05-23-2003, 05:00 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Does Palm Understand Its Predicament?
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9637
Palm seems to have tied itself very closely with Microsoft Office, even Outlook. Does Palm understand how this could cause major problems for itself in the future? This is an interesting article that brings up a few things I hadn't considered before. I am not sure I agree with all of it, but some of it rings true to me.
"Palm bundles the Tungsten with a supposedly huge value in bundled software. As with any piece of hardware, most is garbage, with the occasional useful gem thrown in. One gem seemed to be VersaMail. I was actually looking forward to being able to download my address book to the Palm, and take it with me. Productivity on the road would go up, new contacts would go in automatically, and life would be a small bit better. I quickly loaded it up."
Of course, the experience is less than ideal. In fact, it is downright frustrating, including having to deal with a tech support department that saw the word "VersaMail" and replied back with a canned response - an occurrence all too common with many tech support departments. 
"Unfortunately Palm either has corporate blinders on, or doesn't get the big picture. Microsoft does, and you can bet it is laughing all the way to the bank. While Palm may make the best hardware out there, without a radical change in software, my next purchase will be an iPaq."
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05-23-2003, 05:25 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 89
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The title of the linked article is "Why Palm is doomed." I'll save you the trouble of reading it ... in the author's own words, "The short summary is that I can't figure out how to sync my Netscape address book to my palm pilot." Palm's technical support gives him the brush-off because "the official line is that I was using a 3rd party application, and they do not support 3rd party applications." Because of this Palm is "doomed"? Not a very insightful rant.
I guess there could be an interesting angle to examine in how Palm relies on and interacts with application vendors vs. how Microsoft does. But, Palm "is doomed" and Microsoft is "laughing all the way to the bank"? I don't see it.
Scott
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05-23-2003, 05:30 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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That article was a little silly. Palm is just doing what a smart business does - makes things easy for the majority of the users that are using a product, and if they majority are using Outlook, that's what they aim for. The Pocket PC team and Outlook team might both work at Microsoft, but they have different business goals, and both are about making money. I'm sure the Outlook guys have no grudge against Palm, and the odds of them screwing Palm out of syncing with Outlook are slim to none IMO.
Although I might get a chuckle if that happened. :lol:
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05-23-2003, 05:33 PM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 1,185
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This must be the Friday funny. Thanks Ed!
Doomed? Because they benchmark their sync against Outlook? Come on. What's a software vendor to do? The truth is Outlook/Outlook Express are pretty much the defacto standard emai/PIM applications for most desktops. I could just see the triple digit declines in sales if Palm decided it was only going to sync with OpenOffice or Lotus.
Funny how so many years of support for Outlook has just ruined Palm.
BTW, another good reason for why all these vendors should embrace SyncML.
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05-23-2003, 05:50 PM
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Neophyte
Join Date: May 2003
Posts: 1
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Whenever I visit Pocket PC Thoughts, I'm always looking forward to reading the latest anti-Palm rant. The author's obsession with bashing Palm at every opportunity is quite amusing to me.
I recently made the jump myself from a Handspring Visor to an e755, but for some reason I am still able to see that Palm has some advantages and I certainly wouldn't recommend a PocketPC to everyone.
Whatever this article claims, I've had fewer problems syncing my Visor than my Pocket PC, and both do things like truncating messages and using plain text instead of RTF.
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05-23-2003, 05:59 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 312
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This guy must do some reserch before he writes anything out -
"The latest Palm, the Tungsten-T is the finest example of the breed I have ever used"
Palm's latest two models are the Tungsten | C and the Zire 71. The Tungsten | T has been out from last yr!
As for Outlook - why not. Most people use Outlook and Express for the mail clients, and as Jason said - they are doing smart business.
And Versamail 2.5 works like a charm on my Tungsten | T - much better than Pocket Outlook on my iPAQ.
