“When I sat down at the beginning of the Palm Pre announcement press conference I was expecting to watch the death of a company. Palm? Give me a break. It would NEVER do anything interesting and Nokia, Microsoft, RIM, and expecially Apple were about to kick it into the deathbin of history,” Robert Scoble blogs for Scobleizer. “I was wrong. WAY WAY WAY wrong.”
Scoble declares, “Palm just did what Nokia and Microsoft and RIM couldn’t do: deliver a better experience than Steve Jobs did.”
MacDailyNews Take: Riotous laughter rings through the cavernous halls of MacDailyNew’s palatial headquarters. RIM’s BlackBerry Storm also got excellent “reviews” the day after it was unveiled and “news” outlets regurgitated RIM’s press release. Then people actually tried to use the thing:
• ChangeWave: Apple iPhone’s ‘very satisfied’ rating more than double that of RIM’s BlackBerry Storm – December 22, 2008
• Yale Daily News: The Storm isn’t an iPhone killer, it’s a Blackberry killer – December 10, 2008
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship Professor reviews RIM BlackBerry Storm: ‘Disappointing and awful’ – December 05, 2008
• NY Times’ Pogue reviews RIM’s BlackBerry Storm: ‘I’ve got a better name for it: BlackBerry Dud’ – November 26, 2008
• InformationWeek reviews RIM’s BlackBerry Storm: ‘Tiresome, slow, severe bugginess and problems’ – November 24, 2008
• TIME Mag reviews RIM’s BlackBerry Storm: ‘Novelty screen feels cheap; steer clear of this storm’ – November 20, 2008
• Chicago Tribune reviews RIM’s BlackBerry Storm: ‘Can’t compete with Apple’s iPhone’ – November 20, 2008
• Gizmodo reviews RIM’s BlackBerry Storm: ‘Heavy, laggy, sluggish, unstable, clunky, and tiring’ – November 20, 2008
• Engadget reviews RIM’s BlackBerry Storm: ‘Frustrating, inelegant, uncomfortable; a disappointment’ – November 20, 2008
• PC World reviews RIM’s BlackBerry Storm: ‘Awkward, disappointing; a failed experiment’ – November 20, 2008
We called that one right, too:
• BlackBerry Storm: No Wi-Fi. No iPod. No iTunes App Store. No sale. – November 14, 2008
Scoble continues, “Nokia’s devices that I saw last month just suddenly seem so lame. Why? Well, when you look at the Nokia N97, which will be out at about the same time as the Palm Pre, you see that they also have a nice UI, but it falls apart when you click down into apps and try to do things. Palm doesn’t fall apart. Click down and you keep getting shocked.”
MacDailyNews Take: How is that better than the iPhone which certainly doesn’t “fall apart when you click down into apps” either while continuing to amaze years after release, not just a day after a pre-release presentation?
Scoble continues, “Palm’s bet on social networking integration is a game changer. Click into a contact and you see people’s Facebook info and other info from their social networks. That is huge and not many people will get it.”
MacDailyNews Take: “If many people won’t get it, how can it be “‘huge?’” MacDailyNews asks while looking at “people’s Facebook info and other info from their social networks” via their iPhones’ excellent and free Facebook app available at Apple’s iTunes Store right now, not “first half 2009″ on – bwahahahaha! – Sprint.
Scoble continues, “Cut, copy, and paste. Anymore to say?”
MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, “free iPhone software updates.”
Scoble, “Anyway, the bottom line is Palm has a real winner here. It shows that you can never count a company out. Even one that looks like it’s already out of the game.”
MacDailyNews Take: We shall see. We shall see. In our opinion, there isn’t room, nor is there a need for Palm in a market already crammed full of iPhone wannabes, to say nothing of the iPhone itself. There are more than enough pretend iPhones, thanks. Plus, developers have far too much on their plates already (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, etc.). Maybe – maybe – Palm can displace one or more of the other iPhone knockoff artists. if so, more power to them – if they finally start treating Mac users like they exist again.
Some people are foaming-at-the-mouth desperate to minimize what Apple does and conjure up worthy competitors. We’ve seen it umpteen times with the Mac (OSes and hardware), the iLife apps, iPod, iTunes, iTunes Store, and now we see it with each and every “iPhone killer” that’s released. It’s sad. Give Apple the credit they deserve, don’t disrespect them with pie-in-the-sky hyperbole about a phone that’s six months from release by a company – and on a network – that are both running on fumes.
A bit of perspective: When Apple was “dying” in 1997, they had $1.2 billion in the bank. Palm just got a $100 million cash infusion from their backer, Elevation Partners, just to keep operating. Note: $1.1 billion is $1.416 billion when adjusted for inflation. If Apple was “dying,” then Palm is in rigor mortis. Furthermore, Palm has a current market value of $669 million – and that’s with PALM up 36% today on the day-after “Pre” (dopey name) hysteria. Apple’s market cap is $81.2 billion, they have $28+ billion in cash on-hand, and are a debt-free company. In other words, Apple could buy Palm this afternoon with petty cash. Maybe that’s what Palm and Elevation Partners are really shooting for?
Palm hasn’t built a better experience than Apple. Not from what we’ve seen and read. And, even if they’ve come anywhere within range — a claim, by the way, that we’ve heard about basically every “iPhone killer” on the day following whatever company’s carefully-choreographed dog and pony show was shown, six-months-prior-to-release, no less — they were taught how to do it by Apple (many of those at Palm are Apple castoffs, in fact). Not to mention that Palm simply does not have the any resources which with to compete against Apple.
We’ve iCal’ed Scoble’s article for future use.
And, oh, by the way:
We’ve been pushing the state-of-the-art in every facet of design… We’ve been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this and we’ve filed for over 200 patents for all of the inventions in iPhone. And we intend to protect them. – Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiling iPhone, January 9, 2007
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "mks1" for the heads up.]
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