Comments on: Rock bottom for Palm and Hawkins?

Palm CEO Ed Colligan made the right decision to dump the Foleo. But how will Jeff Hawkins and Palm bounce back from the admission that they badly misjudged the market for a weak laptop?

[tundraboy]

A computer that works like the human brain?

You mean prone to bias, prejudice, irrationality, illogical conclusions, and plain old forgetfulness? Pass.

[enovikoff]

Pass?

Hmm, what did you use to write that comment? The same thing that's frought with bias, prejudice, irrationality, illogical conclusions, and plain old forgetfulness?

[Galaxy5]

Don't make fun...

A chat I had with Bill Atkinson last year (he's the neuroscientist who
created QuickDraw) indicates Numenta is working on some great
ideas.

To address your post, they're working on a way of computing that
accesses and stores information like the brain; by reference, using
few resources, and long-term. But I guess you just wanted to make
a snarky post, and you've succeeded in that by completely missing
the point and citing emotions, not qualities of the human brain.

[Mehboob Alam]

Revenge of the Newton...

people are falling over themselves to buy the iPhone.. I'm sure Steve Jobs is laughing, quietly..

[wcmack]

Form Factor and Interface

Palm is a company with a great past. Most of that came from exploiting a breakthrough form factor (the handheld PIM) and interface.

The company's ability to exploit those breakthrough has come to an end. For Palm to regain primacy in the product and market space, it needs to use cutting-edge technologies out there today to develop either a new form factor or a new interface or both, for an infomation-entertainment device.

It also needs to take a new in-depth read of the market and place itself firmly into a segment that it can recapture. Should it go for the business segment or the entertainment segment?

The iPhone is a phenomenal piece of technology, but it is far from perfect. It is weak as a PIM with integrated functions. Its tie to AT&T for the next two years puts a world-class piece of hardware together with a less-than-worldclass content delivery platform.

So Palm has areas it can exploit. But a "pPhone" won't do it. Palm needs to up the ante with a new breakthrough device that will push the game beyond the admittedly impressive level that Apple has created.

This is Palm's challenge. Is Hawkins up to it? I doubt it. Palm needs new blood with new ideas in the design function.

[c|net Reader]

Misjudged Markets?

The various palm related sites are full of folks that say they desperately want a new PDA -- not smartphone -- that provides features that have appeared in older and more recent PDAs with updates from current hardware options. I, for one, use my phone as a phone and my Palm T|X as a PDA. (If I didn't use Verizon as my carrier, I'd be able to tell my phone to dial from my PDA, too.) Combining the two makes the result good at neither.

Treos are too big to be phones and too small to be useful PDAs. I wouldn't want a screen any smaller than I have on my T|X and I would certainly want no lower resolution. Perhaps Palm would do well to ignore phones and focus on PDAs that play well with phones from other vendors and add value in the process. Then, they'd get out of the competitive phone business and provide something useful to those like me.

A truly useful advance in the PDA market would involve a dramatically better OS and a UI more like one finds on the Mac. That is, let the OS and hardware handle most of the UI functionality and make it easy for the software to look good and do the right things.

Sadly, I don't know whether any of those things are possible now as the Windows juggernaut holds so much sway with developers and Blackberries have gained so much usable business functionality.

I don't know what I'm going to do when my T|X dies. Perhaps I need to lay in a stock of them now....

[feranick]

The Foleo is not dead

Although I am the first to say the Foleo is wildly underwhelming, We should be fair. What has been canceled is the current generation of the Foleo, powered by a specific version of Linux. THe reason it has been pulled off is because having two platforms to maintain is simply not sustainable by Palm. The next generation will be powered by the same OS that will power their new phones. So we will see the Foleo, like it or not.

In other words, the implementation was killed, not the vision.

[bobcode]

Must be versatile

If it was as versatile as the Palm PDA, it'd might sell. However it was hobbled worse than the iPhone. It could only do e-mail, and that poorly. As a stand alone, full function PDA, Palm calls handhelds, it'd be nice.

[perlstar]

Good and Bad

I played with a real-live Foleo at LinuxWorld.
Instant On: insanely good. I would almost buy one just for that.
Can't sync my Palm to it: bad. Although, if it would do everything my Palm E2 does, so I could switch to using it instead: good.
Bluetooth & WiFi: good.
Price: seemed a bit expensive for what you get.
Size & form factor: very good
I forget how the Foleo is powered, but AA batteries (NiMH) would be good. At least as an alternative, or an add-on auxiliary power source.
--
Fix the bad, and keep the good, and it will do as well as the Palm Pilot did. Sascha Segan's recent PC Mag article (search for "four pillars") articulates this well.

