Rebates for Mac Users Moving From Palm to Pocket PC

[marlof]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.palmuptrade.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.palmuptrade.com/</a><br /><br /></div>The people at <a href="http://www.pocketmac.net">PocketMac</a> wrote in with an offer that might be of great interest to Mac users.<br /><br />"We've just set up PalmUptrade.com--it's our initiative with Hewlett Packard for existing Mac-based Palm users to trade in their Palms for significant rebates on Hewlett Packard's iPAQs &amp; our own PocketMac Pro software. Our initiative comes on the heels of news of Palm deciding to discontinue Macintosh support in future versions of their operating system. We will also be giving Palm users a free tool, PocketMac Palm Importer, to move over their existing Palm Desktop data to Entourage, iCal or OS X Address Book. In total, Palm users will get a minimum rebate of $50 from HP (more for newer Palms) and an instant rebate of $43 from PocketMac."<br /><br />If you're a Mac user PalmSource in future will have you in the same boat as Microsoft, offering no native Mac support but leaving that to third party developers. One of those third party options for the Pocket PC is PocketMac Pro. If you want to read more on this, you might want to read <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,26293">our review</a>. Synchronization shouldn't stop you, so if you're wondering about a next PDA to purchase, you might as well broaden your short list and include Pocket PCs. After all, there's nothing wrong with getting a discount like this, now is there?

[Zack Mahdavi]

It's nice to see that the people at PocketMac are taking their product very seriously! This kind of teamup with HP will definitely lead to better Mac support for Pocket PCs in the future.. :)

[mmace]

Marlof,

Thanks for going out of your way to explain the reality of the situation, rather than what some people have said about it.

I know this isn't the place for PlamSource to publicize its plans, but there's an important inaccuracy in PocketMac's publicity, and I want to be sure the record's clear. They wrote:

>Our initiative comes on the heels of news of Palm deciding to discontinue Macintosh support in future versions of their operating system

For the record, we have not done anything in our operating system to disable or disadvantage Mac users. What we have done is we stopped internal development of our Mac-based desktop software that enables a Mac to sync with a Palm OS handheld. Third party developers such as MarkSpace had been offering this sort of product for some time, and we decided to stop competing with them.

Some of our licensees had been bundling the PalmSource Mac desktop software with their devices; some hadn't. Some of our licensees may well choose to bundle the third party Mac desktop software with their devices in the future; it's up to them to decide. We expect that there will continue to be great Mac interoperability software available for Palm Powered products in the future, the only question is whose brand will be on it.

Mike
CCO, PalmSource Inc.

[huangzhinong]

can't imagine. The brand new zire is only $25 in ebay, it can be traded in for $50. wow :D

[Lucky Bob]

There a number of things wrong with this trade-in program. One thing is that the use of "Palm" is a tad deceptive, because Palm is now two companies. As mmace said, Palmsource is the company that has stopped the development of Mac support. So it could very well be possible that PalmOne may include Mac support with its future Cobalt handhelds. If that's the case, that's probably the reason why HP is doing this trade-in program before PalmOne even releases its Cobalt handhelds.

[marlof]

Thanks for going out of your way to explain the reality of the situation, rather than what some people have said about it.

Let's make things clear: I never was happy with Microsoft's decision not to include native Mac support. And I'm not too happy with PalmSource no longer offering native Mac support. I might understand this from a "costs of development compared to installed user base" point of view, but I don't understand this from a customer service point of view.

But with the quality of the third party sync offerings to date (I only have experience with the two Pocket PC products) this might be less of an issue now. I just hope the licensees/OEMs (palmOne, Sony, HP, Toshiba, Asus, Motorola etc.) one day may decide that they should bundle Mac sync software with their Pocket PCs and Palm devices so Mac users aren't faced with an extra purchase when they want to use a PDA.

And thanks for the clarification of the PalmSource decision. It's the way I understood the PocketMac press release as well -probably since I read up on the subject- but your words explain things a bit better to our readers.

[marlof]

So it could very well be possible that PalmOne may include Mac support with its future Cobalt handhelds.

Yes. This might happen. And this might not happen. The future will tell. I just hope if it happends, the Pocket PC OEMs will follow that decision, or offer uptrade programs like this one. Since I don't care if it's coming from the left or the right, everything that helps Mac users overcoming the need to purchase extra software when they want to use their PDA is welcome to me.

[Zack Mahdavi]

For the record, we have not done anything in our operating system to disable or disadvantage Mac users. What we have done is we stopped internal development of our Mac-based desktop software that enables a Mac to sync with a Palm OS handheld. Third party developers such as MarkSpace had been offering this sort of product for some time, and we decided to stop competing with them.

Mmace,

Thanks for coming onto the forums to give your take on this matter.

However, I don't ever believe Palm was very competitive at all in developing Palm support for the Mac. When OS X came out, it took months before a OS X native Palm Desktop was available. Later, Mac OS X Panther arrived, and users were having problems syncing their Palms with Palm Desktop. The solution? Enable the super user, and then log in with root access and reinstall Palm Desktop. That may be okay for us power users, but for normal people, these instructions were overly complicated. In fact, Palm has yet to introduce an update to Palm Desktop to address this issue.

Finally, the User Interface on Palm Desktop was extremely scary. The datebook, Address Book, Notes, and Tasks all opened in separate windows. What a pain it was to constantly move around windows to just use Palm Desktop. Everyone was hoping you all would introduce a Mac OS X style version, but that still hasn't happened (3 years later).

I'm sorry to say this, but Palm / PalmOne / PalmSource never tried to compete and deliver the best PDA experience for the Mac. Instead, you made it annoying to use.

And that's why I switched to a Pocket PC... and I've recommended to many Palm / Mac diehards to switch to Pocket PCs. They simply work better on a Mac.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. :)