All Articles Tagged palm pre

Pop-quiz: You’re O2 and you just lost iPhone exclusivity in the UK, and now have to compete with both Orange and Vodafone for users’ iPounds. What do you do? Why, tell them you still have the iPhone… and are getting the Palm Pre?!

We’re proud that we’ve been able to offer an exclusive iPhone deal to our 20 million customers for the last two years. We always knew that iPhone exclusivity was for a limited period of time, but our relationship with Apple continues and will be an ongoing success. We have over 1 million iPhone customers and they remain very important to us.

We aim to offer our customers the best devices on the market, including becoming the home of Smartphones and we are really pleased to now add another device in the Palm Pre. We also offer award-winning customer service and benefits, which is why more people choose O2 than any other network in the UK.

What say you UK readers, if you’re thinking of taking your iPhone to another network, will offering you the Palm Pre change your mind?

[via Engadget Mobile]

According to PreCentral.net, the upcoming Palm webOS 1.2 update will NOT be re-hacking iTunes 9 sync. In other words, the cat and mouse game between Apple and Palm may soon be missing it’s mouse. We’d heard Palm was in this for the long haul, even though we thought it was more ego than good sense, and at the expense of their own customers, so if true — huge kudos to Palm (even if it took a little help from the USB-IF). And to Palm Pre users, our sibling site is:

suggesting people at least dip their toes into the non-iTunes-direct-sync waters. DoubleTwist, Salling Sync, Drag ‘n Drop, The Missing Sync: learn them, love them, switch to them.

In the opposite of kudos department, it looks like Palm may be cloning one of least popular aspects of Apple 2-Billion download iTunes App Store — developer alienation. According to JWZ, he’s gone through dozens of emails, jumped through countless hoops, bended but refused to break, and now has faced an Apple-esque 2 weeks of silence.

Could it be that introducing, setting up, and running an app store is difficult, and until a few years from now, when all the bugs have been worked out, Apple, Palm, and almost every company will have their share of stumbles, falls, and face-plants?

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse was put on Charlie Rose’s hot seat and asked the pointed question: “Is the Palm Pre making a dent into the iPhone market?”

Hesse’s response?

Aaah… It’s-it’s doing well, but you can almost put the iPhone, to be fair, in a separate category. The Apple brand and that device have done so well, it’s almost not… it’s like comparing someone to Michael Jordan.

Gizmodo figured they’d remind Hesse that it was, in fact, the same category and that Apple needs competition (the consumer needs competition). Engadget thinks it was a duly respectful and tactful acknowledgement of the iPhone’s success.

We think it’s nice to hear a wireless CEO who’s not so bombastic and, frankly, disconnected as most of them seem to be, as evident by Hesse’s answers on Android, Nextel, the price of touchscreen handsets, and battery life as an impediment to smartphone growth.

Rhapsody [free - iTunes Link] is now available in the iTunes App Store. It was less than a month ago that we told you about the submission of RealNetwork’s Rhapsody iPhone app, well Apple may have been scared straight by the FCC because it’s been approved and is now available as a free download.

Now don’t don’t forget there is a $15/month subscription fee you must dish out if you want all of that music streaming goodness over AT&T’s data network or Wi-Fi. Sorry folks, no off-line access like Spotify here.

In a strange twist of fate, PreCentral.net tells us Palm has rejected their first App Catalog app, NaNPlayer, a (superior according to PC) replacement for the built-in Pre music player. Why did they do this? The developer used an undocumented API and that violates the SDK agreement. Sound familiar, iPhone users? Will Palm now get the same grief Apple does?

Sound off in the comments!

While even our friends over at PreCentral.net haven’t exactly been thrilled by Palm’s own, creepy Pre ads, we’re not sure Bell Canada’s approach — filming an original iPhone 2G ad using the Pre as a stand in — is any better.

As a Canadian myself, I’d like to assure the world we’re really a heckuvalot more creative than this! (Right Bell?!)

Recent iPhone ad for comparison’s sake, after the jump!

[via TUAW]

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Did Apple CEO Steve Jobs approach former Palm CEO Ed Colligan back in 2007 with a gentleman’s agreement to stop hiring each other’s employees? (Similar to the agreement allegedly just terminated between Apple and Google?)

