The written musings of a long-time Apple //e and Macintosh tech nerd. Opinions are my own.
This week’s 1SRC Podcast has been posted for your listening enjoyment.
1SRC Podcast 143 Show Notes
Earlier today on the Palm company blog, Palm CEO, Ed Colligan responded to Engadget’s open letter which was posted on the Engadget website this past Tuesday.
“I forwarded it to our entire executive staff and many others at Palm have read it. Although I can’t say I agree with every point, many are right on. We are attacking almost every challenge you noted, so stay tuned. Let’s remember that it is very early in the evolution of the smartphone and there is enormous opportunity for us to innovate. We have only just begun to fight!
Thank you for taking the time to write. I really do take your comments to heart and I know the team at Palm is totally committed to delivering the best mobile computing solutions in the world.”
-Ed Colligan
Commentary
I think that this really gets back to what I’ve been saying about Palm in my weekly 1SRC.com podcasts: That Palm has been steadily executing a plan that will make Palm the company it was allowing them to bring innovative products to market. We know that Palm is working on a number of major projects and all we have to do is wait for them to be ready. I know that there have been delays, but do you really want more buggy hardware and software? Let’s just give Palm the space they need to get everything done correcrtly right out of the gate.
Tiernan Ray writes for Barron’s website today that Palm may have pushed back the release date of the Foleo to late September to early October. The Barron’s article cites Deutsche Bank’s Jonathan Goldberg who wrote, “In a round of checks yesterday we learned that the Palm Foleo will be delayed” in a briefing released today. Mr. Goldberg’s briefing continues:
“The product was supposed to hit Palm stores this week, but was delayed when software bugs were detected. These apparently included an inability to synchronize the Foleo with most models of the Treo, in particular the nominally high-volume Treo 680. Our contacts indicate Palm now expects the device will ship in late September/early October.”
This is surely some sad news for my fellow Foleo Fanatics who are waiting for this device to become available, however, I would rather seem Palm work out all the kinks before the device ships. If that means that software on the Foleo or the various Treo smartphones needs to be fixed, I would rather Palm fix it and have a solid launch than ship a product that isn’t complete.
Read Barron’s Tech Trader Daily article…
[Thanks to everyone who emailed me about this report.]
If you are a Palm fan, you MUST read Engadget’s open letter to Palm written by By Peter Rojas, Ryan Block, and Joshua Topolsky.
“Dear Palm,
Man, what a crazy year, right? We know things haven’t really been going your way lately, but we want you to know that we haven’t given up on you, even though it might seem like the only smartphone anyone wants to talk about these days is the iPhone. It can be hard to remember right now, but you used to be a company we looked to for innovation. You guys got handhelds right when everyone else, including Apple, was struggling to figure it out. And it was the little things that made those early Palm Pilots great — you could tell that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to think about what made for a great mobile experience, like how many (or rather, few) steps it took to perform common tasks.
The problem is that lately we haven’t seen anything too impressive out of you guys. Sure, over the past few years the Treo has emerged as a cornerstone of the smartphone market, but you’ve let the platform stagnate while nearly everyone (especially Microsoft and HTC, Symbian and Nokia, RIM, and Apple) has steadily improved their offerings. So we’ve thrown together a few ideas for how Palm can get back in the game and (hopefully) come out with a phone that people can care about. (And we’re not talking about the Centro / Gandolf.) Read on.”
I’ve posted this week’s 1SRC Editorial which deals with the recent reports that IBM is looking at possibly purchasing Wind River Systems, the embedded Linux operating system company.
“Palm recently announced a partnership with Wind River Systems to provide the underlying open standards Linux operating system for future Foleo Mobile Companion products. Over the weekend, PC World Magazine ran an article on their website about a possible acquisition of Wind River by IBM.
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Palm is a company that has a lot of balls in the air. The Elevation Partners recapitalization deal still needs to be approved and potentially executed with a backdrop of an already jittery financial marketplace. Palm is also gearing up for a number of new product roll outs including the Foleo Mobile Companion sometime in the next few weeks; the release of the new form factor Centro smartphone, and last, but not least, the launch of a new Linux-based version of Palm OS, which I’ve dubbed “Palm OS II” until Palm officially names the new operating system in advance of its introduction during the 2008 calendar year.
As if this wasn’t enough to keep a medium-sized technology company occupied, the possibility of having a new business partner acquired, I’m sure, has a few people at Palm interested in the latest M&A (mergers and acquisitions) newspaper headlines. The last operating system provider that Palm was working with, ACCESS/PalmSource, ran into trouble. So what is to prevent such a thing from happening again?
Enter IBM.”
Over this past weekend, PC World ran an article on their website about the possible acquisition of Wind River Systems by IBM. Wind River as you might recall was recently selected by Palm to provide an open standards based Linux OS for future Foleo products. (Details here.)
