How The Pocket PC Beat The Palm

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://sastwingees.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/6/4/2005214.html">http://sastwingees.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/6/4/2005214.html</a><br /><br />Enterprise, enterprise, enterprise. :wink: This is a blog entry about how Microsoft beat Palm at its own game, and what Apple should learn from this as Microsoft takes aim at the iTunes/iPod combo.<br /><br /><i>"Let us first look at Microsoft brilliantly outflanked Palm to the extent that Palm capitulated entirely and released a Treo with a Windows Mobile OS. Interestingly, as I pointed out last week, Palm did use the much-talked-about license-your-OS strategy advocated by Clayton Christensen. It licensed the OS to several partners (Sony, Garmin, Tapwave, Handspring, Handera...) and for some time it did seem like the Palm was winning the battle. Microsoft, meanwhile, made quite a few attempts (remember the brick-sized clamshell Jornada with a full-keyboard, anyone?) and finally hit a home run with the Compaq iPaq which used a similar stylus-based UI pioneered by Palm. iPaq was introduced in 2000, a full four years after the Palm Pilot debuted in 1996. In the interim, MS has also done another important thing which will help it in the year 2002, as we will see - it built the OS as a general purpose one capable of running on multiple types of processors including the more powerful Intel ARM-based XScale processors."</i><br /><br />The article also mentions one of the key turning points for the Pocket PC vs Palm war, the year both UPS and FedEx went with the Pocket PC for their mobile solutions, helping to solidify the Pocket PC as a serious enterprise tool.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2006/20060607-upsonwindowsmobile.jpg" /><br /><i><b>UPS truck on Windows Mobile steroids</b></i><br /><br />My <a href="http://palmone.r3h.net/us/company/anniversary/Palm-10th-Anniverary-Timeline.pdf">favorite quote though is from</a> the Palm 10 year anniversary press release. <i>"<b>February 1999</b> The sleek, modern Palm V handheld redefines the handheld industry with a new icon a product that strategically had zero additional features from its predecessor. Message: style matters."</i> Of course, Microsoft and its OEM partners finally got that, something the iPAQ 3600 clearly showed. However, Palm forgot that style wasn't <i>all</i> that mattered. You can have a car that looks like a Porsche or Ferrari on the outside but if it has the chassis and drive train from a Ford Escort, it is still a Ford Escort.

[Timothy Rapson]

Microsoft hasn't done anything that caused me to move from Palm OS to WinMob. My Toshiba offers little special that an iPaq 3600 didn't offer 5 years ago when I was a happy Clie user.

What happened is that Palm OS 6/ Cobalt never arrived. As my PDA use evolved I wanted: multitasking, real fonts, real files, graphics standards. WinMob offers that because it always has. Palm promised that but never delivered it.

The bottom line here is that both POS and WinMob look to me like they are going to ultimately fail in the marketplace. My silly Toshiba has a beautiful screen but once its been off for 20 minutes I have to wait and wait and wait for it to "boot" just like a desktop does. No one is going to want to do that with a phone OS and phones are where all the hardware is going.

I give props to MS that WinMob is as quite stable, but it is still not as stable as Epoc was. My next PDA is more and more likely to be a Nokia of some sort.

[Ed Hansberry]

My silly Toshiba has a beautiful screen but once its been off for 20 minutes I have to wait and wait and wait for it to "boot" just like a desktop does. No one is going to want to do that with a phone OS and phones are where all the hardware is going.
something is wrong with your toshiba then. it should only "boot" when you pop the soft reset button. sounds like either a driver is causing a problem or the hardware has a fault. i've seen the behavior you describe on an ipaq 2215 and PDA2K but always traced it batk to a driver or software that the developer was able to fix.

BTW, WinMob is now primarily a phone OS. The standlone PDAs take a back seat, and IMHO, will totally die as a consumer product in the next few years.

[atpcz]

BTW, WinMob is now primarily a phone OS. The standlone PDAs take a back seat, and IMHO, will totally die as a consumer product in the next few years.

Personally I think this is a good direction. Not just for a "phone" (which I think they can make A LOT better) but from a connection point of view. Once you taste 3G you simply can't go back to something slower.

I want access to my emails/websites/data/music/videos where ever I am, and currently my O2 Exec fulfils this (well not the music/video part, only when my Cowon A2 isn't with me). I've just bought a Slingbox (yesterday) and think that its simply fantastic that I can control my Sky box from the PDA. Without 3G or faster this would be a waste.

Now, would I buy a PDA that had a 3G connection but no phone app? Yes.

What I'm looking foward to is a UMPC (2nd gen) and a Smartphone with 3g (the successor to the i-mate SP5 springs to mind). I'd have Outlook etc on the UMPC which would use the Smartphone to connect up via bluetooth. I'd then ditch the Exec or whatever is the next version.

Just my 2 cents

[Don't Panic!]

Well if the war is over then Microsoft better focus on us consumers before we bailout for Apple. PPCs could now become the multimedia devices that they always had the potential to be. But NO! They want PMPs and UPMCs and god help us probably a gaming device as well. They need to set there sites on the PSP. A PSP size/style device running Windows Mobile and using anything other than Sony's pathetic memory sticks would blow consumers and probaly more than a few enterprise clients away.

