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Hardware

Palm Is Trying To Make a Comeback, Again (gizmodo.com) 37

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Palm probably wasn't a name you were expecting to hear from again, but to the surprise of many, the company recently posted some teasers on Twitter foreshadowing a new gadget coming out later this month. From a report: While Palm hasn't officially revealed detailed info about its upcoming release, the teaser pics in its tweets make it quite clear that Palm is prepping to release a new pair of wireless earbuds. And judging by the silhouette of the device in the background, it seems Palm has taken some inspiration from Apple's ubiquitous AirPods. For a company that's most well known for making phones and PDAs, the decision to move into the audio market might seem like a strange pivot, especially since the last time we saw something from Palm was in 2018 with the tiny Palm Phone. Unlike other smartphones, Palm basically bucked every modern phone trend when it made the Palm Phone, which was designed so that you would spend less time looking at your phone in order to focus more on the world around you, while still providing the essential smartphone functionality.
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Palm Is Trying To Make a Comeback, Again More

Palm Is Trying To Make a Comeback, Again

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @03:08PM (#61892749)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tgeek ( 941867 )
      Very likely true, much like the used and abused "Atari" brand. And honestly . . . earbuds? Really? Given the wide range of quality and price points already in the market, I can't think of any possible innovative angle to attract me to a newcomer earbud product . . .

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drhamad ( 868567 )
        That's not really true about Atari. They've been bought once and are still with the same company (though it has a different name). They remain a subsidiary of the same company. The only confusion here is that pieces of Atari got sold off to others.

    • Re:I'm finding it doubtful (Score:4, Informative)

      by phalse phace ( 454635 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @03:19PM (#61892803)

      I'm finding it doubtful that whatever is called Palm today has anything at all to do with the PDA manufacturer beyond some legal history. I suspect what this article actually means is "The marketing department of whoever owns the Palm trademark has decided to see if it can be used to sell earbuds."

      Palm was acquired by TCL [cnet.com] from HP (HP paid $1.2 billion [slashdot.org] for it in 2010) back in 2015

      • TCL's enough to make me go "who?" because they're probably not the folks who made Ethernet transceivers in the 1980s.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Palm was acquired by TCL from HP (HP paid $1.2 billion for it in 2010) back in 2015

        Palm in the 2000's split into two companies, PalmSource and PalmOne. PalmSource was acquired by Access Co. Ltd, of Japan (who created "Garnet VM" for the Nokia N800 way back when). This is the current state of the old PalmOS.

        PalmOne was the hardware company that made device using PalmOS, but stopped. When PalmSource was acquired, they renamed themselves back to Palm, dumped PalmOS and created WebOS. You might remember WebOS p

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by drhamad ( 868567 )
      You are correct. It went Palm->HP->TCL->??
    • HP bought Palm and killed it, because that's what HP are good at. They then sold the brand to a Chinese electronics manufacturer and that is who will try to sell you some wireless earbuds.
      They might be OK, or they might be rubbish. I though their tiny smartphone idea was stupid, but they're sold out on the website so I guess people bought them.

    • Ya I saw a packard bell usb monitor stand in in the local clearance closeout store

      Its the usual, get some useless tatty garbage and slap a random dead logo on it game

  • They licensed WebOS back from LG and do a proper third option for mobile...

    • They were never really known for mobile whatever the TFS says but it would still be closer to a PDA than earbuds.

  • My Graffiti skill may still come in handy (Score:5, Funny)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @03:20PM (#61892813)
    Haven't used it in quite a while, may need to brush up on it again.

  • Poor palm... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @03:21PM (#61892815) Journal
    They owned the precursor to both the smartphone AND the ebook reader and managed to fumble it all.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      Yer another Kodak story I fear, that is CxO1"hmm this smartphone thing might earn us a nice chunk of cash going farward" CxO2 " nah new products are risky, and besides this will probably hurt our PDA sales" Cx01 considers for about a nanosecond and sais "yea you are right, let's just focus on improving thestilus detection on tge screen kf next years model, an hey I just heard about this new 3G thing yhay might be something to look into fir our in the field model" CxO 2, " absolutely, agreed" glances at watc

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Kodak's problem was that their cameras took potato quality photos, so were quickly matched and overtaken by competitors and camera phones. The market for digital cameras became mostly just SDLRs because people who didn't really care about top image quality just used their phone. Kodak didn't really have much of an offering in the DSLR space.

          • Kodak's problem was that their cameras took potato quality photos, so were quickly matched and overtaken by competitors and camera phones.

            Kodak's problem was that their UI department was fucking worthless. Kodak digital cameras had by far the worst interfaces of all such products on the market at the time. I bought one myself so I experienced this first hand. This is very weird for a company which made its name by making cameras easy to use. The only cameras they had where this wasn't true was their overpriced rebranded devices.

        • Palm was in the same situation as Blackberry - more experienced, and early iPhones were in many ways inferior to what Palm was producing at the end, but they were considered "old hat" by the market as soon as Apple entered, and Google finished the job.

          Palm's platform had piss-poor performance. It doesn't matter how technically superior for purpose your OS is if your performance is shit. And performance was increasing by leaps and bounds at that time, which is why Apple's strategy of using the core of their desktop OS for mobile made sense. It was able to scale with powerful new devices and Palm's wasn't. Then Palm had to shift to Linux, which made good sense but took too long because they were too small and didn't grow to meet the challenge.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
          Thank you for taking the time to correct me I appreciate it

    • They owned the precursor to both the smartphone AND the ebook reader and managed to fumble it all.

      The idea was too advanced for the technology and was superseded by the smartphone. They were way ahead of their time, but the tech just wasn't there. Palms would have been great with wifi. They just barely had wired Ethernet. Handspring made a good attempt, but by that time, smartphones were on the horizon.

  • Loved my Palm Pre. Hoping for something similar.

  • Were pretty f'n great for productivity only to be outdone by the original BlackBerry. Now the damn things are as much toys as tools and I really have no trust in mobile devices. They make me feel like the product is in control not me. When I typed on a palmpilot it stayed there lol.
  • To be honest, earbuds were the second thing I though of when I saw the shadow.

  • Who knows who Palm "is" these days? This certainly doesn't sound like much of an announcement. I see ads on Facebook for wireless earbuds that cost $30. This could be one individual, just importing stuff from China/

  • Why Palm? (Score:3)

    by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @04:26PM (#61893099)
    Palm seems like a bad name for a company that is selling earbuds. How about something like Canal, or Lobe?

  • ...And in other news, NBC has announced that the reanimated corpse of Johnny Carson will be hosting a new reality TV show about 20-something tinder hookups. This bold new direction for NBC will combine hard earned experience with fresh new perspective.

  • Good. (Score:3)

    by rogoshen1 ( 2922505 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @05:21PM (#61893285)

    the pre was a great little smart phone and webOS was a perfectly serviceable OS. Sure there was a dearth of apps; but that's par for the course in a david vs goliath+1 state of play)

    I liked the smaller form factor and hardware keyboard on the pre. The touchstone charger was pretty slick as well for 2009 or so. All in all it was a shame what HP did to palm. granted HP did the same thing to themselves; go figure.

  • I thought Palm died decades ago. This could be a trick.

  • Back in the day, I had a Handspring and a Palm Treo 650.

    I did some on-prem consulting for them right before HP acquired them. They were in the midst of dealing with the fallout of an Oprah giveaway and launching the Pre Plus IIRC.

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