Palm Responds to the iPhone 205
Several people noted a NYT piece about Palm's response to the iPhone. Essentially, their response appears to be to hire a former Apple engineer and a couple other folks -- while also pursuing plans to perhaps sell the company. Nothing like a dual approach to the problem.
Destiny (Score:5, Interesting)
Somehow I get the impression that the iPhone's future... destiny, if you will... is already determined, and anything Apple's competitors might do at this point is more or less irrelevant. Nothing is going to steal the iPhone's thunder if it turns out there actually is a market for it. And if there isn't... it'll sink without a trace, as will any rivals.
As cool as I think the iPhone is, I'm currently leaning toward the second option. Too expensive, too little demand.
Agreed (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't agree so fast. (Score:2)
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Not only is it too expensive and not all *that* much better than some other [MP3 players] out there, but the decision to lock in to one [OS platform] is probably the one thing that will doom it to failure. Looks like a great toy, but far too expensive but as for me personally there is no way I'd switch to [the Mac]. Bad, bad experiences with them in the past. I doubt many people will rush to change [computers] just for a high priced toy. There will be a limited market within [Appl
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If you want another provider, switch the SIM card and go for it. All other US providers have a locked phone for CDMA networks, which means that you can't just switch providers and keep your phone.
The iPhone will not be locked down like most other phones here in the States, and GSM is widely used in Europe too, for exactly that reason, possibility of choice. T
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There's also the issue of the camera being on the wrong side of the phone, but that's less of a problem (video calling is still comparitively unused.. most people don't even know their phones can do it).
Re:Destiny (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hmm, I was mostly going off the general mood in the last few slashdot articles :)
Personally, I haven't yet bought a mobile phone of any kind. When the iPhone was first announced I thought: maybe this is what will finally persuade me to get one. Now I'm not so sure -- it has lots of features that I just don't see myself using. And while I wouldn't be too worried about the cost of buying one, I would be worried about becoming an obvious target for muggers...
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I'm surprised you haven't noticed that by now.
The reaction to the iPhone neatly mirrors the reaction to the iPod.
mugging for a cellphone (Score:2)
If mugged, you could have the serial# (asin?) of the phone hotlisted and it would not be possible to reactivate it.. what's the point of mugging for a cellphone?
(now, in GSM europe- with sims and unlocking so possible, maybe)
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Thousands (possibly tens of thousands), every year. The market for 'second hand' phones is huge.
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Agreed, for one thing Apple has proven themselves quite well over the last few years that they are able to see trends in the market before they occur (or better yet, create them). One thing to keep in mind is that the concept of the iPod didn't reach the status it enjoys now until the release of the iPod nano. Before then an iPod was strictly a premium item that few people had, while the rest of us scrounged around with cheap flash players. The nano changed all that, and I suspect Apple will at some point r
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I can't speak for Asia, but I don't know what European countries you've been to where the operators don't offer a large variety of free phones to those willing to sign up for a monthly contract. Obviously, the types of phone you get offered depe
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What are you saying... Are you poor or something??? :-P
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Should we go ahead and put this next to "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."?
I'd say Apple has earned the benefit of the doubt at this point. Yes a lot of people will be turned off by the price and carrier lock, but let's be honest, a lot of people obey their "Oooh shiney" gene as well. Also, don't discount what Apple could do by, say, dropping the price on this 6 months after release, or eventually opening it up to other carriers a year down the road, things lik
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Yea, who would pay $400 dollars for a device that essentially performs the exact same function as a $50 portable CD player?
That's a terrible idea...
Oh, wait....http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/t humb/5/57/Ipod_sales.svg/402px-Ipod_sales.svg.png/ [wikimedia.org]
(Sorry for the hotlink, the link to the actual Wikipedia page was being hosed by the Slashcode)
Re:Destiny (Score:4, Funny)
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You are out of your mind. Everybody already wants one. The demand is already there. Not from just the geek crowd, either.
People asked for this device. Millions of iPod users have already asked Apple for "an iPod phone" because they like their iPod better than their phone.
