“Why I’m A Palm Fan And Not A Fanatic”∞
Great editorial by Derek Kessler at PreCentral about how Palm desperately needs to make some solid improvements to webOS and the phones that run it, stat.
The issue Kessler presents is that the Pre and webOS don’t compare favorably to other smartphones on the market, which is right on one level but wrong on another. The problem is, the level on which he’s wrong—where people who are genuinely interested and educated in these things can forgive some of the shortcomings for the advantages of the platform—matters much less in keeping Palm afloat as a company.
The other level is the one where the average person is comparing Palm’s offerings with those of Apple, HTC, RIM and every other phone manufacturer. This is where the vast majority of Palm’s sales come from. People will look at the Pre and say: “The Facebook app sucks, there is no video recording, the App Catalog has barely anything. This phone sucks.” And if that’s their first impression, they will likely always look at Palm phones like that—card metaphor, Mojo SDK and synergy be damned.
If I were Palm, I would be frantically scrambling to get things done. Because while Palm is spending their time on video recording and getting the graphics card sitting in the Pre to work, their competitors who already have these things down are widening the gap.
