1SRC Podcast Ten

[Jeff Kirvin]

The Treo 650 pricing snafu, PalmSource unveils a new Cobalt smartphone reference design, tags trump trees and why design is in the eye of the beholder. [details (http://www.1src.com/?m=show&id=824)]

[jjesusfreak01]

I sure hope youre posting from the west coast, because i dont wanna know what an 11:30 podcast sounds like.

[Jeff Kirvin]

I'm in the Mountain time zone, so it was 9:30 pm. But it doesn't make much difference, as I'm nocturnal.

*blink, blink*

[strider_mt2k]

Again, Jeff great 'cast.
I look forward to it weekly, and have started listening on my way to work.
(So you've got morning drive, at least with one listener! ;) )


I'll cop to being one of the folks who called corporate greed on P1 for it's pricing mistake over at PIC.
Your words ring true however, and I'm willing to rethink my position on this based on your explanation.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but what keeps happening is despite really wanting P1 to knock my socks off, they keep (consistantly) dissapointing me by screwing up something, somehow.
Image isn't everything, but it's alot, and my first impression was that this is more "P1-ery" whereby they make more profit to counter the huge payouts their corporate retirees are getting.
Of course I'm reading THAT stuff at PIC too, so I'm also willing to accept that maybe my thinking is being colored by that.

My post was a reaction based on that stuff, and perhaps made in haste.


I'll also agree that the T5's look is really nice, (I wish my TH55 had a directional pad on it!) but that's as far as I'll go.
I can say for sure that I'm biased because I expect newer (supposedly) high-end PDAs to have some of the same specs, if not specs that exceed the one I own now. (Perhaps in the minority here, I'll accept that.)

The Treo 650 is the only thing to even come close to whetting my interest, but things keep interefering with that.

[Jeff Kirvin]

P1 isn't trying to impress you, that's the point. They're making devices for regular people. I'm quite sure geeks will continue to be disappointed in PalmOne and PalmOne will worry a lot about that on the way to the bank, because they're making a healthy profit ignoring the geek market.

The purpose of a product isn't to push the envelope of innovation or be "cooler" than the model it's replacing. The purpose is to solve a customer need. The T5 does this, and it sells.

Want cool? Look at Tapwave.

[Cyker]

Hehehe! Kudos for the podcast :D
Entertaining and informative as usual - I just dig the sardonic wit :p ;)

Comments:
Treo Price:
IMHO, the reason the unlocked Treo 650 is more expensive *is* because of corporate greed. Yes, they made a snafu of the price (i.e. that it was meant to be 700), but that doesn't change the fact that the reason it's more expensive in the first place is for profits.

See, if you get the Sprint/Cingular, you're locked into them so they sell you the initial thing cheap and sting you afterwards. Classic Razor vs Blades (Or Printer vs Ink ;)) strategy.
With unlocked devices, they have no hold over you, so to discourage you from getting it they make it cost more. This is standard mobile phone practice - Here, if I got a phone on Orange/Virgin/T-mobile/whatever I probably would only have to pay a tiny amount, but I would be locked into a 1, 2 or whatever year contract and they'd recoup their costs from it that way. If I wanted the unlocked version of the same phone, I'd be looking at £200-300 quid.
Of course, an additional factor is that Palm wouldn't have any further profit from you, unlike the phone companies, once you bought their unlocked 650, so it's in their interest to hike the price over the locked versions...

Apparently, some European countries have a ban on this kind of thing, i.e. companies are not allowed to subsidise phone purchases in such a way, and in these countries the pay as you go thing is really popular, but unlocked phones are also a *crap* lot cheaper than in contract-subsidised countries.

Palm Direction:
I suspect you're right about Palm's direction - They seem to be going after the starched-shirt corporate sectors with their devices at the moment - Regular people would not buy a modern Palm; They're just too damned boring when you put them next to a flashy PPC (Ignore the fact that underneath the fluff the PPC is a pain in the butt to use - Regular people won't know what until afterwards, then they'll either take it in their stride or sell it and never use a PDA again.) - And geeks don't like them because they suck compared to the cool Sony stuff they've been used to.

Tapwave do not cater to the geek market - They cater to the gaming market, and while this overlaps with the geek market to some extent I don't think they will attract as popular a following as Sony did - The number of people stating that the TH55 will be their last PDA, barring something similar but better arriving, seems to bear this out, and I do not think Palm or Tapwave will be bringing out anything to challenge the TH55 because that is not the direction they're aiming for.

