Dueling opinions: five reasons why the Pre will succeed, or was that fail?

Pre week is here, so that means its time for all the tech pundits to strap on their thinking caps can come up with provocative things to write about the Palm Pre. There are two camps that these writers can jump into that will be sure to rile the masses: the Pre will succeed and prove a worthy challenge to Apple and RIM, or the Pre will fail and Palm will see its last days. Over at ZDNet they’re expecting a homerun, and PC World doesn’t anticipate much success for Palm.

We’ll try our best to play the reasonable devil’s advocate along the way, and we’ll start with the bad: PC World. To boil it down, their five points are as follow...




5. Despite successes of the past, Palm of today is not the same Palm that brought us the Palm Pilot or even the Treo. PC World says, “Palm is effectively, a start-up.” Things can go wrong, despite all the fresh blood. Of course, the fresh blood is what has brought us a device as revolutionary as the Pre (and it was fresh blood that brought us the Palm Pilot and the Treo), so despite the missteps that fresh blood can bring, it was needed.

4. Users today won’t think much of multi-tasking on their phones. While everybody but the iPhone supports multi-tasking, without having been able to truly leverage its full capabilities people just won’t be able to fully comprehend what to do with it. This assumes that users are not smart enough to fully leverage the capabilities of webOS, and with how dead simple Palm has made it, it’s hard do believe that would be the case.

3. On a similar note to #5, the new blood in Palm does not have the same experience with developers that Old Palm or even Apple today has. Without a strong developer base there won’t be enough applications to justify getting the Pre over something like an iPhone of Blackberry.

2. In a stretch, the slide-out keyboard was a bad call. Apparently people don’t want a compact device with the best of both the iPhone and BlackBerry/Treo hardware worlds. Whodathunk?

1. The biggest and most relevant point of all: Palm just doesn’t have the cash to compete. The assumption is that even if Palm makes all the Pre phones they possibly can, but still can’t meet demand (that’s bad?) and can’t capture market share to gain third-party developers.



So, that’s PC World’s take. Ready for ZDNet’s positive spin?

5. Palm has experience building the ecosystem of software. Much more so than any other mobile platform, Palm has worked with third-party developers until the cows came home. Only problem is, we’re working with a whole new platform right now and the SDK hasn’t even been made public.

4. The Pre is not the iPhone, and carriers like that. We all know that AT&T has (at least for now) the exclusive in the states on the iPhone, and everybody else is looking for a phone to compete. Moreso than any phone in the last two years, the Pre has been hailed by the media as that phone, and Sprint is pleased as punch to be the exclusive launch partner. So excited is the mobile industry by the Pre that even Verizon (despite the BlackBerry Storm) and AT&T (despite the iPhone) both want the Pre and other webOS devices on their networks.

3. webOS development is easy as pie, and developers like pie. With the SDK application development environment centered around HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, developing for the Pre will not only be easy, but it will be easy for the tens of thousands of experience web developers already out there. Unlike the iPhone (Objective C) and Android (Java), very little specialized experience will be needed to develop a lean and powerful application. There are, of course, two problems. The first is that there’s only so much you can do with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Developers are going to want deeper native access so they can code more powerful applications. Second is the limited deployment of the Mojo SDK. Eventually it will go public, but for now only approved developers are getting it, which means there will be fewer applications in the App Catalog.

2. Standing in stark contrast to PC World’s #2, ZDNet thinks that the combination slide-out QWERTY keypad and the full touchscreen is 100% win. The full screen is great for reading and web browsing, whereas the physical keyboard is great for entering text with ease. While the sliding design is a compromise between the two, all compromises come with parts that people are bound to not like: it makes the device thicker and generally results in a smaller screen and keyboard (or a relatively large device, like the G1).

1. Multi-tasking. Sure, all of the Pre’s competitors (iPhone excluded) support multi-tasking out of the box, but none have found so elegant a solution to managing multiple applications. The cards metaphor utilized so effectively by webOS combined with the unobtrusive notifications are so reminiscent of desktop applications that users will feel right at home.

There you have it, five points against and five points for the Palm Pre. Give it a few months and we’ll have an idea of which side was right. But you know who we’re pulling for.

