The iPhone, several months away according to Apple, is making a lot of folks nervous in the Palm Community. What I find most interesting is the almost rabid defense of the Treo over the iPhone. To be honest, I find some of the rationale... well... irrational! Jobs made a big point in the iPhone announcement of pointing out that the phone is based on Apple'e award winning OSX. It does not make sense that the phone will not support additional applications.

There is a lot of speculation going on right now about what the iPhone will or will not do, or is or isn't. After reviewing more information and the specs, I am not as excited as I was the day of the announcement. The lack of an SD slot for memory expansion and the non-changeable battery both have me concerned. I am also concerned about the lack of Office applications on the phone. All issues that may be addressed before the final product ships, or in future generations....

The Palm Addicts people have put up a fantastic new blog dedicated to the iPhone. There is a wealth of information there, including a link to this article, which brings us hope that the iPhone will be available outside the Cingular network.

I still see this phone being a significant alternative to the Treo. I love Palm as much as any Palm Addict, but this is a time to put more pressure on Palm to innovate and provide better support, not to become Palm Apologist as many seem to be becoming. Palms skimpy memory and lack of Wifi are serious issues, but so is Palm Support, and the notoriously buggy products they have been releasing the last couple of years.

The Palm Community is a big one. We have supported Palm through the Tungsten W, T5 and Lifedrive debacles, and continue to excuse their poorly tested products, becoming an army of Beta Testers.
Daily I read about known issues with NVFS, digitizer issues, buggy software....

For example, I have never been able to reliably use the Blazer Web Browser on my Lifedrive. Simply clicking on a link in an email, is an adventure... I never know if the browser will open, or if my Lifedrive will reboot as a result of the Lifedrive's idiotic memory scheme.

Palm has time and time again gouged their customers with products that often delight, sometimes disappoint, but are almost always overpriced and under powered in some way. I found it ironic and somewhat hypocritical that many Palm fans are ripping the price of the iPhone at $599 for the 8GB model. This is interesting since the Lifedrive premiered at $500 two years ago and the Treo 750 is about the same price, at a fraction of the memory or features. While the Lifedrive can now be found as low as $300 on some sites, the word is out, it is a slow, buggy piece of hardware. (One that I mostly love), but still slow and buggy. The fact that the Treo 650 sold until very recently for $400 or more (Unlocked), and has a measly 24 megabytes of memory, and no Wifi, is a disgrace. The fact that the new Treo's dont offer Wifi is a further sign that Palm is out of touch with today's smart phone users.

Palm has relied on third parties to provide basic functionality, that comes out of the box with the iPhone and other devices. Hobbyist Software saved the Treo 650 with it's innovative products that fixed glaring deficiencies in the Treo.

Things like using MP3's as ringtones, providing adequate speaker volume and protecting preferences during frequent crashes, were all problems that Palm should have solved BEFORE shipping the product, instead companies like Hobbyist had to come along and provide "patches," for obvious FLAWS in the Treo 650.

The Lifedrive has been such a pathetic case, that third parties and hackers have had to practically redesign the product. There is now a hack that will allow you to replace the SLOOOOOOW internal Microdrive in the Lifedrive, with a Flash Memory card, increasing speed, battery life and apparently stability. Palm could have included REAL memory 64MB or better, with the Lifedrive, included the built in Microdrive, and still made a profit selling the Lifedrive at $500. Instead they created a weird scheme whereas the Lifedrive used a partition on the Microdrive as memory, creating a slow, unstable device that again had to be "patched," by third parties like Ludastech to provide reasonable speed.

There will be several months before we really see the impact of iPhone on Palm sales. In that time, I expect to see a lot of the questions about the iPhone cleared up. I have decided to go ahead an purchase a Treo 680. It is simply a clearer choice at the moment for my needs... But a massive shot has been fired across Palms bow. If they do not react, and react quicky, and if it turns out that the iPhone will equal Palm in terms of business applications, the lack of an SD Slot may just become a non-issue, and battery life may be addressed through Apple or third party products. If that happens, Palm will be in serious trouble... And no amount of spin on the part of Palm die hards will fix it.

Whatever happens, I hope that Palm fans will finally start to demand more from Palm. More service, more stability in products, more innovation, and more competitive pricing. There is NO reason we should not be able to buy the Treo 680, unlocked, right now for $300. This may be the just the medicine we all need.

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Posted by: lovesoul at September 28, 2007 07:48 PM