5 ms·

Palm was killed by their inability to evolve the platform in the face of quantum leaps from other players -- but that same thing caught out pretty much every ot

Palm was killed by their inability to evolve the platform in the face of quantum leaps from other players -- but that same thing caught out pretty much every other mobile platform of the era. In 2004, the Treo 650 was as good as it got. I LOVED mine, and there was really no other player in the market that could truly best it until Apple landed with the iPhone. (And I say this having sampled best-of-breed Windows Mobile stuff in that era -- the HTC hardware was slick, but WinMo was useless and incredibly dumb.)

stephc_int13 4y ago
RIM and Palm suffered the same kind of huge technical debt on the low-level kernel stuff. They basically started with something very crude that barely did the job, and built stacks on top. But they had nice frontends, nice hardware, especially the Sony Clié series was quite ahead of its time hardware wise.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  RIM's sins were much more serious. Their devices were designed in a time when having the horsepower to actually run a mail client on them wasn't possible, and so they were dependent on an intermediate server. Using a Blackberry in the absence of BES (and an Exchange server) was pretty weak sauce. Palm, OTOH, had a real platform that worked on its own. My Treo could talk directly to my ISP's IMAP server, something Blackberries of the era couldn't do. My Treo made it easy to separate work and personal mail. My Treo's PIM apps were superior to the Blackberry's. Also, you and I apparently had VERY different experiences with the Clie line. I had one. It was physically interesting but insanely fragile, and for SOME reason needed different sync software than Palm (or Handspring) branded Palms.
  - stephc_int13 4y ago
    I was creating software (mostly games) for a wide range of handheld devices at the time. When you're doing that you can quite easily get an idea of the weaknesses and strengths of the platform, and I can tell you that PalmOS was quite weak but almost OK at the very beginning but it quickly deteriorated and at the end they could simply not push it forward at all. Sony did a good job considering, but they simply bet on the wrong horse. To be honest, Android also started in a very weak state, not the same kind of mess that PalmOS was, but it was riddled with over-engineering and absurd design choices, but with a huge effort they managed to fix the worst parts and still push it forward. I was surprised they could pull it off.
    - ubermonkey 4y ago
      I never cared about mobile gaming in the era, so I can only go on what I used the device for: communication and personal information management. PalmOS was good at those things. To be fair to Sony, there wasn't really any other horse to bet on in that era. The problem was their hardware was fragile vs. Palm or Handspring devices.
      - stephc_int13 4y ago
        Symbian and WinCE were relatively strong competitors. And there was an attempt at Linux + Qt made by Sharp with the Zaurus and Qtopia.
        ubermonkey 4y ago
        Er, no. Symbian had some presence via Nokia devices, but was kinda an also-ran in the US in terms of actual viable smartphone platforms. WinCE and WinMo were gawdawful and unusable unless you were just really, really drinking the Redmond Kool-Aid. (Amusingly, if you Google "symbian" now the first link is for a thing that is absolutely not related to smartphones, but which uses a name that is "symbian" without the "m". NSFW.)
        stephc_int13 4y ago
        Symbian was a contender in Europe, many mobile gaming companies in Europe started on this Platform, especially in Finland/UK. Remember the Ngage? It was nothing compared to what came later, but if you were in this business at that time, Symbian was a thing.
        ubermonkey 4y ago
        Yeah, my bias is definitely US, since that’s where I live. Symbian devices were very very few and far between for us.
deergomoo 4y ago
> the HTC hardware was slick, but WinMo was useless and incredibly dumb You’re not kidding. I had a HTC HD2 and the hardware was very futuristic-feeling (one of the first phones with the original Qualcomm Snapdragon, and a “huge” 4.3” screen that my friends gently mocked for being ridiculously large), but the software experience was leagues behind iOS and Android, despite they themselves being in relative infancy. It would have been pretty nice if it got an update to Windows Phone 7, which was promised but never came. HTC’s own customisations were the worst part. Their flashy animated home screen was very nice, but the iOS-style threaded SMS app couldn’t deal with threads longer than about 300 messages and would routinely lock up the phone for minutes at a time until you deleted your conversation history. In the years after I got rid of it people continued to port newer versions of Android to it, but I just remember it being shit at texting and browsing the web—the only things I actually wanted it for.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  My HTC was branded an 8525 by AT&T. I think that means it was a Tytn in other markets. When it was introduced, there was no iOS yet. And even so, it sucked out loud compared to the 800 pound gorillas of the era, Palm and (in full deployments) Blackberry. WinMo was SO DUMB. I remember discovering the hard way that if you left the browser in the foreground, on-page refresh directives (like CNN used to use) would still be honored even if the device's screen was off. Result? Dead battery in no time. WinMo also had no way to deal with IMAP mail natively. It was Exchange or POP unless you bought an aftermarket mail client. True fact: I actually didn't text much until I got an iPhone, so I can't speak to texting on the 8525. I think lots of people my age only came to texting later, whereas if you're like 10 years younger than I am (say, born in 1980 instead of 1970) you probably texted on flip phones in high school or whatever.

stephc_int13 4y ago

RIM and Palm suffered the same kind of huge technical debt on the low-level kernel stuff. They basically started with something very crude that barely did the job, and built stacks on top. But they had nice frontends, nice hardware, especially the Sony Clié series was quite ahead of its time hardware wise.

ubermonkey 4y ago
RIM's sins were much more serious. Their devices were designed in a time when having the horsepower to actually run a mail client on them wasn't possible, and so they were dependent on an intermediate server. Using a Blackberry in the absence of BES (and an Exchange server) was pretty weak sauce. Palm, OTOH, had a real platform that worked on its own. My Treo could talk directly to my ISP's IMAP server, something Blackberries of the era couldn't do. My Treo made it easy to separate work and personal mail. My Treo's PIM apps were superior to the Blackberry's. Also, you and I apparently had VERY different experiences with the Clie line. I had one. It was physically interesting but insanely fragile, and for SOME reason needed different sync software than Palm (or Handspring) branded Palms.
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  I was creating software (mostly games) for a wide range of handheld devices at the time. When you're doing that you can quite easily get an idea of the weaknesses and strengths of the platform, and I can tell you that PalmOS was quite weak but almost OK at the very beginning but it quickly deteriorated and at the end they could simply not push it forward at all. Sony did a good job considering, but they simply bet on the wrong horse. To be honest, Android also started in a very weak state, not the same kind of mess that PalmOS was, but it was riddled with over-engineering and absurd design choices, but with a huge effort they managed to fix the worst parts and still push it forward. I was surprised they could pull it off.
  - ubermonkey 4y ago
    I never cared about mobile gaming in the era, so I can only go on what I used the device for: communication and personal information management. PalmOS was good at those things. To be fair to Sony, there wasn't really any other horse to bet on in that era. The problem was their hardware was fragile vs. Palm or Handspring devices.
    - stephc_int13 4y ago
      Symbian and WinCE were relatively strong competitors. And there was an attempt at Linux + Qt made by Sharp with the Zaurus and Qtopia.
      - ubermonkey 4y ago
        Er, no. Symbian had some presence via Nokia devices, but was kinda an also-ran in the US in terms of actual viable smartphone platforms. WinCE and WinMo were gawdawful and unusable unless you were just really, really drinking the Redmond Kool-Aid. (Amusingly, if you Google "symbian" now the first link is for a thing that is absolutely not related to smartphones, but which uses a name that is "symbian" without the "m". NSFW.)
        stephc_int13 4y ago
        Symbian was a contender in Europe, many mobile gaming companies in Europe started on this Platform, especially in Finland/UK. Remember the Ngage? It was nothing compared to what came later, but if you were in this business at that time, Symbian was a thing.
        ubermonkey 4y ago
        Yeah, my bias is definitely US, since that’s where I live. Symbian devices were very very few and far between for us.

deergomoo 4y ago

> the HTC hardware was slick, but WinMo was useless and incredibly dumb You’re not kidding. I had a HTC HD2 and the hardware was very futuristic-feeling (one of the first phones with the original Qualcomm Snapdragon, and a “huge” 4.3” screen that my friends gently mocked for being ridiculously large), but the software experience was leagues behind iOS and Android, despite they themselves being in relative infancy. It would have been pretty nice if it got an update to Windows Phone 7, which was promised but never came. HTC’s own customisations were the worst part. Their flashy animated home screen was very nice, but the iOS-style threaded SMS app couldn’t deal with threads longer than about 300 messages and would routinely lock up the phone for minutes at a time until you deleted your conversation history. In the years after I got rid of it people continued to port newer versions of Android to it, but I just remember it being shit at texting and browsing the web—the only things I actually wanted it for.

ubermonkey 4y ago
My HTC was branded an 8525 by AT&T. I think that means it was a Tytn in other markets. When it was introduced, there was no iOS yet. And even so, it sucked out loud compared to the 800 pound gorillas of the era, Palm and (in full deployments) Blackberry. WinMo was SO DUMB. I remember discovering the hard way that if you left the browser in the foreground, on-page refresh directives (like CNN used to use) would still be honored even if the device's screen was off. Result? Dead battery in no time. WinMo also had no way to deal with IMAP mail natively. It was Exchange or POP unless you bought an aftermarket mail client. True fact: I actually didn't text much until I got an iPhone, so I can't speak to texting on the 8525. I think lots of people my age only came to texting later, whereas if you're like 10 years younger than I am (say, born in 1980 instead of 1970) you probably texted on flip phones in high school or whatever.