It would be very easy for Palm to do 'tho - All they need to do to challenge the TH55 is add WiFi to a T|3 and duplicate some of the little OS tweaks that Sony add to their flavours of PalmOS (Gotta love the japanese attention to detail!), and they'd be half-way there! Throw in low-drain circuitry and/or a high-cap battery and they'd be up there with the TH...!

PDA Design:
I disagree - All PDAs have been really f'ing ugly from day one. The original Pilot wasn't bad, but the III and V were just rectagular pieces of plastic (They looked like Calculators!!!! In fact, my old Casio and TI sci-calcs looked waaay cooler).
I think there's a certain amount of rose-tinted glasses going on here. This is my take on the PDA world:

PPCs - Ugly. (I don't use a PPC, so this is going by all my co-worker's PPCs. Which are really freakin' ugly... These would be Dells, iPaqs and LOOX.)
Palm m-series - Unbelievably Ugly.
Palm Zire - Aside from Zire 72 (Before paint peels off), all ugly.
Palm T - Ugly
Palm T|2 - Ugly.
Palm T|3 - Ugly when closed, okay when open.
Palm T|5 - Ugly (What's with the stupid curves?!)
Palm T|E - Not bad, but boring.
Palm T|C - Probably designed by programmers. Ugly sister number 1
Palm T|W - Ugly sister number 2
Treo - Ugly
Sony S and SJ-series - Short and Ugly.
Sony T-series - Pretty cool.
Sony TJ - Mmm... not ugly... but... boring.
Psion Series 3 - Ugly.
Psion Series 5 - Cool.
Psion Sena - Ugly.
Sony NX, NZ, NR, NV - Cool until you open them, then ugly.
Sony UX - Ugly.
Sony TH55 - Cool.
Handspring Visor - Almost Cool. Not Ugly.
Tapwave Zodiacs - Unbelievably Ugly (But very comfortable to hold sideways!)

In fact, I'd say that only Sony seem to be producing nice looking PDA's more often than not. I'm probably biased, but IMHO, the TH55 just looks so much cooler than every other PDA out there right now (I reckon it influenced my buying decision a bit too ;)). Then, this should be expected - Designing things that Look Cool is what Sony Does - Their devices might have some incredibly questionable design decisions, but they will look Cool.

Of course, 'IMHO' is the crux - Personal opinion matters a lot. My friend things his Zod looks awesome but I think it's as ugly as the Palm m-series :D

[strider_mt2k]

Man, I'm so screwed.
Thanks handheld industry! :(

The Zod is cool, but I don't want to have to spend more money bringing it close to what my TH can do out of the box.
And also, where are the titles for this "gaming" handheld"?

(rhetorical question, I'm aware of the situation)

[strider_mt2k]

"And geeks don't like them because they suck compared to the cool Sony stuff they've been used to."

Say it brother.

[Bionic Antboy]

Another good podcast!

What I like about them is that I usually agree with about 60% of them, when it comes the more subjective issues. :)

In this case, I lean WAY more towards Kent's take on the lack of "sexiness" of PDAs, though the general population never thought any PDA (including the Palm V) was "sexy" in the day (maybe among the geeky, but that's it). I think a general purpose PDA, which a sleek industrial design and proper marketing could OWN the PDA world, and draw new in customers attracted to the media player side of things. It's at the point now where a decent sized device with multimedia capabilities (including internal media storage) AND full Palm functionality could be crammed into a device the size of an iPod, and sold for a decent price (though this is going beyone the "design" aspect).

Heck, I still get people (M and F) stopping to ask about the UX if I'm checking email in a pub or something. A friend of mine still get's the same thing with his NX70. That's because they "look COOL", and DON'T look like PDAs. They look like funky cameras/music players/phones (all things people have asked me re: my UX). When I show them what it can do, they are suitably impressed. If I were playing with a T5 or a Zodiac or any of the PPCs on the market, they probably wouldn't even stop to ask, so the interest IS there. ;)

"As far as design goes, as long as the usability is there and ... the device is targeted at it's specific market I think it's fine. I don't think the PDA industry is losing design enthusiasm....(then talks about specialization)"

It's this "specialization" that's causing stagnation. If a manufacturer were to couple Sony's design with a GOOD software experience (especially when it comes to media conversion/playback), the "cool factor" of WiFi and Bluetooth, a Palm device COULD be successfully marketed as a "lifestyle accessory", even if one had to "sacrifice" storage (say to a 4 gig microdrive). That's still a lot of storage (about 30 hours of mp3s AND 16 hours of video). ANY PDA maker, from Palm to HP would love to have even one 10th of the iPod's sales (currently over 10 million), which wouldn't be inconceivable if properly marketed as a MEDIA/internet device for the masses.

