Palm Pre: Where's the music?
Palm's Pre won CNET's Best of CES award for 2009, and is getting tons of love from around the tech world.
Not a bad accomplishment for a smartphone with a completely new operating system, from a company written off as dead not long ago.
I wrote something like this about RIM's BlackBerry Storm and got some heat for it, but still...where's the music?
I don't mean that the Pre won't play music--of course it will. Palm even announced a deal with Amazon.com to let users buy music downloads without any intervention (cooperation? interference?) from the carrier, Sprint.
But let's recap why the iPhone became the first smartphone to capture the consumer imagination. Sure, its design had a lot of pleasant "just works" surprises, from the bright touch screen to the way the keypad autocorrects for big fingers. But a large reason is because Apple branded it as an extension of the iPod, which has become synonymous with mobile music.
When music fans were looking to consolidate from two devices (MP3 player, phone) to a single one, the "i" brand reassured them that they wouldn't get a second-class music experience.
Equally important: iTunes, the software with which every iPod user was already familiar. It's not perfect. I know people who hate it, particularly on the PC. But compare it with the proposed Pre experience, as covered by PC Magazine:
9.) How do you get music and video onto the Pre?
You can drag and drop it over from your PC using USB mass storage, or buy songs on the device using a built-in Amazon MP3 Store client.
My immediate reaction upon reading those three little words, "drag and drop"? Yecch. No sync? No library? No rating system? No playlists, preset or automatic? No way to view and change information about songs?
Here's the thing: without iTunes, there's no iPhone. And without the iPhone, there's no consumer smartphone audience. I don't doubt that Palm (and RIM, for that matter) understand mobile communications and information management, and there's certainly a lot of room for improvement in business phones. But if I'm going to replace my MP3 player with a phone, these phones won't cut it.
That's why Microsoft's recent justification for the Zune--it helped the company learn how to build music management software and an online store--didn't ring as false to me as it did to some other folks.
The device might be a failure. But whenever Microsoft rolls out its next-generation mobile-phone platform, at least it has a reasonable story for managing and buying music.
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Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattrosoff. 
Good read about the features of the Pre, and comparison to the iPhone.
http://www.SprintPre.net
The Pre is a game changer.
"The Pre is a game changer" Well, I guess it depends on what "game" you're playing. "Sniping Apple" isn't one that too many others play...
its SO much simpler to drag and drop my music - than trying to sync thru itunes! half the time itunes is giving me errors or crashes. the navigation sucks and its always lagging!
and its so much easier to change the info/tags via windows than thru itunes too.
After reading this, I double-checked to see if the writer was a high-school student with too much time on her hands. I don't want to start another app. on my machine, create playlists, sync playists, rate songs, and then be constantly bugged by my firewall for that "music management" app. is getting homesick and wants to talk to some Apple servers for god knows what reason!
I can imagine teens having the time to run through Apple's hoops, but I prefer drag-and-drop, and you're done! It's the reason I stopped using my iPod and replaced it with a MuVo (the mp3 player plugs directly into a USB port and acts like a flash drive...don't even need a darn cable!)
1. They assume they can predict our wants and needs.
2. They obligate us to use this software that is based on our imagined wants and needs.
I don't need ratings to tell me which of my own songs I like best. And as for the other features he mentioned; that what I have a COMPUTER for. Ever heard of WinAmp? It's free and it's awesome and it doesn't interfere with my precious phone.
The time where people keep hundreds of megabytes of MP3s on their desktops is over, as is the time where we had to download podcasts on our desktops. You subscribe to an on-line music service and download what you want to your phone, over the air. Add to that real-time podcast updates and streaming audio and video.
I'm not sure whether the Pre is the best choice, but the iPhone and iPod are obsolete.
Drag and drop is pretty much de facto for cell phones on a worldwide scale. No matter how many iTunes-esque software (usually terrible) phone makers like to throw at us, there's normally drag and drop too, and that normally saves the phones' music features from becoming unusable.
