PalmSource Exclusive [Part 1]: Michael Mace (CCO) and John Cook (Dir Prd Mktg)

Bob Russell · 06-13-2005, 11:52 PM

MobileRead.com is very pleased to present this exclusive interview with two of the key leaders at PalmSource… the Chief Competitive Officer, Michael Mace, and the Director of Product Marketing, John Cook, who were kind enough to sit down with me at the recent PalmSource Mobile Summit and DevCon 2005 in San Jose, CA to share their views on the direction and future of PalmOS.

We hope that this interview, as a supplement to the ongoing information and news that we provide on our site about the mobile device market, will serve to increase awareness of what looks to be a promising future for Palm devices, and to promote a better perspective on what PalmSource is trying to achieve.

The interview will be presented on MobileRead this week as a five-part series, and it begins with this first installment, covering PalmOS on phones and the freshly-revealed “Project Rome.”

MobileRead: We've heard a lot here in San Jose about PalmSource going after the phone market, and feature phones have come up a lot. PalmSource is looking to make PalmOS the platform of choice not just for the smart phone and for traditional PDAs, but for feature phones also. What will it take to make it ready for the feature phone market?

Michael Mace: Here's the trick. You ask people in the industry what a feature phone is, you get 15 different answers. So I'm actually trying to stay away from terms like feature phone and smart phone. They don't actually mean anything. If you want an example, look at the debates between IDC and Gartner about how do you define these segments.

The real way to look at it is that there are people that are willing to pay extra to get a value-added device, whether it has a phone in it or not. And there are people that want to do something extra with data whether it's entertainment or whether it's extra communication functions, or whether it's managing information like a doctor would do. Those people may go for a smart phone or they may go for a handheld depending on the exact mix of features that they want, and what's the right product for them. But they're in the market for something that has an OS and has advanced features. On the other hand you have a lot of people, the majority of phone buyers, who just want voice, and who really don't want to pay extra for anything else.

So the real issue is supplying PalmOS as a software for people who want to go after this value added thing - for people that want a platform. But then also can we supply software for the majority of those phone buyers who are pretty much after voice. They'll take other features if those things are given to them, but they're not going to go out and pay two hundred dollars extra to get a more souped-up phone.

We're trying to provide software for both types of users. PalmOS is the main emphasis for getting to those value added users... the people who pay extra for data functions. And what we're doing with the former China MobileSoft, the company that we bought in China, is the center of what we try to do for what I would just call phones. Forget about feature phones, smartphones, whatever. It's for phones. And especially for those phones that move to 3G. They need more sophisticated software to go into a phone. And so what we're trying to do is build both of those things eventually on top of a Linux foundation. So PalmOS is going to be based on Linux. I think there is going to be feature phone stuff, which may not even necessarily be called PalmOS, because it's not necessarily going to be running third party applications. It's more just like embedded software, but that too will be based on Linux. And we're trying to cover both markets over time.

MR: Do you see PalmOS as being different products supplied to phones that are primarily voice, but with a few features, versus more robust phones?

MM: We're going to work with the phone companies. So we're going to do a great platform with PalmOS and we're going to do a great embedded Linux, and we're going to let them pick what's appropriate for a particular phone that they're trying to build. It's really going to be up to them. We'll have both and we'll see how it goes.

John Cook: I think the point is that you need a range of technology solutions, and one size does not fit all for this market very much. And what people have been defining as our niche, if you will, I think we want to grow out of that in technically moving to Linux because it gives us more scalability if we do that.

MR: We heard yesterday from Larry Slotnick [PalmSource Chief Product Officer] about an exciting next generation user interface which will be coming out of Project Rome. Can you tell me more about that technology and what its significance is?

MM: The context is that a lot of these phones that we're talking about are going to be are going to be non-touchscreen one-handed devices, so you need another interface for that. It's a different way of using the devices, so we've been working on concepts around how you would control a one-handed non-touchscreen device and how you would interact with it. It's very different.

