PalmOne with Steve Jobs mentality?

[Alexander Turcic]

Interesting comparison by Jeff from my favorite blog Writing On Your Palm:

Take a look at Apple. They have a small chunk of the market compared to HP, Dell, etc. but they're far more profitable. They design products that are clean, simple, easy to use and have a certain cool elegance. Their hardware is uninspiring on a spec sheet, but beautiful to see and wonderful to use.

The same could be said of PalmOne. Like an Apple Powerbook, the Tungsten T5 loses the "bag of features" comparison to competition from HP and Dell. But it's simpler, more elegant and can inspire fierce brand loyalty. It costs more than the Wintel competition for the power it delivers, but it's not all about features.

[drc54]

Hmm, that certainly is a view, probably more hopeful or should I say wishful? Apple has one thing, "sex appeal" on their product design. Just these last two days, I couldn't resist but take look and kick-the-tires of their new mini-Mac. Very tempting to buy indeed.

But I agree, brand loyalty is a factor. As an example, to this day, I only buy Minolta cameras ever since I was first exposed to the brand in the 70's, betraying only once by buying a Canon Photoshoot for my daughter (hey, I needed something for her to upload images to "friendster"). Now seriously looking at their new digital dynax SLR. Should I make buying decision on products which the publication bestows a 5 stars rating only? Or will I be dissappointed if this new SLR camera or the new Palm T6 gets no star at all? Heck no, I'll just buy if I like it.

[gadgetguru]

But the T5 is no Powerbook and it's not elegant by any means...the V is elegant, the T5 is heavy, clunky, and buggy. Apple's products are in the 'just works' category, PalmOne is not. Apple is at the forefront of technology or not far behind, PalmOne almost never introduces any new technology (save for its buggy Flash RAM). Apple try to fix any flaw as soon as it can (there are exception), Palm's T3 mad digitizer is awaiting a fix, the TC's lower screen defect get fix a year after it was discovered, the T5 and Treo 650 memory issue is still awaiting a fix too.

PalmOne is no Apple! PalmOne tried to emulate Apple with its airport stores but its clear that PalmOne's musical chairs of CEOs are no Steve Jobs either.

I disagree that the T5 gives a better user experience, anyone upgrading from a TE will have problems with it, it's not restore and play like most previous Palms, so much for loyalty...

[Jeff Kirvin]

Originally Posted by gadgetguru

But the T5 is no Powerbook and it's not elegant by any means...the V is elegant, the T5 is heavy, clunky, and buggy. Apple's products are in the 'just works' category, PalmOne is not. Apple is at the forefront of technology or not far behind, PalmOne almost never introduces any new technology (save for its buggy Flash RAM). Apple try to fix any flaw as soon as it can (there are exception), Palm's T3 mad digitizer is awaiting a fix, the TC's lower screen defect get fix a year after it was discovered, the T5 and Treo 650 memory issue is still awaiting a fix too.

I own a T5, and it's the best device Palm's yet made. I had a E, I had a T3, I've had Palms all the way back to the Palm Pilot Professional. The flash RAM isn't "buggy" by any means. It has more overhead due to the cluster size, but that's only a problem on the Treo. The T5 has plenty of room. A few internet malcontents that were pissed off because the T5 didn't come with WiFi, a phaser and artificial girlfriend for them have given this device a bad rap it doesn't deserve. Don't judge until you've owned one.

[elbowz]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kirvin

Don't judge until you've owned one.

I do own one and whilst I wouldn't go so far as to say the T5 is a bad PDA I do have to say its the most disappointing PDA I've owned in a long time.

My primary beefs are with the G2 implementation and the crash-happy Blazer software.

Handwriting on the T5 is adsurdly inaccurate - ten times worse than the T3 I had previously. Its also slow - its possible to write a letter and move the input point before the character has been recognized.

The Blazer problem is probably heap related - pages refuse to load as they are too big and Blazer causes random resets.

Outside of these two problems I do like my T5, but I'm reaching the point where I really couldn't recommend one over a WM2003se based device... which is where PalmOne's devices diverge heavily from Apple's, which I have no hesitation in recommending over their Windows counterparts.

[Alexander Turcic]

Brighthand picked up the topic and also made a comparison between Apple and P1.

http://brighthand.com/article/Another_Apple