Bloomberg, based on communications revealed by Palm’s Derick Mains, says indeed he did. The conversation reportedly took place in August 2007, after Apple unveiled the iPhone in January and shipped it in June — and after Apple had hired 2% of Palm’s workforce to do it. Palm then brought former Apple iPod executive Jon Rubinstein on board to reboot their smartphone efforts, and it’s at this point Steve Jobs apparently stepped in:

Jobs, Apple’s CEO, told Colligan he was concerned that Rubinstein was recruiting Apple employees. “We must do whatever we can to stop this,” Jobs said in the communications. [...] Jobs said Apple had patents and more money than Palm if the companies ended up in a legal fight, according to the communications.

Palm’s response?

“Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal,” Colligan said to Jobs, 54, according to the communications. Colligan said he thought about Jobs’s proposal and considered offering hiring concessions, before deciding against it, according to the exchanges.

Palm, of course, did go on to hire liberally from Apple’s iPhone engineer ranks. Still, it’s interesting to see Palm offering up this exchange on a silver platter during a time when tech companies in general, and Apple in particular, is coming under higher government scrutiny. It comes on the heels of other recent Palm vs. Apple scrapes, of course, including the ongoing jousting match over iTunes sync and USB access, the still simmering patent dispute Jobs hints at above and that Apple and Palm have played about in the media, and of course humorous comments from investor Roger McNamee and Colligan himself about how the iPhone is/was doomed.

[via Engadget]

UPDATE: MacRumors is saying they have good reason to believe these images are, indeed, fake…

Boy Genius received some more screen shots of what’s alleged to be iTunes 9, showing a Samsung YH-J70JL Black — of all things — purportedly syncing with the front end of Apple’s media management empire. PreCentral.net jumped on this to ponder out-loud if Apple was having a change of heart regarding locking out Palm’s previous attempts to spoof an iPod ID and sync with iTunes on the down-low, and will now allow non-Apple devices access. TiPb, however, can see this playing out in only 3 ways:

1. The screen shots, or that specific feature at least, isn’t real
2. The ‘verse gets rebooted, Star Trek-style, and Steve Jobs ain’t in it.
3. Jobs is going nu-cu-lar and will allow every device except the Palm Pre to sync with iTunes.

Option 3 looking the most likely at this point?

Our sibling site, PreCentral.net has put together something we’re openly and admittedly jealous of — a brand-spanking new Homebrew Apps gallery for the Palm Pre. For those unfamiliar with Homebrew, think of it as something akin to the iPhone’s Jailbreak ecosystem, where apps are developed outside “official” SDK channels and installed without the built in App Store (or App Catalog in this case).

Jailbreak, of course, is and has always been one of the brightest, most creative and vibrant parts of the iPhone (and TiPb!) community, and it looks like Homebrew is every bit the same for the Palm Pre (and likely future webOS devices).

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More specifically, Palm’s biggest cheerleader at financial backer, Elevation Partner, Roger McNamee famously gaffed that:

“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone,” McNamee said today in an interview in San Francisco. “Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”

Well, today is July 29, 2009 — two years later and a month later. Given that Apple sold 5.2 million iPhones last quarter, and AT&T activated 2.5 million of those babies, we’re leaning towards a number somewhat higher than “not one.”

Hey, maybe that’s what he meant? Quite clearly, “millions” means “not one”… right?

(Note: Palm did retract McNamee’s hyperbole with a speed that would make Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer Open-Mic Reaction Team (SBOMRT) envious.)

Dieter did some digging over at PreCentral.net and goes through how Palm re-hacked the iTunes sync. It looks pretty much like what we figured. Palm is spoofing the Apple USB Vendor ID so as to present as an iPod. This is one step deeper than last time, where they still ID’d themselves as a Pre. In a further display of chutzpah, while violating the prohibition against misuse of USB vendor IDs themselves, Palm has filed a complaint against “another company” (we’re guessing Apple) for improper use of same.

So let’s follow the logic here. Palm is seemingly objecting to Apple using the USB vendor ID to filter out non-Apple devices. Palm doesn’t feel that filtering is in keeping with the openness of the USB standard.

What’s the alternative, however? For Apple to maintain control over their own software by putting an authentication chip in every iPod/iPhone that handshakes with iTunes before syncing? Or to agree to freely license iTunes interoperability to every device maker on the planet?

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