JC: This is still kind of early in the development phases, but Larry alluded to this... the point being that with traditional style Palm devices, you want something done quickly, you probably run away from it, the device is with you more often. It's very interrupt driven. So what kind of paradigms do you want set up? A lot of the work that we're doing now is like the odd chart that he put up on the screen. If you look at the center starting point and all the different potential paths you can go it looks kind of confusing. The trick, and this is where our user experience or UX team is working now, is that I don't want to give you all those choices. I want to give you "the" choice that makes a difference to you when you're ready to go after that task. So it's thinking through all the use cases, and it's going through a lot of prototyping. Then at some point you get some migration path that says if you want to optimize for this one-handed phone with your software with no touchscreen, you might want to go this direction. I just heard a discussion that David Feder [Dir. Developer Services] was doing on talking about selling to phone devices. Don't think of the touchscreen as your primary thing, think of the one-handed navigation as being the most common aspect of the UI. But he says if you have a touchscreen, take advantage of it. So it's not totally either/or. With Rome the concept was to think very clearly.. if you have small screens, different paradigms, how do you want to rethink the metaphors you want to use for the user experience.

MR: So would you envision more Rome techniques being applied to the simpler phones because of their increased dependence on one-handed operation?

JC: I think that's where they'd start. Even more limited real estate, so smaller screen size and one-handed navigation are both going to play major roles about how you want to think about your software.

----

This interview will continue with the remaining installments…
<Part One>
..Part Two
..Part Three
..Part Four
..Part Five

Special Note: We are keeping this forum thread open for comments, and we encourage a lively discussion of these topics from all sides. But we will moderate heavily if necessary. All we ask (and require) is that all posts remain polite and on-topic so the discussion remains profitable for all. That has been a trademark of MobileRead’s short history thanks to all our great readers, and we will make every effort to maintain that civility as we move forward.

Antoine of MMM · 06-13-2005, 11:57 PM

I'd be interested in a making of Rome when this aspect is done. I am sure that the Treo and original Pilot went into these sessions as the base line. To hear what different models that came up were would be interesting.

Seems like PS is spreading itself thin, and at the same time doing what it needs to do to meet the market head on. It should be interesting from here on out for sure.

Colin Dunstan · 06-14-2005, 03:44 AM

First of all I am happy to see that PalmSource is not taking the differentiation of handhelds and smartphones serious any longer. Industry analysts are obviously making a fool of themselves by contradicting each other.

I agree with Antoine... Project Rome sounds like it could be the next handheld killer. One reason why Apple has been so very successful with the iPod is because of its intuitive user interface. Other competitors tried to emulate the UI but always fell short. Even no matter whether they had a better display (i.e. OLED) or a longer battery life - the iPod was almost always preferred by reviewers, and I argue that the great UI is the main reason for that.

John Cook talks about "one-handed navigation" .. well that is exactly what I just said. Look at the iPod - all you need is your thumb to navigate through all its menus in a fast manner. Definitely looking forward to seeing what PS brings us in the future!

lindseydyson · 06-14-2005, 06:47 AM

A well rounded interview, congreatulations. This is my 1st post on your forum, (although it took almost 5 minutes to complete due it not recognising my name grrrr). Interesting, we have mentioned it on Palm Addict.

Lindsey Dyson
Deputy Editor PalmAddict
Personal Assistant to Sammual McLoughlin
Welcoming over 40,000 visitors a day to Palm Addict

Bob Russell · 06-14-2005, 07:57 AM

Great to have you here Lindsey! Hope you'll come back often.
Sorry for the frustration with the post. Most often it goes smoothly. Even so, Alex is looking to streamline the whole process even more for ease of use.

You've got a great site at PalmAddict and you guys have been good friends to MobileRead. Keep up the great work!