Palm OS and all that cool software would be incidental, but there to discover. Considering the fetishism that exists in the iPod community, this treasure trove of capabilites would be a boon for Palm OS software developers.

That's just my take on it.

[palmjob]

Kent,
I've gotten myself into a habit of listening to your Podcasts during my 90 mile commute and my drive is almost enjoyable now. PLEASE keep the Podcasts coming as I enjoy the the passive education I've been getting and have been passing them along to my wife for her commute.

[bryus]

Thanks for being another voice of reason. I have been arguing with Clie people for years about how Palm isn't interested in cutting edge, it's interested in SALES. The proof that this is a better strategy is that the "cutting edge cool" of the Clie has been discontinued in the US due to poor sales while the "boring mainstream reliable" of palmOne is still around.

It's ok to sell Ferraris if you can make a profit but trying to do it at Chevy prices isn't possible.

[Bionic Antboy]

Palm isn't interested in cutting edge, it's interested in SALES.

The focus on specialization totally misses the "elephant in the room", being the iPod, IMHO. Both Windows Mobile and Palm OS are robust enough to be the backend of device that could bring a huge new audience to their respective OS.

For example, an iPod Photo goes for $600, or an iPod 20gig for $300. A Palmone T5 or a Zodiac 2 goes for $400. Surely a Palm-based general consumer device could be sold for in the $600-700 range with a hard drive. Archos makes a linux-based device that is being MARKETED as a media player, but underneath, it IS linux. A user doesn't HAVE to make use of the full features of the device, but it's there. Many probably won't, just because the linux handheld software market isn't there.

If the Archos was running the Palm OS, however, it would be a different story.

Couple this with ANY consumer friendly aesthetic design (which neither Palm nor the majority of PPC makers has, but Sony DOES in spades! ;) ), and a modicum of marketing (ditto) and a Palm centric media device could go far. A bit of a risk, maybe, but no more risky than the Zodiac.

Of course, this is all MHO, but I think it could very well be a winning strategy for a Palm developer. Heck, if I had the resources, I'd be jumping at the opportunity. After all, the biggest hurdle in gluing a Palm device to an iPod is the interface to the hard drive. That's it. Everything else is there, WiFi, USB, Bluetooth, media playback etc ad nauseum.

[bryus]

I don't think the market is there for an iPod/PDA unit yet. There are a lot of PDA owners who want it for the PIM and a lot of iPod owners who just want to listen to music. I would guess that the overlap of people who want both is very small and the subset of that who would pay $600 is even smaller.

Also, keep in mind that battery life would be horrible with a large color display and a hard drive. It would have to be an enormous device to hold a big enough battery.

Just look at the new Olympus media device/camera to see why this won't work.

[Bionic Antboy]

I don't think the market is there for an iPod/PDA unit yet. There are a lot of PDA owners who want it for the PIM and a lot of iPod owners who just want to listen to music.

The end user wouldn't be required to WORRY about the PIM stuff, as it would be marketed as an all in one media-player first. Palm OS is just the backend, available to the user if so desired.

Well, the iPod community is already playing around with the interface, and Apple IS marketing the iPod Photo, with a pretty small screen. Similarly, there appears to be some demand for media-players that have wireless connectivity. Apple's approach is to gradually trickle new features into the iPod, why not someone take it from the opposite approach? As I mentioned, Archos is doing just that, but with a linux interface. If someone were to do something similar with the PalmOS, there's a MUCH larger community to spark interest.

Also, keep in mind that battery life would be horrible with a large color display and a hard drive. It would have to be an enormous device to hold a big enough battery.

I think enormous might be an exaggeration. ;) After all, it wouldn't have to be any larger than other media-players out there, and just a wee bit larger than an iPod. The physical demands size-wise aren't that difficult, if, for example, you think of it in terms of grafting a PDA to an iPod for it's storage. It would certainly be smaller than taping an iPod and a T5 together, back to back.

Just look at the new Olympus media device/camera to see why this won't work.

I don't see the comparison. I'm referring to the Archos PMA 400. http://www.archos.com/products/overview/pma_400_tech_specs.html, and suggesting that if Palm OS were the backend of a media-centric device (with a more polished Sonyesque design), marketed primarily AS a media-centric device, it would get the Palm OS into all new hands. End users wouldn't HAVE to immerse themselves with a full Palm experience, as all the tools to surf, email, view pics, movies, documents and listen to tunes exist, and a simple launcher would be all that's needed.

If a user CHOSE to go beyond the supplied launcher, that option would be there, and if the device gained even modest share in the mp3/media player marketplace, with a community anywhere NEAR the iPod fanatics, then it would be a boon to Palm OS as well.

At least that's my take on it.