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As A Happy iPhone User, I Have Zero Interest In A Palm Pre

May 21st, 2009

This is probably stating the obvious, but worth mentioning since the hype is brewing and will certainly get louder until Palm’s Pre smart phone is released on June 6. The carrier will be Sprint and will cost you $199 after a $100 mail in rebate.

Anyhow, since I’ve had an iPhone for about a year now, my interest in personally getting a Pre is about zero, or Steve Jobs’ salary divided by zero which is still zero.

Here’s a short list of why I won’t be getting a Pre:

  • The Pre is new hardware from a company whose very survival is counting on it. If the Pre fails, I believe Palm will fail, and I’m not personally into purchasing hardware for more than $100 that could prove to be a dead end. Even with Apple, I’ve always bought v2 hardware (I waited until the iPhone 3G to take the leap) and let early adopters pay the price (and with the original iPhone, there literally was a higher price). The Pre is personally, too risky and too expensive for me.
  • Not enough information: Seems the wraps have been kept pretty tight on the Pre, with very few people getting any hands-on time, and reviews have been rather vague. While this could be a way to maximize hype, it’s a frustration to people wanting to make an educated decision.
  • While the ease of Pre app development should make for some interesting apps, the fact is the iPhone has tons of apps right now – I seem to have amassed over a hundred iPhone apps somehow. This means switching to a new phone also means having to find equivalents for favorite apps.
  • New iPhone(s) and iPhone OS 3.0 are literally, right around the corner. On June 8, Apple holds its WWDC keynote where it’s very likely they will announce new iPhone hardware, and it’s assured they will release the iPhone OS 3.0 around this same time which will certainly improve the iPhone. Anybody considering a Pre vs. iPhone should wait until June 8 to at least see what the latest Apple gear is capable of.
  • And last: I’ve never been a big Palm fan. I owned a Palm Pilot and later a Zire, both devices which got very little use and ended up gathering dust in drawers. The latter one in particular got a lot of derision from my wife and is today, still the litmus test for any impulsive tech purchase I make: “That new ‘xxx’ isn’t going to end up gathering dust in a drawer like that Palm Pilot, is it?”

When I add up all my reasons why I’m not interested in the Pre, it’s obvious I’m not even considering replacing my iPhone. My only question is whether I’ll get a new iPhone come June 8.

But of course, I am curious – anybody out there who has an iPhone now, considering a Pre purchase? And if so, I hope you at least wait until June 8, otherwise, please clean out a desk drawer.

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  • jcieplinski
    Apple simply has too much of a head start on Palm at this point. Which is crazy, if you think about the fact that Palm/Handspring was making smart phones before literally ANYONE else was. (I should know, I had a VisorPhone back in the day.)

    Having had several Palm OS Treos over the years, and greatly preferring them to any Windows Mobile phone that ever came to market, I didn't struggle for more than two seconds when the iPhone came out; it was clearly an advanced product, while the Palm was built on ancient ideas and ancient software. Palm had squandered more than five years with little or no innovation under its belt since the original Treo design, and no software innovation since the original Palm OS arrived. It had been even less a mover and shaker in the market than Microsoft, which is hard to accomplish.

    The Pre is essentially five years too late to matter. (Which makes its name rather ironic.)

    And though everyone hypes the fact that the Pre lets developers code using web standards, what that essentially translates to is what Apple offered on the iPhone before the App store. Web apps. The same exact thing that Apple was blasted for offering as a stop-gap measure for iPhone development is that for which Palm is now being praised. The Pre's entire OS is basically Safari. A web browser with multiple tabs. Cool as that may be, it's going to limit the Pre's capabilities.

    And that's if anyone decides to develop for it. It's already a bad sign that Palm had to engineer a Palm OS simulator inside the Pre, so that people could still run their legacy apps. Shows you how far down the hole Palm has fallen. (Apple was once in a similar situation with OS X and the Classic environment.) That's not a sign that developers are ready to jump in; it's a desperation move to get old developers to keep interest instead of moving over to other platforms. Most of them already have.

    Now, Classic worked for Apple back in the days of the OS X transition. But this isn't 2000. The only competition Apple had at the time was Windows, which while dominant in the market, was a rather lazy and unimaginative foe. Apple fans, people who actually cared about the software on their computers, wouldn't have been caught dead with a Windows box. But old-school Palm users have the Blackberry, an assortment of Google phones, and of course the iPhone, all of which are comparable if not superior to the Pre. That's a far worse position.

    What do I get with a Pre that I don't get with an iPhone? A removable battery and a keyboard. Two things I don't consider a problem on the iPhone. And two things that other smartphone makers also offer.

    So as much as I'd like to see the Pre succeed, and as much as I'd like to get some play time with the Pre, just out of curiosity and respect for Jon Rubenstein, I have absolutely no plans to drop the iPhone anytime soon. Especially now that I've invested so much time and money into the App store.

    Now that I think about that, the App Store just proves Steve's genius again. While the whole world was slamming Apple for taking its time adding Cut, Copy, and Paste, Apple was building the ultimate lock-in factor with the App Store. Priorities.

    Anyone who wanted to create an iPhone killer needed to do it at least a year ago. It's too late now to be any serious threat.
  • So you're definitely not getting a Pre right? :)

    Interesting point about Pre apps being similar to Web Apps, the iPhone
    has come so far since those early days I forgot about that. And I
    definitely agree the "lock in" situation holds very true. Apple made
    it so easy for people to buy, install, and get hooked on iPhone Apps,
    but not only as a service to users - every app downloaded makes it
    harder to switch to another platform.
  • jaded
    I think the Classic emulator for the Pre is to appease the old school Palm customers. Not the developers. There is a good amount of developer interest. I am not sure why there is so much Pre=bashing. It's pre-mature is there isn't a final product to see/hold/feel. Can we wait till it launches before we cast judgment?
  • As far as I know, the emulator is actually a third party product (though Palm engineers did help a bit).
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