06-13-2005, 11:52 PM	#1
Bob Russell Recovering Gadget Addict Posts: 5,381 Karma: 676161 Join Date: May 2004 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Device: iPad	PalmSource Exclusive [Part 1]: Michael Mace (CCO) and John Cook (Dir Prd Mktg) MobileRead.com is very pleased to present this exclusive interview with two of the key leaders at PalmSource… the Chief Competitive Officer, Michael Mace, and the Director of Product Marketing, John Cook, who were kind enough to sit down with me at the recent PalmSource Mobile Summit and DevCon 2005 in San Jose, CA to share their views on the direction and future of PalmOS. We hope that this interview, as a supplement to the ongoing information and news that we provide on our site about the mobile device market, will serve to increase awareness of what looks to be a promising future for Palm devices, and to promote a better perspective on what PalmSource is trying to achieve. The interview will be presented on MobileRead this week as a five-part series, and it begins with this first installment, covering PalmOS on phones and the freshly-revealed “Project Rome.” MobileRead: We've heard a lot here in San Jose about PalmSource going after the phone market, and feature phones have come up a lot. PalmSource is looking to make PalmOS the platform of choice not just for the smart phone and for traditional PDAs, but for feature phones also. What will it take to make it ready for the feature phone market? Michael Mace: Here's the trick. You ask people in the industry what a feature phone is, you get 15 different answers. So I'm actually trying to stay away from terms like feature phone and smart phone. They don't actually mean anything. If you want an example, look at the debates between IDC and Gartner about how do you define these segments. The real way to look at it is that there are people that are willing to pay extra to get a value-added device, whether it has a phone in it or not. And there are people that want to do something extra with data whether it's entertainment or whether it's extra communication functions, or whether it's managing information like a doctor would do. Those people may go for a smart phone or they may go for a handheld depending on the exact mix of features that they want, and what's the right product for them. But they're in the market for something that has an OS and has advanced features. On the other hand you have a lot of people, the majority of phone buyers, who just want voice, and who really don't want to pay extra for anything else. So the real issue is supplying PalmOS as a software for people who want to go after this value added thing - for people that want a platform. But then also can we supply software for the majority of those phone buyers who are pretty much after voice. They'll take other features if those things are given to them, but they're not going to go out and pay two hundred dollars extra to get a more souped-up phone. We're trying to provide software for both types of users. PalmOS is the main emphasis for getting to those value added users... the people who pay extra for data functions. And what we're doing with the former China MobileSoft, the company that we bought in China, is the center of what we try to do for what I would just call phones. Forget about feature phones, smartphones, whatever. It's for phones. And especially for those phones that move to 3G. They need more sophisticated software to go into a phone. And so what we're trying to do is build both of those things eventually on top of a Linux foundation. So PalmOS is going to be based on Linux. I think there is going to be feature phone stuff, which may not even necessarily be called PalmOS, because it's not necessarily going to be running third party applications. It's more just like embedded software, but that too will be based on Linux. And we're trying to cover both markets over time. MR: Do you see PalmOS as being different products supplied to phones that are primarily voice, but with a few features, versus more robust phones? MM: We're going to work with the phone companies. So we're going to do a great platform with PalmOS and we're going to do a great embedded Linux, and we're going to let them pick what's appropriate for a particular phone that they're trying to build. It's really going to be up to them. We'll have both and we'll see how it goes. John Cook: I think the point is that you need a range of technology solutions, and one size does not fit all for this market very much. And what people have been defining as our niche, if you will, I think we want to grow out of that in technically moving to Linux because it gives us more scalability if we do that. MR: We heard yesterday from Larry Slotnick [PalmSource Chief Product Officer] about an exciting next generation user interface which will be coming out of Project Rome. Can you tell me more about that technology and what its significance is? MM: The context is that a lot of these phones that we're talking about are going to be are going to be non-touchscreen one-handed devices, so you need another interface for that. It's a different way of using the devices, so we've been working on concepts around how you would control a one-handed non-touchscreen device and how you would interact with it. It's very different. JC: This is still kind of early in the development phases, but Larry alluded to this... the point being that with traditional style Palm devices, you want something done quickly, you probably run away from it, the device is with you more often. It's very interrupt driven. So what kind of paradigms do you want set up? A lot of the work that we're doing now is like the odd chart that he put up on the screen. If you look at the center starting point and all the different potential paths you can go it looks kind of confusing. The trick, and this is where our user experience or UX team is working now, is that I don't want to give you all those choices. I want to give you "the" choice that makes a difference to you when you're ready to go after that task. So it's thinking through all the use cases, and it's going through a lot of prototyping. Then at some point you get some migration path that says if you want to optimize for this one-handed phone with your software with no touchscreen, you might want to go this direction. I just heard a discussion that David Feder [Dir. Developer Services] was doing on talking about selling to phone devices. Don't think of the touchscreen as your primary thing, think of the one-handed navigation as being the most common aspect of the UI. But he says if you have a touchscreen, take advantage of it. So it's not totally either/or. With Rome the concept was to think very clearly.. if you have small screens, different paradigms, how do you want to rethink the metaphors you want to use for the user experience. MR: So would you envision more Rome techniques being applied to the simpler phones because of their increased dependence on one-handed operation? JC: I think that's where they'd start. Even more limited real estate, so smaller screen size and one-handed navigation are both going to play major roles about how you want to think about your software. ---- This interview will continue with the remaining installments… <Part One> ..Part Two ..Part Three ..Part Four ..Part Five Special Note: We are keeping this forum thread open for comments, and we encourage a lively discussion of these topics from all sides. But we will moderate heavily if necessary. All we ask (and require) is that all posts remain polite and on-topic so the discussion remains profitable for all. That has been a trademark of MobileRead’s short history thanks to all our great readers, and we will make every effort to maintain that civility as we move forward.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Help viewing root dir of e505?	Locheil	Sony Reader	1	11-10-2009 05:49 PM
Exclusive: STAReBOOK Review Part I	CommanderROR	Netronix	21	03-12-2007 07:39 AM
Mike Mace essay on ebooks	cervezas	Deals and Resources (No Self-Promotion or Affiliate Links)	0	05-07-2006 10:00 AM
Former PalmSource CCO speaks out!	Bob Russell	Lounge	1	11-05-2005 08:37 AM

