For a guy complaining about iphone and palm, he sure fails at a good argument against the G1--it's probably what he actually wants.
Dear Palm, it's just not working out
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Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out
#12JWZ isn't being dramatic. The slogan should be "Plam Pre: your life, just slower". I had a Pre for a month, returned it on day 30. It was like living in molasses.
Plus the hardware was way way too cheap (fragile plastic screen, sharp edges on the keytray, poor fit between the sliding halves). I was afraid to use the phone for fear of breaking it. You could hear the plastic crunching everytime you typed on the keyboard.
Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out
#13Why does everyone think Droid is the only hope? Nokia's Maemo-based N900 looks promising as well. Their latest Symbian/series60 phones (e.g. E71, E75) are also pretty decent nowadays, although I would compare those to Blackberry rather than the iPhone.
The N900 is full of cool hardware but it's 2cm thick, will cost $700+, and is unlikely to ever be available subsidized in the US.
Edit: http://gigaom.com/2009/10/19/nokia-n900/ - An early review
Nokia is doing a full rewrite of Maemo for the upteenth time after buying Qt — the software platform is constantly going in different directions. They're so proud of shipping a Mozilla browser, but how the fuck are they going to integrate that with Qt? Don't they also maintain multiple Webkit ports for their other platforms? The mind boggles...
Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out
#14Hm, I would've taken jwz for a G1 kinda guy...
As someone who'd previously been on the business end of subpoenas for data and legal discovery during the Netscape lawsuits, he's paranoid about giving any of his data to Google.
That's why he was trying to get his Pre to sync solely to his local computer, despite that really not being what its makers intended.
Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out
#15I love my Pre. It's not perfect, and I've given up writing an app for it because of Palm's crippling of the O/S, but as a phone it's cute and works.
Sure load times suck. I just keep frequently-used apps open all of the time, then I don't have to worry about it.
Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out
#16Why does everyone think Droid is the only hope? Nokia's Maemo-based N900 looks promising as well. Their latest Symbian/series60 phones (e.g. E71, E75) are also pretty decent nowadays, although I would compare those to Blackberry rather than the iPhone.
The N900 is full of cool hardware but it's 2cm thick , will cost $700+, and is unlikely to ever be available subsidized in the US. Edit: http://gigaom.com/2009/10/19/nokia-n900/ - An early review Nokia is doing a full rewrite of Maemo for the upteenth time after buying Qt — the software platform is constantly going in different directions. They're so proud of shipping a Mozilla browser, but how the fuck are they goin…
They're so proud of shipping a Mozilla browser, but how the fuck are they going to integrate that with Qt?
I don't see the contradiction there. Mozilla and Qt are at different levels in the GUI stack. (KDE is a Qt-based desktop, yet it runs Firefox just fine.)
Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out
#17Not sure why suddenly jwz is considered to be a consumer electronics guru? There's always churn and any particular device isn't for everyone. He's just very vocal about it. The Pre suffers from some slowdown issues which as some commenters point out is almost certainly a software issue, which means it's fixable :) Would like to see Palm take up the community created patches, but it's the wealth and quality of these o…
Not sure why suddenly jwz is considered to be a consumer electronics guru?
You're right, it's shameful that we listen to a guy who might not even have filled in all the application forms to become an officially recognised certified consumer electronics guru :-)
Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out
#18It's too bad, I thought the Pre's card metaphor, along with its pervasive notifications and multi-input open-API contact/message/lifestream datastore was the best hope yet for a great multitasking handheld. The Verizon Droid is the only hope for an iPhone competitor at this point. It looks like it fixes all the hardware issues with the previous devices: * shipping the latest virgin Google build — no carrier or manufa…
WebOS, with its cards metaphor, is extremely impressive. The Pre is not. When Palm gets the hardware fixed/updated and the software optimized, I think they will have a very good Blackberry/iPhone competitor. The interaction and interface design in WebOS is great, and in some cases better than the iPhone. And RIM has shown that it is incapable of developing a good UI for touchscreen devices.
All the things you list above are hardware features. None of those help the fact that Android is kind of crappy.
Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out
#19The Pre needs a serious software upgrade. The processor itself should be fast enough, the application layer is a bit too webby, so probably wastes a few bogomips with all those layers -- but still, with some clever load optimizing and caching, at least launch time should be faster (and/or appear to be faster).
I just got one yesterday, and both speed and build quality are slightly disappointing. One of the main reasons I got one was due to the fact that it's much cheaper on a monthly basis (well, here in Germany), and I thought about having another mobile platform to develop for (my iPod touch should suffice for most iPhone dev work I'm going to do).
But the app catalog is somewhat disappointing. That should've been settled before the device was released, especially if you want to be compared to the iPhone.
Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out
#20It's too bad, I thought the Pre's card metaphor, along with its pervasive notifications and multi-input open-API contact/message/lifestream datastore was the best hope yet for a great multitasking handheld. The Verizon Droid is the only hope for an iPhone competitor at this point. It looks like it fixes all the hardware issues with the previous devices: * shipping the latest virgin Google build — no carrier or manufa…
Oh come on. It's easy to piss on stuff that could be better, but Android is actually a fine platform to develop for, and plenty of applications are showing up. Sure, not as many as iPhone, yet, but there are some pretty cool ones out there.
And it's not "the only hope" - there will be more Android phones out, and the whole thing will only continue to improve.