When comparing the price to other phones, notice that the iPhone also does not have a hardware subsidy. Instead, the ser
why competition is good (Score:5, Insightful)
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As far a physical design goes for me clamshell is an absolute must (much more durable, plus it's easier to talk as the open clamshell gives a natural L shape). I know others think like me, but other like small flat ones.. some like them a bit chunky (my mother is like that - she prefers to have a
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I all but ignore the UI on my phone. I sync the numbers with my Mac, and make calls from the address book or the history list, for the most part. The phone does a lot more than that, but I really can't be bothered to find out what.
You must have a RAZR. God, I hate mine. If my Sony-Erisson T616 wasn't finally flaking out after four years, I'd be using it instead.
Who at Motorola decided it was a good idea to have a separate address book entry for every number a single contact has? I really must hand it to the Choose Your Own Adventure story author who seems to have found work at MOT - the inconsistent softkey menu choices are maddening.
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Problem solved. (Though it took me a few minutes to find the option again. Case in point, I guess.)
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no subject (Score:3, Insightful)
Ex-Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
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From a programmer's perspective, it already does. Resources, event-driven, extraordinarily painful multitasking, etc. It's not as bad as some claim, but it's certainly a blast from the past to develop for.
One Hand Clapping (Score:5, Insightful)
But they didn't. Just as Palm let the Blackberry come from behind and eat the market Palm created, Access has let PalmOS keep it from even reaching the market before Apple is eating it, without even a released product.
It's all too bad. The PalmOS approach, focused simplicity on tasks, designed as a tough peripheral, with the most natural interface, writing on the screen, was the right paradigm. Handled properly, it should have forced all computing, whether workstation, mobile, phone or mediaplayer, to "just work", adopting many of its friendliest innovations. Now that job, as usual, is up to Apple.
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Rich
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Dan East
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Mourn for Palm... (Score:2)
How does thst demonstrate anything? The Treo 700p runs PalmOS. Maybe they're just trying to give the customer choice.
Yeah - the choice between an inferior screen and a modern OS versus a superior screen and a faulty OS.
As someone who has stuck with Palm devices for about eight years now, I don't like that that's what the choices are, but I really think that's the way it is. Every time Versamail crashes my phone, (or even just tells me I have new mail, when I don't), every time Blazer crashes my phone, every time Keyguard causes my phone to stay on instead of off, every time I wish I had Python handy, or that my phone co
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Choice is still choice.
As for the rest of your complaints, you're absolutely right, PalmOS has it's problems, and for many people it's not the best choice. But for me, a guy who uses his Palm to write (with my IR keyboard), read e-books and watch movies (the bigger screen on my T|X is wonderful for this), listen to music, manage my schedule (datebk5 kicks ass), occasionally check my email (I use Snapper
How wise is industry wisdom? (Score:5, Interesting)
I went into a big box computer store recently, to buy a cable for a PDA I'm developing for. I was shocked; a few months earlier thre had been about twenty feet of counter space devoted to PDAs. Now there was zero -- just two shelves under the counter, maybe two feet wide, half for Palm, half for HP iPaqs. In its place was now twice the retailspace, devoted to iPod accessories.
While the industry had been busy competing to offer "updated" PDAs, Apple has kicked the entire lot into retail obscurity. They can't even, as entire industry, hold their own against fashion cases for the iPod Nano. Apple is a company that has carved out a niche by not only ignoring, but flagrantly defying industry "wisdom", which comes from a group of people far too focused on what each other is doing.
The problem, I think, is this: when the innovations are pursued on the basis of their low marginal costs, they tend to end up having marginal value too. Palm hit the innovation ball out of the park with their first generation PDAs. They scored a series of base hits with their upgrades through the Tungsten series. Palm has the customers and retail channel (for now); the sentiments quoted above say that they should use them to innovate within the bounds of the PDA or smart phone paradigm. But we have reached the point where the value of the next "PDA innovation" is not enough to get you on base -- not in a game where a base hit consists of a $200 retail purchase by a consumer.
The true destiny of the PDA is not to accrete laptop like capabilities. It is to become a cheap commodity. The world needs a Palm m505 for $19.99; not a Life Drive (just discontinued last month) for $399. That is the true meaning of convergence: PDAs have become marginal appendages to phones; their job is to sell phones.
The idea that PalmOS should become more like PocketPC and accrete new features only makes the situation worse. As the sales of PDAs plummet, both Palm and PocketPC will suffer, but PocketPC is destined to drop even faster.