06-13-2005, 11:57 PM	#2
Antoine of MMM Mobile Ministry Magazine Posts: 119 Karma: 4507 Join Date: May 2005 Location: Charlotte, NC Device: Nokia N75/N800 Internet Tablet	I'd be interested in a making of Rome when this aspect is done. I am sure that the Treo and original Pilot went into these sessions as the base line. To hear what different models that came up were would be interesting. Seems like PS is spreading itself thin, and at the same time doing what it needs to do to meet the market head on. It should be interesting from here on out for sure.

06-14-2005, 03:44 AM	#3
Colin Dunstan Is papyrophobic! Posts: 1,926 Karma: 1009999 Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: USA Device: Dell Axim	First of all I am happy to see that PalmSource is not taking the differentiation of handhelds and smartphones serious any longer. Industry analysts are obviously making a fool of themselves by contradicting each other. I agree with Antoine... Project Rome sounds like it could be the next handheld killer. One reason why Apple has been so very successful with the iPod is because of its intuitive user interface. Other competitors tried to emulate the UI but always fell short. Even no matter whether they had a better display (i.e. OLED) or a longer battery life - the iPod was almost always preferred by reviewers, and I argue that the great UI is the main reason for that. John Cook talks about "one-handed navigation" .. well that is exactly what I just said. Look at the iPod - all you need is your thumb to navigate through all its menus in a fast manner. Definitely looking forward to seeing what PS brings us in the future!

06-14-2005, 06:47 AM	#4
lindseydyson Deputy Editor Palm Addict Posts: 17 Karma: 169 Join Date: Jun 2005 Device: Palm Addict	A well rounded interview, congreatulations. This is my 1st post on your forum, (although it took almost 5 minutes to complete due it not recognising my name grrrr). Interesting, we have mentioned it on Palm Addict. Lindsey Dyson Deputy Editor PalmAddict Personal Assistant to Sammual McLoughlin Welcoming over 40,000 visitors a day to Palm Addict

06-14-2005, 07:57 AM	#5
Bob Russell Recovering Gadget Addict Posts: 5,381 Karma: 676161 Join Date: May 2004 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Device: iPad	Great to have you here Lindsey! Hope you'll come back often. Sorry for the frustration with the post. Most often it goes smoothly. Even so, Alex is looking to streamline the whole process even more for ease of use. You've got a great site at PalmAddict and you guys have been good friends to MobileRead. Keep up the great work!

Advert

Advert