It is still true that iPhone has the best music player of all phones, but I think people constantly overestimate the pull of the iTunes store. The iPhone's music player wins on its own merits, in the implementation of the whole package. Not all kinetic scrolling are equal, and not all volume control dials are equal.
On the other hand, I'm using Pocket Player on Windows Mobile, and I can confirm that you do NOT lose all playlist capabilites, just because you don't use a jukebox-type software.
I think Palm choosing Amazon is a good call, because there's more freedom in handing your music.
My immediate reaction upon reading those three little words, "drag and drop"? Yecch. No sync? No library? No rating system? No playlists, preset or automatic? No way to view and change information about songs? "
Your next thought should have been - since at CES we found out that the Pre confirms to the mass storage standard, windows media player, win amp and any number of other music players will pick it up as a place to sync music to - you know playlists, ratings... etc...
This functionality isn't anything new - my creative zen does the same, I can sync it with wmp, creative software etc or... I can drag and drop media as I feel like.
So what you are reporting as a problem is actually a benefit - the user will be able to use music management software (itunes excluded of course) or drag and drop.
http://www.macnn.com/blogs/2007/10/18/apple-files-for-iphone-design-trademark-protection.html
The Pre is a game changer." - AppleSuxLeo
Yes, enjoy those dumbed-down javascript applications on your Pre, Leo.
Troll Different.
Does Palm GPL the webOS? Does it allow developers access to low level API?
Don't even bother bringing up the JavaScript as powerful as C++ argument or Palm used the same API for bundled software statement. It Did Not! I would like to see a browser built with JavaScript/HTML/CSS, that could be a real wonder for sure.
For audios only maybe the Mojo framework somehow can pull it through, but good luck with Video Players or some 3D effect here, a little Vector manipulation there. It will be a DOG, an old one.
Windows is already not bad. You can set up windows media player to see your device as a "music player" and sync to the folder playlists etc.. no need to drag n drop..
Could you have posted this article, while waiting at the barbershop, using your iPhone? You could have using the Pre.
However, I don't agree that Palm has more experience in the smart-phone and communications category. Yes, they've been at it for years... but not in a very good way. The Palm V was probable the pinnacle of their achievements... all down-hill from there. What made the Palm V cool was it's small size. The Newton was a far better PDA years earlier... Palm just simplified it in cost and size for the masses (at the expense of capability).
My Treo's, frankly, sucked. They weren't good phones, nor that great of PDAs. I used them basically because there was little other choice and the company I worked for went that direction rather than Blackberry. It was a fairly miserable device that I basically put up with. Little better than the Palm V as a PDA and a really sub-optimal phone (which one would think would be its strong suit). The iPhone kills it in about every way.
It will be interesting to see how the Pre compares, I suppose. But, I really don't hold out much hope. I don't think Palm really 'gets it'. I still remember the Palm CEO making statements about how Apple didn't stand a chance with the iPhone.... shows how out of touch the company and its leader are.
What's the problem?
You are correct , as the Pre is recognized as USB mass storage so there is no problem.
And Play4sure failed. So either you rip all you music or buy it at iTMS or Amazon then cross you finger hoping it will come up automatically in your WMP library.
And WMP throws your music files every where if not hand tuned, pull down wacky ID3 infoes & tiny album artwork which may or may not have anything to do with your songs. It become extremely slow when your collection goes beyond a certain point and the smart playlist function is so pathetic I wander why they even bother.
BTW if your collection by chance have any "exotic" "oriental" songs, then see its metadata explode in front of you, but I guess that's a system wide defect regarding unicode support. Since it's all MS, I blame them nonetheless.
Good read about the features of the Pre, and comparisons to the iPhone.
- by ritaroys January 13, 2009 11:05 AM PST
- It is a good phone. Looks cute. The article is also good. I saw another article with many more videos and other description. Take a look at it if you want to know more:-
- Like this Reply to this comment
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