Palm introduces new models and no one cares

I will be accused of fixing history, but I have reedited this, because when I first wrote this, I had just come from a meeting with a faculty member that had bought 16 Palms, and was having difficulty with a few of them. One she has sent back twice now -- the problem with it is that it will not power up. Never has.

I am concerned about Palm because I greatly admired the industrial design and ui of the original model. I have continued to find inspiration in the early versions of the Palm interface.

For some time, a bit after the Treo came out, it became clear that this is likely the direction Palm should go in, even to the point of abandoning, or greatly reducing, the number of Palms they sell. In a way, Palm reminds me now of Apple in the years of the Centra. For those that are not Apple followers, the Centra was version of their line designed for low-cost, the education market. They were redundant models of models they sold for "pro" and home use. It was crazy -- the same model under different names. I guess it made sense for cars, but it just confused customers, and cost Apple money.

No one wants a $99.00 pda. Wifi on a handheld, with a digital camera, and video support. Sony had that a couple of years ago, before they abandoned the Palm.

They have broken the elegantly simple palm interface. What is with the damned buttonbar at the bottom? Is it supposed to be a dock or something? It is annoying -- I would guess I can turn it off, but I shouldn't need to, because it really got in the way. I watched new users puzzle with it for a while, and accidentally triggering stuff at times.

I spent some time with a Tungsten T5 recently -- and was offered one to keep for testing. After a week, I gave it back. It is like they threw away their own style guide, plus the wireless operation was unstable -- I don't ever remember having to reset a palm so often. No one wants that.

So - perhaps a nicer ending this time. What I would do to fix palm. Ditch all current palm models except for three, and the lowest would not the the $99.00 palm, but the non-wifi model with a camera. Have a new Treo model that forgoes the keyboard, is a flip phone for $199.00 with a contract. The idea is that this becomes more like Nokia Series 60 models, using a pretty, color version of the old palm interface, only input via keypad, but able to use palm data, play back media, etc. That would put a palm os phone in many more people's hands, and would make many palm developers very happy.

--hal


--hal