The problem for a company like Palm is not that money cannot be made with a product whose fundametal retail value is destined to plummet. The problem is that money cannot be made with a conventional tech company culture, which is biased towards on stuffing as much features and functionality into a product as will fit. The best thing would be for Apple to buy a nearly moribund Palm for a song.
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Palm is now selling this thing called the Treo. It was real popular for a while. Created the smartphone market, you might say. That was a few years ago, now it is just one of many.
And dude, check this out - I got an iPod dock for my jet pack!
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However, my point stands. The PDA is just a set of marginal features added to the phone.
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I don't think you quite understand the engineering aspect here. The phone is the killer app added to PDAs.
The question facing consumers has little to do with date books and contact lists - it's do I want to pay more for a device that runs software, like web browsers and music players, or do I want the phone I got for free?
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Apple is betting they will do the same with an iPhone; all the most important features of the smartphone, UMPC, and an iPod, and people will pay hundreds of dollars for them because it works.
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Most normal, non early-adopter people don't see converged devices as platforms. The pragmatic adopters see them as phones with better address and to do lists. They see them as one less device to carry. Apple has realized this, which is why their phone is not a PDA in the sense that we have
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I've developed for practically every major PDA / smartphone that's come out in the last five years. I personally use a Nokia 6600 for no other reason than it's small, slurps my address book from Outlook, and with Opera I can s
What Palm should have done. Too late now. (Score:2)
Palm's own hardware has been going downhill since the end of the Palm III series. The Tungsten line were bulkier than the Palm V, cost more, and didn't really do more for most punters. For the folks
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I have a wide array of PDAs available to me through work, since I'm a developer. I carry a Tungsten T from the junk box. It has one serious problem: not enough battery. It's too bad, because it's the best form factor I've ever used. If it had twice the battery life, a tad more memory, and the ability to dial a modern bluetooth phone, it would be perfect.
I've been contemplating taking it a
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And PocketPC's do the outlook thing... doesn't hold a candle to Palm but I guess it's better than nothing.
iPhone (Score:2)
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I think, given the following scenario, Apple would be ok with not selling an iPod...
1. Customer buys an iPhone and no iPod
vs
2. Customer buys a Nokia / Sony Ericsson phone and no ipod
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On the other hand I still think there's room for both. Afterall many people already own multiple iPods. So now they'll own multiple iPods and one iPhone.
Or maybe....two iPhones....
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1 iPhone for your car. 1 iPhone for your person. 1 Smaller iPhone for the gym (smaller iPods are solid state. 1 iPod for the home music system.
Thats like the bare minimum I can think of. Some folks have like 6 or 7.
Palm needs advertising (Score:3, Interesting)
But you'd never know it if you don't already know what a treo is. I've go a 650 from sprint, my boss has as blackjack. Other than fit in a smaller pocket, the blackjack doesn't do anything the treo can't despite the nearly 2-year difference in release dates. And I'll trade the pocket aspect for the runtime as my Treo can go 2-3 days between charges despite frequent web access and heavy usage unlike the Blackjack's ~1 day heavy usage.
Have you ever seen a treo commercial? I haven't but I'll see fifty bajillion "Helo Moto/Razr/Red" commercials this week. C'mon, run something on CNN during the financial hour, for cris'sakes.
People crank about the lack of updates to the PalmOS. When was the last time you actually updated your Symbian phone? Heck, what percentage of users know what os their phone uses? PalmOS is not the easiest to code for? Fine. How does it compare to symbian? Or the motorola in-house OS? Oh wait, there's not many apps for Symbian because of network carriers locking phones and motorola will tell you to sod off if you don't want to jump through their hoops. Obviously it isn't impossible to code for given the sheer number of programs out there and the big draw items are as pretty as anything on Windows Mobile. (Documents to Go, for instance, is both pretty and a solid mobile Office app)
Palm needs a time machine. (Score:2)
They did way better than I expected on the original ARM transition, but they totally dropped the ball on Cobalt (or whatever their next-gen PalmOS is going to be), and they've already tossed their original product in the wastebin - these days even Microsoft delivers better Graffiti emulation.
Palm has iPhone beat (Score:2)
I wish that M$ had not
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On the other hand, if the server is set up to try to lock out other vendors' clients, that's not Apple's fault, it's your sysadmin's.
