PalmSource CEO David Nagel Resigns

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://news.com.com/PalmSource+chief+steps+down/2100-1014_3-5716543.html?tag=nefd.top">http://news.com.com/PalmSource+chief+steps+down/2100-1014_3-5716543.html?tag=nefd.top</a><br /><br /><i>"Nagel, who resigned as of Sunday, has been replaced by Patrick McVeigh, PalmSource senior vice president of worldwide licensing and sales. McVeigh will serve as interim CEO as the company initiates a search for a permanent replacement. Nagel will remain as a company adviser through mid-July to help with the transition, PalmSource said Monday. The company declined to comment on the reasons behind Nagel's resignation, but one analyst said he believes it was based on PalmSource's performance."</i><br /><br />The announcement isn't helping their stock much. In a day when the NASDAQ was up half a percent, PalmSource dropped 1.33%. Their stock has lost over half its value in the last six months. There seems to be <a href="http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=7858">much rejoicing</a> in the Palm fan community.<br /><br />I don't think I need to go into details about my thoughts on a variety of OSs that have non-preemptive multitasking, no real file system, an inconsistency of apps across products for key features (email, media players), single categories for items, 1KB clipboard, etc. You can <a href="http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=2966">read this article</a> for a list of things that have gone wrong with the PalmOS over the past few years. Seems like there hasn't been much progress, just lots of handwaving.

[Jonathan1]

*sits down with a bag of pop popcorn* Sweet. Its getting to the good part.

Reality ain't got NOTHING on Palm and their anticts. Now if we could get a tag team thing going with Linus, Steve, Bill, and the CEO of the year at Palm I'd be set.

[PPCRules]

I just love it when Ed reports on Palm. He always tells it like it is. Actually, the way he tells it is the way it's always been, but, finally, I think more people are realizing it now.

We've gotta somehow rescue those Pa1mOne(/Handspring?) hardware designs from their current OS.

[griph]

:deadhorse: When are they gonna realise that they are flogging a dead horse! Dump the OS!

[whydidnt]

This was inevitable. What is PalmSource's strategy? How do they intend to survive? What are they doing about thier lack of licensee's and declining market share? These are all things the CEO should have been doing and addressing. Instead they keep changing to the coolest flavor of the week. From BeOS to Cobalt to Linux, they can't seem to figure out what to do next, all along clinging to a 10 year old OS that has been completely mangled so it's original strengths - ease of use, stability and speed no longer exist.

While we are at it, POS board of directors should also be looking for the nearest exit. They have overseen the complete incompetence shown by POS management for several years without batting an eye. :roll:

It's funny how owner's of iPods and PSP devices are trying to figure out how to add PIM functionality - but for years PALM kept telling all their users they didn't need multi-media functions. They blew a huge opportunity by not jumping on the multimedia bandwagon with a killer "zen-like" product while they still had a huge loyal base of users.

Let's hope this is a wake up call and POS finally gets it's stuff together to provide true competition in the PDA market.

[Chris Spera]

This is just me, but I think they need to scrap OS6 and start from scratch. They need to add all of the wonderful things that Ed mentions, like pre-emptive multi-tasking and a real file system, before they're going to have something to compete against WM2003SE and WM5.

Just my 2 cents...

[jickbahtech]

I second that.
I got my start on an M505, and I loved that little bugger...until I got my hands on an h3950, and it was pretty much all over from there.
The lifeDrive is definetly a step in the right direction hardware-wise, but PalmSource has totally dropped the ball supporting Palmone's hardware.

Having used both I'm pretty much OS agnostic, but right now WM is totally trouncing POS. I'm really hoping to see some more competition come out of the Palm camp, or I think they'll be going away (treo can't keep them afloat forever).

[ritchiecook]

You may say a lot of negative things about PALM OS, however I never reset my Palm. You have to reset a Pocket PC every 2 to 3 hours of use and battery life SUCKS! I am now on my 4th Pocket PC and Third Palm. PALM OS may not be perfect, either is windowsMobile.

[bvkeen]

I second that.
I got my start on an M505, and I loved that little bugger...until I got my hands on an h3950, and it was pretty much all over from there.
The lifeDrive is definetly a step in the right direction hardware-wise, but PalmSource has totally dropped the ball supporting Palmone's hardware.

Having used both I'm pretty much OS agnostic, but right now WM is totally trouncing POS. I'm really hoping to see some more competition come out of the Palm camp, or I think they'll be going away (treo can't keep them afloat forever).

I second. I've been both a PPC and Palm user for a good long while, but have become disenchanted with PalmSource's support of Palm devices. The T5 was a good idea, but I don't know how many times I had to hard reset it due to software conflicts from its new memory management scheme. And the LifeDrive is a neat idea, but I've decided to not bother getting one because the initial reports on it are just too bad. Sounds like a good device with a poor OS.

I'd really like to see Palm get it together to keep some competition in the market, maybe adding a Linux OS to the LifeDrive, e.g. But, I think they are just too late on getting their act together.

I expect to be selling my T5 soon, as the one PDA I use almost exclusively now is my x50v. I have very few complaints with the x50v and I suspect most of those will go away when I get the WM2005 upgrade (better memory management and a decent Pocket Word). But, as much as I hate to say it, because Palm is what got me into PDAs to begin with, "bye-bye Palm, my old friend - I hope you get your act together."

[Jonathan1]

This is just me, but I think they need to scrap OS6 and start from scratch. They need to add all of the wonderful things that Ed mentions, like pre-emptive multi-tasking and a real file system, before they're going to have something to compete against WM2003SE and WM5.