__________________
"Life is a dream. The only real thing is you." -unknown
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05-23-2003, 06:03 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by bdegroodt
BTW, another good reason for why all these vendors should embrace SyncML.
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This is the one lesson to take out of this. We really need a sync standard.
As for this article, it's The Inquirer.... what were you expecting? :lol:
--janak
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05-23-2003, 06:14 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Belzebutt
Whenever I visit Pocket PC Thoughts, I'm always looking forward to reading the latest anti-Palm rant. The author's obsession with bashing Palm at every opportunity is quite amusing to me
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This wasn't an anti-palm rant. I don't agree with everthing in it, as I stated earlier. It is a bit interesting though how closely Palm has aligned itself with MS. I would think Palm would at least be making some effort to sync with popular non-MS products or better yet, work with some of these non-MS companies and produce great third party apps for the Palm platform. It would really be a blow in some markets if Palm came out with a full blown "PalmSuite" that sync'd with StarOffice, from email to presentations and did it in such a way as to not worry about desktop licensing at all. There is a lot of speculation that the reason MS doesn't do better Pocket Office apps is they don't want to encroach on their Office cash cow. I am not sure I see the validity in that argument given the low level current Pocket Office apps perform at. Perhaps if they were a few hundred percent better it would be something in the back of MS's mind on how many future enhancements to provide.
Palm, on the otherhand, could care less about a similar encroachment on desktop revenue. StarOffice is not a cash cow for anyone, yet if you had the #1 PDA manufacturer distributing StarOffice apps and sync tools for the PalmOS and one of the largest Unix/Linux distributers touting PalmOS synchronization in the OS and office suite, that would be something that could really begin to put a dent in Office sales.
As it is, Palm has blinders on. It is a catch up game for them. There is no vision. Say what you want about MS. They have a vision. Sometimes they get smacked for it (Hailstorm for example) or it languishes (Passport seems to have been relegated to a mostly site authentication tool) and other times it hits a home run (Office, Windows).
As for the title of the article, yeah, I thought it was a bit sensationalist. That was why I didn't even bother mentioning it.
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05-23-2003, 06:33 PM
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Philosopher
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 555
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by bdeli
This guy must do some reserch before he writes anything out -
"The latest Palm, the Tungsten-T is the finest example of the breed I have ever used"
Palm's latest two models are the Tungsten | C and the Zire 71. The Tungsten | T has been out from last yr!
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Sometimes it takes a while for an article to work its way through the gears and be published. Maybe when he wrote the article it was before the onslaught of new POS devices.
He's requesting for something that should be achieved, but is probably impossible to do so. Support every possible PIM client out there? That's impossible -- someone's always going to be left in the dust.
But I feel for him though -- incompatibilities and missing features can really ruin one's day.
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05-23-2003, 07:13 PM
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Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 516
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I can understand why it took Palm's support team so long to figure out what he was trying to do. I had to re-read part of his article a few times to figure it out myself. He wanted to use VersaMail (a mail app) to sync his address book? Do I have that right?
Let me see if I've got his closing point right, also. His conclusion was that because of this problem his next PDA would be an iPaq. Which is built upon an OS known for syncing with things other than Microsoft products? Since when?
Ridiculous.
Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm no expert on this since I, like most PDA users, sync with Microsoft Outlook), but aren't there several more options for the Palm OS than there are for the PPC OS when it comes to syncing with non-Microsoft PIM apps? I think Lotus Notes is one. Plus Palm has its own PIM desktop app which I believe there's a version of which runs on the Mac OS, right?
I'm sure that Palm would like nothing more than to not support Microsoft products, but unless the world has changed since the last time I checked Microsoft had a desktop monopoly. Microsoft has the money (but not the will) to offer support for all sorts of 3rd party PIM apps, but Palm certainly doesn't have the money for it. They need to devote their resources to other things. Is this a risk they're taking? Sure, but they don't really have much choice. All they can do is hope that Microsoft's Outlook team doesn't "accidently" break anything.
Scott
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