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The Exchange server can be accessed via Outlook Web Access. Also, last I checked, you can configure Exchange to handle IMAP connections.
I'm not sure that I'd wish OWA on my worst enemy - an email client it isn't. IMAP works (ish*), providing that it's turned on on the server. Many corporates don't turn on IMAP on Exchange because "everyone" uses Outlook on the PC and has Blackberries or Windows Mobile 5 devices to access it with remotely.
However, it seems a bit unfair to criticise Apple**, since the iPhone hasn't even been released yet. For example, Blackberry Connect's available fro the Treo, but how do we know that it won't be for the
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In your situation, I would suggest getting your sysadmin to enable IMAP on the Exchange server. IMAP is *the* open standard for accessing a single mail account from multiple, synchronized clients.
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http://www.dataviz.com/products/documentstogo/inde x_palm.html [dataviz.com]
It's been out for many years and IMO Palm sho
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Apple is attempting to make a sexy all in one taht doesn't rely on windoze mobile and market the hell out of it. Palm has done nothing.
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Apple is attempting to make a sexy all in one taht doesn't rely on windoze mobile and market the hell out of it. Palm has done nothing.
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Re:allinone (Score:5, Interesting)
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I guess you haven't tried Amarok [kde.org] recently then... it blows away iTunes in so many ways I could never have imagined. Things are dramatically more intuitive, it supports at least 30 features that iTunes does not (and will not support), and most of all, it works on my platforms, with all of my media players (not just iPods).
More features, more support, more functionality, more platforms, and the GUI that is just useful and intuitive? Using iTunes is like using rocks and sticks to manage my music. No thanks.
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Re:allinone (Score:5, Interesting)
Camera? Sure 0.3MP. Memory? Sure 1MB. etc...
Sure some phones now come with mini-sd slots and what not. But still, if I want a camera my 5MP Canon will do much better. If I want an MP3 player my iPod will do much better. If I want a processor in a box, my laptop will do much better. There is a difference between "doing a lot of things" and "doing a lot of things well."
Combine that with lack of choice [in most markets] and people are easy prey for the doo-dahs and whatnots.
For me, when I bought a phone I looked at some key factors.
1. quadband so I can use it anywhere
2. relatively small
3. decent standby life
Anything else is frivolous and hardly gets used.
Unless you see phones with a 4MP camera, 128MB of ram, 500 MHz ARM, etc... it's hard to say they're really "replacing" anything.
Tom
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it's kind of a lot to pocket, but each device is pretty compact by itself.
Re:allinone (Score:4, Informative)
Portable combo gadgets like this will not replace dedicated devices for another 10-15 years. The reason: too much greed in the business. When IP phones start to give Cell phones companies a run for their money, you start seeing decent All-in-one phones.
Heck, All-in-one Printers are just now starting to be on-par with their dedicated brethren.
Re:allinone (Score:5, Insightful)
So you'd need to see BOTH the telco's and hardware designers lose their greed.
Tom
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Most/all camera-phones take smeared pictures unless it's sittin' on a table or something.
Also, the SD slot, is it standard or MicroSD?
If it's MicroSD then you are begging to break it everytime to touch it.
No thanks.
I'd also like REAL buttons.
Not a membrane that will break when used alot or cold.
I just don't agree (Score:2)
Yes, but I don't have my camera on me every moment of the day, whereas I have my phone in my pocket every waking moment. I find that I have a lot of use for a camera on a daily basis, and it doesn't matter that the pictures aren't the best quality. It's the same story with other non-phone features of my smartphone - I use them extensively. Just because these features aren't useful for
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2G for music? My ipod can store 60G. And I have about 23G of stuff on it (and it's only a small subset of my collection).
As for videos, i dunno how useful that is given the size of the screens [nature of the beast]. I don't even use the video part of the ipod [mostly because it drains the batteries]. Only small screen I like watching is my GBA (or D
Re:allinone (Score:5, Insightful)
All in ones are not the future. All in ones are good for a few things. Playing music, showing photos, making phone calls. Would you want to do photo editing or management on an iPhone? Would you want to do video editing or web browsing or email only on an iPhone? Of course not. You want a nice big screen and a real keyboard and mouse to do those things.