Stay focused MS.

[Timothy Rapson]

My silly Toshiba "boot" just like a desktop does.
something is wrong with your toshiba then.

If there is something wrong with my E800, I sure wish I could figure out what it is. The reason I put boot in quotes is because of course it doesn't reset. In fact, as stated, it rarely resets or needs to. But, if it has been off for more than 20 minutes it takes forever to wake up. I am still hoping that I can find something more to do to fix it.

I have gotten Wakeup Tweak and that helped a lot. I installed Apmemo to Ram instead of ROM and that sped it up significantly, but my desktop has an odd line right through the middle that is obviously because of some graphics problem that affects on the Today screen. The Home program from Toshiba has some nice features but when I click the button to access it, it runs only one in three times. I get to it by clicking down other running programs.

I select a single folder in PocketWord to see open a file there and it often works right, but on some folders it defaults to a "See All Folders view and I have to search through dozens of files and don't know which version from which folder I am viewing so I have to launch location critical files with Resco File Viewer.

But, speaking of Resco, their programs are worth the whole experience alone. Absolutely fantastic.

[Ed Hansberry]

take out any sd/cf card and use it for a few hrs. my 2215 took forever when the CF was installed but woke up instantly when it was just the SD card. HP never fixed the issue.

[Jean Ichbiah]

Microsoft hasn't done anything that caused me to move from Palm OS to WinMob. My Toshiba offers little special that an iPaq 3600 didn't offer 5 years ago when I was a happy Clie user.

What happened is that Palm OS 6/ Cobalt never arrived. As my PDA use evolved I wanted: multitasking, real fonts, real files, graphics standards. WinMob offers that because it always has. Palm promised that but never delivered it.

The bottom line here is that both POS and WinMob look to me like they are going to ultimately fail in the marketplace. My silly Toshiba has a beautiful screen but once its been off for 20 minutes I have to wait and wait and wait for it to "boot" just like a desktop does. No one is going to want to do that with a phone OS and phones are where all the hardware is going.

I give props to MS that WinMob is as quite stable, but it is still not as stable as Epoc was. My next PDA is more and more likely to be a Nokia of some sort.
When you mention POS, You talk about a fiction. POS does not exist. THere are only implementations of what is purported to be a mythical OS

An OS would allow developers to write software that works on all devices that support the OS.

Having developed software for the Palm for several years, I can tell you that the fuzzy"desciption"s that Palm gave on the Dynamic Input Area was light years from that goal. THere was no other way to find out what to do than to reverse engineeer(--costly)And there was no suport from Palm whether free nor to be purchased. Nothing approaching the quality of the"support Incidents" that developers can get as part of the MicrosoftISV program. At the end of a long srting of incompatible Palm machines: PalmV LIfeDrive, and now PalmX, we concluded that Palm would never learn to specify an interface. And I decided to exit the Palm market for Fitaly products. It had just become too expensive to develop on a platform whose developers had not learnt the lessons of the seventies: specify first, then Implement. A year after this decision, we are intoducing Fitaly 4 for the pocket PC:

http://www.textware.com/winmobile/fitalymanualmay.htm

On the Palm our time had to be spent on overcoming the imprecisions due to a lack of a proper specification.

On the Pocket PC, we have been able to use the same time inventing! and produce the best Fitaly version ever.
At the end of the weeek we will also introduce a Tablet PC version

Jean Ichbiah

[Kathy_Harris]

Hmm, I have the Toshiba e805 and it works perfectly. I didn't install 2003 SE, however. I have both an SD and CF card in it at all times.

As far PocketPCs taking a back seat to divergent devices - that's too bad. After many years, I got rid of my cell phone and haven't looked back. I want my PocketPC for just that - a pocketable ebook readin, contact lookin up, file storin, wikipedia device.

[Don't Panic!]

PALM as an OS company exists no more. They split up last year. :( PALM as a hardware company is still taking names. :wink:

I don't really belive the war is over. :devilboy:

[eagle63]

PALM as an OS company exists no more. They split up last year. :( PALM as a hardware company is still taking names. :wink:

I don't really belive the war is over. :devilboy:

Amen. No one has been able to come up with a form factor as good as the Treo. I don't think the war is over yet either. I get all giddy thinking about the slick, intuitive Palm GUI running on top of a stable Linux kernel... It's all conjecture at this point, but I've got my fingers crossed that they can get it done.

[DaViD_BRaNDoN]

I've switched from Palm to Windows Mobile and never look back. Am very glad that I did and since then, has owned 7 different Windows Mobile devices (vs 1 Palm device)

[Rob Alexander]

As far PocketPCs taking a back seat to divergent devices - that's too bad. After many years, I got rid of my cell phone and haven't looked back. I want my PocketPC for just that - a pocketable ebook readin, contact lookin up, file storin, wikipedia device.

I'm with you, Kathy. That's exactly what I want in my PDA. I have a nice, thin little cell phone that I want to carry separately; I don't want them converged. Unfortunately, we seem to be in the minority as all progress on stand-alone PPCs has long since ceased with the currently offered models being technologically no better than what was out there three or four years ago. I'm afraid Ed's probably right. :(