[Originally posted at precentral.net]

Palm Pre firmware 1.0.2, Sudoku, alarm clock

Thanks to Darth Pooh on our forums for the awesome tip: the Palm Pre’s firmware has been updated from version 1.0.1 to 1.0.2. Number changes like that indicate that it’s a maintenance release of some sort to improve stability, speed, and whatnot on the device, and as Pooh noted, the Pre is running notably faster than it did back at CES, though there is still some lag.

But wait, there’s more! Darth Pooh got the chance to check out a new Sudoku application, noting that it was “somewhat playable,” but not up to par with what we’d expect from companies like professional game developer Astraware. He also caught sight of ‘another Twitter program,’ so rest assured all ye Tweeters, your options will be many.

Buyrihn, also in our forums, got some of his own hands on time with the Pre. When he got it, the manager had something like 10-15 applications running at the time and claimed that they caused little lag. Pooh meanwhile has discovered that, as one would expect, running processor intensive applications like Pandora or playing music will cause a slowdown in application launches, but once they're up they run just fine.

Oh, and buyrihn also caught a picture of something that we know many of you have been clamoring for: a third-party an alarm clock application (pictured in blurry cam vision up top). The app supports multiple and repeating alarms and can display both an analog or HTC-style digital clock. Like Palm said, they decided to leave alarm clocks up to third parties and the third parties delivered.

Correction: We have confirmed that the Clock application is actually the work of Palm, not a third party. Sorry for any confusion there.

[Originally posted at precentral.net]

Touchstone is For Sale Now?

The Pre isn't even for sale yet, but it seems that the Touchstone can be bought right now at some Sprint stores.

artap99, an everythingpre forum member, is on the waiting list for the Pre at his local Sprint store. He got a call from the store today letting him know that everything will be on a first come, first serve basis. Plus, they are already selling the Pre accessories.

So naturally artap99 drove over to his Sprint store to check things out, and he was able to buy a Touchstone and the back cover for $49.99. The price is supposed to be $70 for both items, but artap99 was told by more than one sales person that the price was $49.99, so that's what he ended up paying.

If you're planning on buying a Pre, why not call up your local Sprint store and see if they're already carrying the Pre accessories? It sure wouldn't hurt to pick up a Touchstone ahead of time and be ready for your new baby when you bring it home.

[Originally posted at precentral.net]

Best Buy Palm Pre Inventory Leaked

We told you about Best Buy's June Buyer's Guide having a large Palm Pre ad in it. Plus, we let you know that the Pre is already on display in a Best Buy in Puerto Rico.

Well, looks like some Best Buy inventory sheets for the Palm Pre were leaked and popped up in the everythingpre forums. So you might want to check out those inventory sheets and see if you spot your nearest Best Buy, or at least one within driving distance.

Seems that the largest amount of Pres on order is 42 Pres for Alamo Ranch, Texas. HooWee, those of you living in that area will surely want to check out that Best Buy location! Also: *gulp*, I'm sure you see that $849.99 full price is still in effect.

[Originally posted at precentral.net]

Runway and Instant Items Apps coming to Pre

Mentioned last month in an article in Redmond Developer News was an application for the Palm Pre that we hadn’t seen before: Runway. Greg Stevenson, the developer of Runway, hadn’t planned on releasing any details of the application (or even acknowledging its existence) until the Pre was out, but the article threw a slight kind in his plans. So, he’s launched a new website to explain what Runway, and its companion application Instant Items, will do.

Runway is described on the website as a time and project management application. The article mentioned that Runway will be able to bring more online calendars to the Pre, but as Stevenson says on his website, “if Runway is just another time management application, then the Pre is just another mobile device.” And we all know that it’s more than just a phone and web browser.

Also coming from Stevenson is Instant Items, a phone-operation streamlining application. Apart from being able to access your contacts to dial numbers, it can also add items to your calendar and to-do lists. The website claims that it can do this “all in an extremely quick manner using a fraction of the keystrokes of traditional methods.”

Interesting, eh? Even working within the boundaries of the currently limited Mojo SDK, developers are coming up with some interesting application concepts.

