Palm Inc: Bean-counters with rotten souls
I recently went on a business roadtrip with a friend who had a brand-new IPod Touch he gently hinted--at the beginning of our journey--was so
much better than my not-even-a-year-old Palm TX. Without fail, I was able to download and send email, update a blog and check the news from every two-bit, podunk town across six western states, while he was left wondering if he even *had* email literally 98% of the time.
And my TX had the same usefullness and functionality on the streets and in the cafes, restaurants and hotels of Amsterdam and Berlin. My phone wouldn't work there. I didn't even take it and got along fine--never out of touch. I
like my TX. It's far more useful than a phone with a screen the size of an ant's butt.
Yesterday, Palm announced their new "Palm Web OS" operating system. A linux-based OS that is incompatible with all their current devices.
Today, it is obvious that
all Palm development and the vast majority of, if not all, third-party development for my Palm TX--which recently celebrated it's FIRST birthday in our home--has just come to a screeching halt. I know now that I will never see a decent browser for it, (Opera comes close--no cigar).
Palm has stated they have no plans to continue their PDA line. It's rather like parents kicking a child out of the house because they had a new baby.
For the past year or so, Palm has stated the new operating system--then codenamed "Nova"--would support legacy applications from Palm OS 5. It doesn't. Seems to me they were less than ingenuous--I can't believe it was simply, somehow, a sudden
surprise to them that there is no legacy support. Perhaps they didn't want potential--and current--customers gravitating to competitor's products?
"It won't natively run applications written for the original Palm OS, but," [Palm vice-president, Stephane] Maes said "we anticipate
there will be solutions to do so."Note she doesn't say, "We're working on it." Personally, I
anticipate they will leave it up to third-party developers, as usual.
If you have been a Palm customer in the past and you buy their new product, you will have to pony up big bucks to replace all your old applications with software that does pretty-much the same thing in their new gadget. Dastardly. You
still won't have Graffiti, though. The new Palm Web OS does not feature Graffiti--one of the most useful features of the former Palm OS.
Don't hold your breath waiting for Palm to come up with any additional, breathtaking apps or simple, reasonable improvements for their new OS. They have a history of sitting on their hands about such things, (I have long suspected that they suffer--as a group--from Attention Deficit Disorder.)
They have, for example, consistently refused to release an SDHC card driver for Palm OS 5, leaving it up to an unassociated third-party to finally get around to doing so. Palm's built-in browzer "Blazer" was a laughably horrible application from the beginning and in four years Palm did nothing to reasonably improve it.
There is every reason to believe they will hold their new customers in equal contempt.
I expect to be using my TX for years yet, despite the fact that Palm has just thrown me--a recent customer--to the wolves in favor of profit. I will keep in mind they have done this once now, and Palm has given me no reason to believe
other than they will do it again to millions of customers down the road if it suits their purposes to do so. They have shown they cannot be trusted. They have shown that they care nothing for the consumers who--collectively--spend millions of hard-earned dollars on Palm's products and third-party software
for those products.
I, therefore, will never again do business with Palm. I will use smoke signals or semaphore flags first. Fool me once...
The bottom line is: it's all about the "bottom line." After the Palm Web OS announcement, Palm stock soared a whopping 35%.
Palm--indeed most corporations--feel no loyalty to, nor regard for their millions of customers. They answer only to their stockholders and don't give a fig about anyone else.
If everyone felt the way I do, voiced their disapproval, and took the same actions, corporations would never treat the public so.
If you agree, write Palm a quick email expressing your disapproval. If you don't agree, you are, alas, part of the problem.
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