[inachu]

Might be good thing.

If he is pulling back to put resources elsewhere then I hope to have a brain emulator in my pocket?

[Cub Fan Al]

Yikes

I just saw this gizmo on their web site a month agao and now it is dead already?

Maybe they should concentrate on their core and build a better Treo phone...I have been waiting for one with built in GPS capabilities for months, My Motorola phone works perfectly as a GPS device. Even RIM has a Blackberry now that will do that, and good old Palm is still hanging out there with a "dumb" smart phone.

Get with it dudes!

[ColdMast]

it was too old to be new

They were looking into the past of pocket organizers to make a product that people bought rather that a thing that people want.

Keys: Bigger
Screen: Brighter
Size: smaller
Style: sleeker
Price: cheaper

Then Palm might have a chance for profitability

[Renegade Knight]

Palm Has Potential

They have missed the boat time and again, and yet they still have one heck of a lot of potential as a company.

So what if the Folio died? It's coming out with a lot of new ideas to see which ones takes that's going to make this company. They can't just keep slinking along.

[Charleston Charge]

Interesting

Tell me more about this beer stacking method...

[sierralink]

A REALLY dumb idea from the start

The only thing it was missing was a Cue Cat. A monkey could have spent those millions in a much more productive way. RIP Palm, thanks for the start but you've become obsolete.

[thriftyT]

Nope.

Mr. Krazit,

Looks like you jumped the gun on Sept. 4th.
It is now Sept. 6th and HP just announced a new line of iPaqs and
Apple just announced that the iPhone can be had for $399.

NOW Palm has hit rock bottom.

Good night, and sweet dreams Palm.

[rbiz]

Uh, No

Even reporting about Palm is just beating a dead horse. As
recently as five years ago I still had semi-high hopes for Palm
getting off its collective backsides and doing something to
reinsert itself into this nitch, and now - thanks to Apple et. al. -
all of a sudden, fast growing segment of the computing market
place.

It seems it was back in the mid '90s, after "partnering" with
Microsoft, that Palm enjoyed a sudden and quick (as in short-
lived) burst of industrial creativity, then they just kept sinking
slowly and surely toward obscurity. They've already been
railroaded and no one seems to really feel it, not even Palm.

Of course you never know, but I stopped holding my breath a
couple of years ago. Up until now Palm has not even had any
real competition, (maybe that's the problem), and what did they
choose to do with that time? ...squander it away. What a shame.
Bye Palm.

[appledogx--2008]

The chance for redemption?

OK. Rock bottom hurts. Apple was there before the bondi blue
iMac. If Palm could come out with something like an iPod touch at
the SAME price, with WiFi, browser, email, the usual PDA apps but
mure usable, a similar killer interface without tons of buttons and
supporting 3rd parth applications, they might be able to pull a
great comeback. If they don't do it soon and Apple wakes up first
and adds the PDA stuff to the iPod, Palm will be the first Edsel of
the 21st century.

[umcrouc0]

Maybe 5 years ago this would have been good

I guess this was conceived before small fully functional laptops were around? It's too big for the PDA/smartphone market (even the size of the first blackberry is too big these days), and too useless for the mobile computer market. Great combo there. I'm sure everyone wants a computer that can't run any of their programs or a mobile device that they need a carrying case for. Guess they never heard of Tablet PCs either.

[jkamenetz]

Palm Company

I passed about four generations of Palm Products.
My feeling is that Palm has an issue with life cycles of the new products (such as LifeDrive and Zire ). Support is minimal. Updates for pressing software issues as in the case of LifeDrive are not forthcoming.When I write to Palm, I get the impression of a total lack of will to improve the service and the products.
Therefore, my next products will be Windows-based products.
This is written with great sorrow as the third party developers have some very good products and they are let down by Palm.

[kjim9]

Foleo A tough portable.

I was looking forward to the Foleo and wanted one. I was planning on upgrading it with flash drive and/or cracking the case to add memory. It looked to be a tough small laptop without a moving hard disk. Of course, I use linux and linux doesn;t scare me. With the extra memory applications could be added as needed.
Jim K