[Originally posted at precentral.net]

iTunes-Pre Media Sync Probably Unlicensed

When Palm last week unveiled the Pre’s newfound ability to sync with iTunes, it set the blogosphere ablaze, most notably the big Apple fanblogs were enraged with misplaced indignation (seriously guys, Apple can fight for themselves, they’re big boys). But it also touched off an interesting dialog: how did Palm do it? A close examination of the presentation at the All Things D (D7) conference revealed that to iTunes, the Pre appeared as an iPod, even displaying “Syncing iPod” in the little information window at the top of iTunes.

That raises the question, as Daring Fireball writer John Gruber asked, is this legit? It all boils down to how iTunes recognizes iPods. It’s a three step process, described by Jon Lech Johansen’s nanocr.eu blog:

“The iPod has a specific USB Vendor Id that identifies it as being an Apple product and a USB Product Id that identifies it as being a specific iPod model. In addition, the iPod’s filesystem has a specific folder and file structure. Modern iPods also respond to a custom USB command that returns an XML file with information about the device.”

Joahnsen speculates that when you select Media Sync on the Pre, the device switches from the USB vendor and product IDs of the Palm Pre to that of a specific iPod model, and that its mass storage partition is structured in such a way that iTunes looks at it and says, ‘Yes, this is an iPod.’ Lastly, when prompted by iTunes with the aforementioned customer USB command, the Pre spits out the XML file about the device, presumably with information that says ‘I am an iPod.’

Palm can’t be using the iTunes synchronization APIs that added compatibility to a number of non-Apple devices way back in the day. For one, Apple has likely stopped licensing that API now that the iPod has enjoyed tremendous success (none of those players are younger than five years), and for two that API only worked with iTunes for Mac; Palm claims that Media Sync will work with iTunes for Mac and PC.

So, where do we go from here? Palm’s description of Media Sync comes with a footnote:

“(2) Compatible with iTunes 8.1.1 on Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X version 10.3.9-10.5.7.”

Apple just yesterday released iTunes 8.2, which is purported to bring compatibility with the new iPhone OS 3.0. It seems unlikely that 8.2 will block the Pre from syncing just yet, but keep an eye out for 8.2.1.

For us the real question is this: Why does Palm seem to suddenly have so much chutzpah? They fearlessly included multitouch gestures in the browser, Google Maps, and Photo gallery that other companies feared to include (hi T-Mobile G1, how are you?). Now with the Palm Pre literally appearing as an iPod, it's almost as though Palm is taunting Apple. Apple doesn't like being taunted.

Like Gruber, we're increasingly getting the feeling that Palm is either trying to goad Apple into a legal showdown or they are so confident in their patent portfolio that they feel they can throw these features in Apple's face. Honestly -- BlackBerrys have had a iTunes sync app that worked pretty well and because it is a separate app, it avoids all these questions. Palm probably could have just as easily done that, but instead they went with direct iPod-imitating sync. If Apple decides to lawyer up, Palm likely feels they can simultaneously cry "monopoly!" and they have the smartphone patents to possibly make Apple back down. If they fail, well, if nothing else they'll be guaranteed gobs of free publicity.

[Originally posted at precentral.net

First two of five making-of-the-ad videos on Facebook

As promised, Palm has started releasing videos about the making of their Palm Pre ad campaign. These first two videos, released on Facebook, give us some blurry stylized shots of the woman who looks to be the face of the Pre (as opposed to disembodied iPhone voice) and her hand holding a Pre, and glimpses of the large scale of the commercial interspersed with images of the Chinese locations where Palm shot the ads. The first video contains one important quote from, well, somebody with Palm: “What we're doing here is nothing short of re-launching our brand, re-launching our company.”



According to Palm’s description of the first video, the ads were filmed in three locations in China: a studio in Beijing (where hand lady was hanging out), the Shaolin Kung Fu School in Dengfeng, and the mountains outside of Kunming. Presumably the mountain backdrop from Kunming will be used with the bluescreen shots from the studio - we'll find out for sure come Wednesday. Also sighted: a few glimpses at the story-boards for the ad campaign, but the super-narrow depth-of-field blurs out most of the text accompanying them. In the meantime, we’ve got at least three more videos on the way. Either way, the graceful shots of the martial artists are sure to make for a captivating commercial.

[Originally posted at precentral.net