RIP Palm/WebOS

[dhaupert]

Just saw this shocking news:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/18/hp-w ... s-devices/

I knew they weren't selling well, but can't believe they have given up that quickly.. very sad day for Palm lovers

[gymfloor]

How do you think Best Buy feels? They have about 250,000 of them sitting on the shelves.

[dhaupert]

Guaranteed we'll be seeing these blown out for 249.99 in the near future. At that price, they'll discover they do sell after all!

[curtterp]

Dave,

Are you glad that there is now one less platform to worry about? I know that it is bittersweet for you to see this happen. I remember the USRobotics Palm Pilot. I was always intrigued with it, having had an Apple Newton when those came out.

My first Palm was the Palm V which I won in a contest. I was not real keen on the idea of only 2mb of memory in the device because I had the Newton at 6mb, and was already running out of memory, and I couldn't afford to buy a larger SD card. But with Newton programs running 100-400k, it was refreshing to see most Palm programs under 50k. Wow, 2mb was a lot of memory then. Years later I bought a Palm III for my wife. Those lasted until her kids went to college, and then they were used buy the kids for their schedules. I bought a couple of Dell X3i Windows Mobiles to replace the Palms for us and used those for years. But all good things must come to an end, which the last of the Palms and Windows mobile handhelds were brought to our company e-waste drive yesterday.

Just think.... My Droid X is smaller than the screen size of the Newton.

[dhaupert]

It is indeed bittersweet. In one sense I'm glad I didn't spend the last 2 years developing for it and to be hit with a shocker like this- that would have sent my home to foreclosure and forced me to start putting my resume together for something new! But I always have a fond place in my heart for Palm and all they accomplished for this industry and for me in general. I remember all the years of going to the Palm developer conferences. There was almost a religious following to Palm back then and everyone there had a collective desire for Palm to do great things. And they were delivering, and we as developers were all benefiting greatly from it.

I remember seeing Jeff Hawkins, the founder of Palm and the inventor of the PalmPilot and the Treo both walking from one of the sessions. I had to stop him and thank him personally not just for what he's done with all his hard work, but for how it personally gave me the ability to have my own business, provide well for my family and be able to work from home so I could be there as my children were babies and not miss all those tender moments. Very few opportunities like that in the late 90s!!

And it is even more bittersweet for me because WebOS is actually a superb product- one of the best OS designs there are. But somehow I think we all felt that it was a little late for them, they had already sealed their fate the years before. And it made people less likely to go out and buy a Palm or HP device that they thought could not catch on with the rest of the buying population and become something unsupported with apps and all that is necessary these days. So in a sense, I'm partly responsible for their demise as well for not being willing to take a chance on them.

[moneil]

Yeah, reading the precentral.net forum last night I thought I was at a wake. Yet, I don’t think it’s RIP time just yet, and there has been a lot of “very speculative reading-between-the-lines” going on. Though I think HP could of / should of done a better job with their Palm acquisition and that they are “throwing in the towel” way too early they also seem to be saying that they want to move away from the hardware side and more to the software side. Perhaps there is still a bright future for WebOS (albeit delayed) from HP, once they sort out their direction, especially as a licensed product and even more so if it’s also available for installation on a PC (which was an announced goal when HP bought Palm, as I recall).

I think WebOS is too awesome to just die out ~ something will happen. I still have my Sprint Pre (with Classic) as well as a fully functional Palm Tungesten E and a TX. Though the Pre is not connected to their network at the moment I still turn it on in wi-fi mode and also play around with some of the apps. As to what will happen, that is entirely speculative at the moment. If the price drops enough I might pick up a Touchpad tablet (especially if the free 50 gig storage at box.net still holds). I’m guessing the odds are there will be some type of WebOS revival in the next 6 – 12 months to justify taking advantage of a “deal” (I have my thoughts as to what may happen or what I’d like to see happen, but it’s all speculation at this point).

I like my Androids (HTC Evo 4G and a “rooted” Nook Color), and they are useful to my strategic needs in ways that WebOS isn’t at the moment (IF Classic had been available for the Touchpad in full screen or at least scalable that would have changed the equation), but I do dearly miss the WebOS interface, especially the “cards”.

Very nice job on the web page makeover, btw.

[dhaupert]

My theory is that HP is seeing the dismal sales of the touchpad, the lack of interest in carriers for the Pre, and all the while noticing all that is going on with regard to patents. Google bought Motorola for their patents. Everyone went crazy bidding for Nortel's patents, and now even Kodak may sell their patents as they are worth more than the company itself. Maybe they figured the patents are worth more than the actual products they can make, and so they are preparing a package of patents to sell off. Selling patents seems a lot easier than selling actual devices these days!

Thanks for the encouragement regarding the new site!

[moneil]

Musing on your statement “I'm partly responsible for their demise as well for not being willing to take a chance on them” there is an irony that DDH Software is largely responsible for me purchasing a Palm Pre in March 2010.

Though my Blackberry Pearl was working great and there wasn’t a “real” need to replace it I wanted a full keyboard (for texting) and a bigger screen. I had primarily used the Pearl as a communications device and was still using a Palm TX as my data device and I wanted to combine those functions.

My first choice would have been a different Blackberry and I tried out a trial version of HanDBase on the Pearl … and … well that just wasn’t going to work, for reasons that have been ample discussed in the Blackberry section of this forum. I rather liked the Android phones but no HanDBase for Android yet. With Sprint the “i-thing” wasn’t an option and I had always considered the Win mobile phones over priced.

I didn’t care much for the Pre hardware from trying it out at the store (small keyboard and screen) but I thought WebOS was pretty cool. When I heard about the Classic emulator which would run legacy Palm OS software on WebOS devices, that was my choice, and I was very happy with it. Despite the recent announcement from HP, IF I could have Classic on a Touchpad and a Pre 3 (larger screen and keyboard) I would still consider those.

Maybe RIM, considering the position they seem to be sliding into (though supposedly they have a lot of cash at the moment) should try to pick up WebOS (or aspects of its patented technology). Maybe that would revive both Blackberry and WebOS.

[Brian_Houghton]

Looks like Best Buy is unloading their stock of Touch Pad's for $99. That's really pretty cheap for a quality (I'm assuming) tablet.

[moneil]

Yeah, I’ve been following the “drama” with Best Buy and other retailers at precentral.net . Being an original Pre owner, after the acquisition of Palm by HP and the announcement of “new products” I was so anticipative of a Touchpad and a Pre3 (which would have Bluetooth synchrony with each other). That was exactly the direction tech should be going. The announcement that Classic wouldn’t work with WebOS 2.0 and beyond (Classic is what allowed me to use HanDBase on a WebOS device) and the continuing confusion about if/when/what carriers the Pre3 would launch on defiantly added some “insecurity” to my technology planning. When Touchpad came out on July 1 I played around with it, the “i-thing” and the Acer Iconia Android tablet at the local Wal-Mart (where I wouldn’t buy) and the Staples (where I might have bought).

I was NOT IMPRESSED with the “i-thing”. As hardware the Acer was cool (full sized USB port, SD card port, HDMI port) but it was Android, lol. The WebOS tablet was way cool, but didn’t have the connectivity functions the Acer provided.

The Touchpad at the “fire sale” prices being offered is a killer deal. Though it’s a “roll of the dice” to an extent, I still think WebOS is too awesome to just die off / go away, so those who can get a tablet at $99 - $149 will be well positioned when the platform revives in however manner, IF they can live without the connectivity ports. Unfortunately I don’t think I can.

I’m still contemplating the Acer Iconia …