What Apple gets, and what I think is the future, is making all of these things work together. The iPhone syncs to your desktop at home. The Apple TV gets its content from your desktop at home. It's not about replacing your computer, it's about extending it.
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Apple's very late to the game. Their implementation may be better, but they're stealing the paradigms, not innovating them.
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I don't dispute that. However, I'm not sure how well implementations are going to work when you've got, say, a Wii hooked to your TV, a Palm Treo as your phone, and a Windows box as your desktop. We need standardization to make sure that the information is able to be seamlessly integrated, and no company seems to want to open up.
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The "Most Inappropriate Use of the Present Tense" award goes to
Actually... (Score:2)
Re:allinone (Score:4, Interesting)
Think outside the box! The zeitgeist is shifting to a new paradigm!
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That's what I'm looking forward to, except for the plug part. Now mind, this is all 20-plus-years-from-now dreaming stuff, so don't rip me a new one because we're not even close to it. I know. What I want is a nice big monitor etc, and when I sit down at my desk my "phone" automatically wirelessly connects to it, and becomes the computer I'm using. This device will be powerful enough to run all the stuff I need. In addition, there c
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I couldn't agree with you more! [oqo.com]
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I currently have a Treo 700P. I've had the 600(good idea, poorly implemented) and the 650 before that. Explain to me again why i need the limited range of a Wi-fi connection when I have a data connection through a wireless service that provides much greater coverage area?
Because when you're in a coverage area for Wi-Fi, it gives you better speed and reliability than the blanket coverage of the phone's data plan.
EVDO: Up to 4.9Mbps
802.11b: Up to 11Mbps
802.11g: Up to 54Mbps
I'm actually at the point where I have to consider canceling my data plan to save money - if my phone had built-in Wi-Fi that would certainly ease the transition, as there's free Wi-Fi in quite a lot of places these days.
Re:Good riddance to Palm (Score:2)
I noticed you posted the marketing propaganda speeds. Have you actually used Wi-Fi? I've never seen that actual througput. Once again, best case, real world numbers I've seen look more like this:
EVDO: 2Mbps
802.11b: 5Mbps when I can find it
802.11g: 22Mbps when I can find it
Yes, thanks, I'm quite aware of the relationship between the maximum possible throughput of a network and the down-to-earth, real-world performance you can generally expect. I just didn't want to be saying "Oh, you can get 5Mbps just on 802.11b" and then have some dipshit come back saying that EVDO was that fast, too. So I went with the theoretical throughput limits instead.
Either way, the relationship still holds: EVDO being maybe about 10% the speed of 802.11g.
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But the only reason I have the T3 is because there are no longer any *proper* PDAs on the market, devices such as Psion's Series5 or Revo: good screen, realtime OS, AND a proper keyboard, too.
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sherriw wrote:
You are not the only individual w
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I don't know, it seems people are still selling PDAs.
Just because one market is taking off, doesn't mean the other is gone. Despite the /. bellyaching, it is perfectly possible to get a standalone PDA, and just as possible to get a phone that works extremely well as just a phone. Yes, it will probably be able to play games, but if that bothers you... don't play games. It's not as though the possibility of
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PDAs as dedicated devices are disappearing, as they're squeezed out by cell phones and "smart phones" on the low-end and sub-notebooks and notebooks on the high end.
Their big reason for existing was as an address book, calendar (day-timer) replacement, and note taker. Any modern phone can store hundreds of numbers these da
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I'll believe it when HP stops selling them. If that does happen, it will be because there's so little demand it's not a worthwhile market, so by definition not many people would be affected by it. And if they end up adding cell phone capability to their whole line because it's too cheap not to do it, well everybody wins. They keep making PDAs
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Actually, Palm does not have an operating system at all. They either license Palm OS from Access, or Windows Mobile from Microsoft.
And by the way, most people don't care about installing third party apps, and you only need to tweek setting if they were wrong to begin with.
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Steve Ballmer is full of shit as usual. Qwest has been hounding me on a weekly basis to renew my contract with them, but I've got news for them: they're wasting their stamps. I'm not signing a contract with any carrier until I see the iPhone and have a chance to try it. I need a new phone, and unless the iPhone sucks, it will be my next one.
That means that App