Just my 2 cents...

The problem is I personally doubt that they have time to build a new OS from scratch. I mean if you REALLY started something from scratch? Minimum a year I bet. Why do I get this image of Apple's transition from OS 9 to 10 here? How many times did they start and stop that project before Jobs came back?

[twalk]

This is just me, but I think they need to scrap OS6 and start from scratch. They need to add all of the wonderful things that Ed mentions, like pre-emptive multi-tasking and a real file system, before they're going to have something to compete against WM2003SE and WM5.

Just my 2 cents...

OS6 on a Linux kernel. If they can pull it off, they'll have something better than WM, but at this point I'd put better odds on them not pulling it off.


As for letting Nagel go? PS was only making roughly 72M, they reported a loss of roughly 3M, and Nagel is making about 8.5M...

It also clears the way for P1 to do a friendly takeover, if that's what they're thinking. (And if they have 1/2 a brain cell, it should be. Wait, I'm talking about P1 here...)

Todd

[surur]

This is just me, but I think they need to scrap OS6 and start from scratch. They need to add all of the wonderful things that Ed mentions, like pre-emptive multi-tasking and a real file system, before they're going to have something to compete against WM2003SE and WM5.

Just my 2 cents...

The problem is I personally doubt that they have time to build a new OS from scratch. I mean if you REALLY started something from scratch? Minimum a year I bet. Why do I get this image of Apple's transition from OS 9 to 10 here? How many times did they start and stop that project before Jobs came back?

They could always license the win ce kernel and run styletap on top of that. Problem solved in one day! OK, to get conduits and wireless to work will take a few more weeks, but afterward any new apps they write will be automatically multi-tasking. They would have access to all the hardware and drivers already available for win ce also.

Surur

[Paul P]

The announcement isn't helping their stock much. In a day when the NASDAQ was up half a percent, PalmSource dropped 1.33%.

Not a palm fan, but stocks drop on good news and bad on any particular day, regardless of the market. The stock looked dead around the same price about a year ago (if my memory serves me right). Then it rebounded. It doesn't take much for a good rebound (well maybe a little irrational exuberance).

Also, I hope you shorted it six month ago :)

[Janak Parekh]

This is just me, but I think they need to scrap OS6 and start from scratch. They need to add all of the wonderful things that Ed mentions, like pre-emptive multi-tasking and a real file system, before they're going to have something to compete against WM2003SE and WM5.
I bet, behind the scenes, that their Linux strategy is doing exactly this. If they keep stuff from OS6, it sounds like it'll be the high-level stuff - UIs and APIs. What saddens me is to see the total downfall of the BeOS kernel, which was supposed to be an amazingly stable multitasking platform. :(

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

You may say a lot of negative things about PALM OS, however I never reset my Palm. You have to reset a Pocket PC every 2 to 3 hours of use and battery life SUCKS! I am now on my 4th Pocket PC and Third Palm. PALM OS may not be perfect, either is windowsMobile.
No one here ever said one or the other was perfect. ;)

Now, your other points:

1. If you've never had to soft-reset your Palm, that's pretty impressive. I had to reset even my Palm III back in the day, and I've seen modern units spontaneously crash and require soft resets fairly often. (And, on the other hand, I rarely soft-reset my Pocket PC -- usually once or twice a month.) You may want to look more closely at the applications you're running on each, as they tend to have a far greater effect on stability.

2. If you look at the latest specs, battery life on the two platforms is nearly identical, across-the-board.

That said, let's keep this from being another cookie-cutter Palm vs. Pocket PC discussion. I think many of us would like to see Palm succeed, if for no other reason than to give WM competition. However, their strategy seems to be confused. I'm not sure getting rid of Nagel is going to help; what little I saw of him at a CeBIT keynote suggested he was reasonably clueful (compared to, say, Carl &amp; predecessors.)

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

The problem is I personally doubt that they have time to build a new OS from scratch. I mean if you REALLY started something from scratch? Minimum a year I bet. Why do I get this image of Apple's transition from OS 9 to 10 here? How many times did they start and stop that project before Jobs came back?
Right -- the Mac fans kept the platform solvent long enough for OS X to be released and perfected. I don't know if Palm is going to have the same groundswell. It seems to me the LifeDrive is a strong attempt to maintain the userbase in that fashion, and it remains to be seen how it'll fare.

--janak

[surur]

That said, let's keep this from being another cookie-cutter Palm vs. Pocket PC discussion.
--janak

Yes, these days there is so much to bash them on it embarrassing to the basher and bashee alike. Its like mugging your grandmother :roll:

Surur

[erratic]

It's funny how owner's of iPods and PSP devices are trying to figure out how to add PIM functionality

I totally agree with the rest of your post, but it is important to remember that the iPod came with (read-only) PIM, text reading and address book from the very first model, it seems added as an afterthought on top of the media functionality. Quite the reverse of what Palm's strategy has been!

[Darius Wey]

Quite the reverse of what Palm's strategy has been!

Palm's strategy? Oxymoron?

Oh, I just know I'm gonna get hammered for saying that.

[Felix Torres]

Well, PalmOne is so committed to the OS they just renewed their license til 09.
*And* bought full control of the Palm name for $30 million.

http://news.com.com/PalmOne+buys+rights+to+Palm+name/2100-1047_3-5718102.html?tag=nefd.top

Gotta admire that kind of guts.
They're gonna ride that bomb all the way to ground zero...
(Slim Pickens would be proud of them!) :devilboy: