4 ms·

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 s

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.

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.