“IBM Corp. could establish a strong presence in the market for embedded operating systems with the acquisition of financially ailing Wind River Systems Inc., a deal that is reportedly in the works.
After the Silicon Valley Watcher site reported earlier this week that IBM was considering the deal, industry insiders — including Wind River competitors — agreed that an acquisition would make sense.
Wind River, a 1,300-person company in Alameda, California, develops operating systems for embedded applications primarily in the aerospace, defense and automotive industries, using both a version of Linux and its proprietary VxWorks OS.”
Following on the heels of last week’s Sprint product line up sneak peek at the Tech Summit conference, Christopher Price of PhoneNews.com has written an article based on information posted in the PhoneNews.com forums detailing Sprint’s phone line up into January of 2008.
The following information has not been confirmed and it should be considered only a rumor at this point.
According to PhoneNews.com member comptech2002, Sprint will launch the Palm Gryphon on October 14, 2007. Then during the three months of Q1, 2008, Sprint is expecting to launch the Treo 800w.
Rumors usually conflict
The first obvious question I have is whether or not “Gryphon” is the Sprint branded version of “Gandolf” which Palm seems to now be calling the Centro. Since there is no mention of Centro or Gandolf or Treo 690 in this version of the proported Sprint roadmap, one is left to wonder if this is just a mistake and Gryphon is not real or is another Palm device.
Next we have the Treo 800w. Previous rumors indicate that the 800w is the long awaited update for the Treo 700wx, running Windows Mobile 6.0, with an internal antenna, and a higher resolution 320×320 screen like the ones that appear in Palm’s Palm OS-based Treo smartphones. Personally I was expecting to see the 800w in Q4 of 2007, however with the current import ban in effect on phones containing Qualcomm chips, it is hard to know if the date has slipped or if the device was ever really intended to ship this year at all.
What about the Treo 800p?
Ever since rumors of the Treo 800w started to surface across the Internet, many folks started to wonder if there would be an 800p running a version of the Palm OS. The Treo 800p would be the successor to the Treo 700p and 755p. The questions on the minds of Palm OS fans are: when will such a device ship; will it support Wi-Fi; and will it run “Palm OS II”, Palm’s as yet unnamed Linux based OS.
Treo 755p coming to Verizon
Last week PalmInfoCenter.com ran a rumor that Verizon will be shipping the Treo 755p this November. While still a rumor, my sources confirm what was reported in the article, that the Treo 755p will ship on Verizon in November. As long as nothing changes.
GadgetsOnTheGo.net‘s Jimmie Geddes has posted some official information about Palm’s latest smartphone, previously rumored to be “Gandolf”.
The Palm Centro from Sprint
- Smallest Palm OS smartphone to date
- Targeting a younger demographic, new to the smartphone space
- Runs on EVDO network
- New design features a full keyboard and touch screen
The Centro looks like it will be Palm’s low-cost entry level device the company’s executives talked about back in April at the Palm Analyst day.
Update:
For more details on the Centro, including a first-hand account hands on with a pre-release version of the device, check out Sascha Segan’s article over on Gearlog.com.
-amg
This week on the 1SRC podcast, show number 142, I talk about the new details regarding the Verizon Wireless 700-series updaters, getting Reuters news on your Palm; Carl W. Brooks from PalmLoyal.com sends in an audio postcard, this week’s 1SRC editorial and more!
Palm has updated their Verizon Treo maintenance release download pages to give customers more details about why the updaters were taken down and details about what can happen to devices that have already been loaded with the updates.
The Verizon Treo 700p page now reads:
“The issue is caused by a device setting that affects connectivity to the Verizon Wireless network under certain situations and only occurs on devices that have installed the updater. Users receive an error message and typically can reconnect to the data network after a short period of time. This data connectivity issue does not affect the device or personal data in any other way.
Treo 700p users on Verizon Wireless experiencing this issue will see the following error messages more frequently:
- Error 3000 – Data network is not available
- PPP Link Time Out error 0x1231
We are currently working on delivering a solution and will repost the updaters as soon as they are available. If you would like to be notified by email when the updaters are available, please submit your email address. Thank you for your patience.”
The Treo 700w|wx page now reads:
“The issue is caused by a device setting that affects connectivity to the Verizon Wireless network under certain situations and only occurs on devices that have installed the updater. Users receive an error message and typically can reconnect to the data network after a short period of time. This data connectivity issue does not affect the device or personal data in any other way.
Treo 700w/wx users on Verizon Wireless experiencing this issue will see the following error messages more frequently:
- Page Cannot Be Displayed
- Answering Modem is Disconnected
- No Modem at Above Number
We are currently working on delivering a solution and will repost the updaters as soon as they are available. If you would like to be notified by email when the updaters are available, please submit your email address. Thank you for your patience.”
Foleo Fanatics will update you when Palm updates the Verizon Treo 700p and 700w|wx maintenance release download pages.