be coming in 2008. I am keeping my fingers crossed that they can bring sexy back in 2009. I would miss them.
Comments
The Palm really was sexy. I loved my IIIx, but it has been gathering dust for a few years now...
a company worth billions
missing the chances of being much faster than ipod, blackberry or eee-pc
.
Remembers me off the PSION story in the late '90 !
Auf der Suche nach einem kleinen, leichten Gerät zur mobilen Terminverwaltung bin ich nun wieder bei einem Palm gelandet. Der iPOD synct zwar mit iCal, kann aber leider die verschiedenen Kalender nicht unterscheiden oder gar in ihrer jeweiligen Farbe darstellen. Auch der iPOD touch kann es nicht, und das iPhone auch nicht. Für mich ist diese Kalender-Unterscheidung jedoch ein wichtiges Feature von iCal, das ich sehr schätze.
Nun nutze ich den kleinen Palm Z22, und im Zusammenspiel mit Missing Sync macht der genau das, was ich von einem mobilen Kalender erwarte: exakter Abgleich aller iCal-Kalender, in beide Richtungen. Die Farben teilt man einmal manuell zu, dann passt auch das. Außerdem taugt er auch ganz gut als "Notizblock", und eine Akkuladung hält wochenlang :-)
Oh, so here's where the whole Newton production went to...
Ich bin immer wieder darüber erstaunt, wie viele Palm Vx noch in Gebrauch sind und von ihren Besitzern geliebt und gehegt werden, gerade wegen des immer noch netten Designs und der leichten, schnellen und stabilen "Grundversorgung" mit den vier Basisfunktionen Kalender, Kontakte, Aufgaben und Notizen. Dazu noch eine schier unglaublich lange Laufzeit mit einer Akkuladung...
Bei den aktuellen Geräten ist hiervon leider nichts mehr geblieben.
I totally agree.
I have a love/hate relationship with my Treo 700p. I've also owned palm pilots from day 1 (including buying stock in Palm). The company just never delivered on the vision. The current platform feels dated, the UI is not clean, and the Treo misses the mark on far too many basic features. I'm not sure when they 'stalled', but something just never clicked. I think they were confused whether they were a hardware or software company.
Anyway, my Treo will be my last Palm.
I was just wondering the other day why Palm ever dropped the "Palm Pilot" brand name. For the average Joe, any handheld computer is STILL a "Palm Pilot".
I have a Zire, which I used for a bit as a PDA. It was decent enough for the times, but is now relegated solely to GPS duty.
I had a Blackjack phone, which I liked well enough, but was itching for a full keyboard (and better Mac compatibility) so I bought a Palm Treo, without ever having used one. The interface just felt (and probably was) 5 years old - and was shockingly NOT Mac-compatible without third-party software. I hated it so much I sold it on eBay and immediately slapped my SIM card back into the Blackjack - until the infamous $200 iPhone price drop.
It's very sad to see a company fail so miserably in a product category that it once defined.
