[Russ Smith]

When Palm was on top, their design philosophy worked well with the existing hardware. Where Microsoft was bent on a multi-tasking OS and a complete file system, Palm built small, quick, and functional. However, as mobile processors got better and added media co-processors, Microsoft's design strategy proved more able to grow with the technology. Palm got around a number of issues that plagued Microsoft by not really multi-tasking. Those issues re-appeared for Palm in their first attempt at a true multi-tasking OS (OS6) after Microsoft had solved them in Windows Mobile.

Palms OS6 was also an attempt to do what Apple also did by taking an existing multi-tasking OS (Linux for Palm, Unix for Apple) and dropping their user interface on top in order to take advantage of the core OS' stability and established code base. Apple's success at doing so had as much to do with marketing as it did with the relative merits of the OS. Palm wasn't able to make the sell.

From the user standpoint, Palm has got a lot of work cut out for it. My wife recently tried a Palm and returned to Windows Mobile in frustration. As an example of why, the simple "cut and paste" operations that we take for granted in Windows Mobile are sometimes completely lacking in Palm applications. Also, Hotsync actually required that Outlook be closed in order to sync. Not impossible, just annoying. True, Windows Mobile and ActiveSync have their own annoyances, but the scales tilted in WM favor.