Apple to buy Palm???

[d_saum]

Apple to buy Palm????

http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/pdas/rumor-apple-to-buy-palm-153345.php

Rumors are running rampant lately and today we hear that Apple may be evaluating a Palm purchase. This rumor comes about after two of Palms biggest investors are calling for the company to be sold.

There are a few connections that link Palm and Apple—some more concrete than others. They are located close to each other, some of the early Palm employees are previous Apple employees and Jobs has already taken a stab at buying the company back in the 90s. Treo Newton 800p nanoite? Let’s hope it would be better than Motorola and Apple’s phone offspring.


What do you all think???

[asherman13]

Apple to buy Palm????

http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/pdas/rumor-apple-to-buy-palm-153345.php

Rumors are running rampant lately and today we hear that Apple may be evaluating a Palm purchase. This rumor comes about after two of Palms biggest investors are calling for the company to be sold.

There are a few connections that link Palm and Apple—some more concrete than others. They are located close to each other, some of the early Palm employees are previous Apple employees and Jobs has already taken a stab at buying the company back in the 90s. Treo Newton 800p nanoite? Let’s hope it would be better than Motorola and Apple’s phone offspring.


What do you all think???

I would love it, and I would buy (or want to buy) every product they put out, no matter what.

[PlaceofDis]

not happening. not at all.

[asherman13]

not happening. not at all.

Why do you say that?

[macEfan]

it would be neat if it did happen, apple would get to use all of Palm's Patnents. I would so buy an apple phone or Pda. Maybe it will be a PDA/Ipod/Phone. COol!

[puuukeey]

unfortunately this seems all to true. apple is taking the business plan of a vengeful victim. it refuses to work with anyone so it makes all its own solutions. it says "you don't want to develop for our awesome platform? well we'll either write better software than you or buy you"

which sounds great at first until you wake up one morning and realize that apple has like 3 serious developers and 13000 amateur programmers working on its platform.

so why not buy palm? its one more thing apple can brand.

one way of doing things

[DeSnousa]

I say yes, would be awesome. Palm is starting to use Pocket PC, so if Apple buys it, we will possibly get a new OS :D

I also think Palm could benifit with a new name change. A vote of iPalm ;)

[asherman13]

unfortunately this seems all to true. apple is taking the business plan of a vengeful victim. it refuses to work with anyone so it makes all its own solutions. it says "you don't want to develop for our awesome platform? well we'll either write better software than you or buy you"

Before the Treo 700(p?), all Palm products (I think) were compatible with Apple computers. The same goes for Handspring's Visor, Sony's Clié, and other PalmOS-using PDAs.

[d_saum]

Yeah, I would SO be on board for this. I cant even imagine what a treo would look like after a "Job's job" on it! I've been wanting to upgrade from just a regular phone to something like this and if apple bought it... woohoo, just that much better! ;)

[johnnybluejeans]

It will never happen. When does Apple aquire companies? Never. It is not their style. They create, they do not usurp. Apple is not Microsoft.

Furthermore, PDAs are a losing business. No one wants PDAs anymore. Everyone got one in the late 90s and then realized they are worthless gadgets. They have seen a bit of rebirth with the Blackberry and the Treo, but they are communications devices more than anything else.

[fowler.]

It will never happen. When does Apple aquire companies? Never. It is not their style. They create, they do not usurp. Apple is not Microsoft.

Furthermore, PDAs are a losing business. No one wants PDAs anymore. Everyone got one in the late 90s and then realized they are worthless gadgets. They have seen a bit of rebirth with the Blackberry and the Treo, but they are communications devices more than anything else.

look into the origins of itunes for a second.

[mduser63]

It will never happen. When does Apple aquire companies? Never. It is not their style. They create, they do not usurp. Apple is not Microsoft.

Where did Logic, and DVD Studio Pro (Spruce and Astarte) come from then?. Also see the history of:

PowerSchool
Focal Point
Silicon Grail
Prismo Graphics
Zayante
SchemaSoft
Cassady & Greene
and who could forget NeXT (or was it NeXT that acquired Apple?)

[EricNau]

It will never happen. When does Apple aquire companies? Never. It is not their style. They create, they do not usurp. Apple is not Microsoft.

Furthermore, PDAs are a losing business. No one wants PDAs anymore. Everyone got one in the late 90s and then realized they are worthless gadgets. They have seen a bit of rebirth with the Blackberry and the Treo, but they are communications devices more than anything else.
Well, you are partially right.

Apple has acquired companies in the past, one of the biggest being NEXT (which brought Steve Jobs back to Apple). And it was Steve Jobs (and some others ) who bought Lucas Animation and turned it into Pixar.
Steve Jobs doesn't have anything against buying other companies.

I agree with you on your second point however. Apple will not buy Palm, as it is not profitable enough.

[bousozoku]

I don't think that it will happen; however, it would be a good idea for the various intellectual property that Palm and Be have.

Certainly, the Treo 650 is quite good and it could be improved to remove the rough edges, including the FAT32 formatting. It would also be a first step into a new consumer area for Apple--phones.

Still, the research possibilities would be the greatest asset of a buyout.

[redAPPLE]

imo if this happens, a few things could come out of this.

1. the intelectual property would flow to present and upcoming Apple products. e.g. the second best product after the iWalk, the iTablet.

2. newton reborn. which i would personally welcome.

[MacEffects]

Well, I hope they do so Apple will have another Newton (Or at least a Newton Like Device) and will kick @ss again :D :cool:

[IJ Reilly]

Keeping in mind that Palm is now two companies. Which one would Apple want, the software or the hardware company?

One little interesting sidelight to this rumor is that Palm bought the assets of Be some years ago, so if Apple bought Palm (or PalmSource, which presumably now owns the Be property), they'd get BeOS along with. FWIW.

Not that it's likely to happen, even at the current fire sale price.

[AtHomeBoy_2000]

They are located close to each other
Thats an understatement...
7.0 miles (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=39.916234,71.191406&hl=en&saddr=1+Infinte+Loop+Cupertino+CA&daddr=950+W+Maude+Ave,+Sunnyvale,+CA+94085+%4037.392790,-122.040375)

[Koodauw]

I think with the new direction apple is heading in you cant say that they would "never" do this or never do that. I think this could very big for apple if done right.

[d_saum]

It will never happen. When does Apple aquire companies? Never. It is not their style. They create, they do not usurp. Apple is not Microsoft.

Furthermore, PDAs are a losing business. No one wants PDAs anymore. Everyone got one in the late 90s and then realized they are worthless gadgets. They have seen a bit of rebirth with the Blackberry and the Treo, but they are communications devices more than anything else.

Ummm, did you even read the article? Jobs already tried to buy Palm in the 90's so if investors want Palm to sell, this rumor might actually have some truth to it.

Also, you say no one wants PDA's anymore...
1. Notice how many people on this thread would want one?

2. Ever hear about the following that the Newton STILL has??? It's huge.

3. How about all the people who got soooo excited when the rumor of the iPhone surfaced?

Seriously, could you imagine if Apple did buy Palm? Obviously they would not just rebrand and keep Palm products the same. They would use all their patents and hardware ideas and build on them. I think this would be a stellar move for Apple. Just imagine a smartphone/pda/iPod that Apple has complete control over? (dammit Im drooling all over myself now!!!)

[mpw]

Having just got a Palm T|X yesterday I'd obviously love Apple to buy Palm. And to all those who say PDA's are dead or dying, they're not. They have evolved into smartphones and the Palm T|X I would suspect will be the last(ish) high-end PDA from Palm that isn't a cellphone too.

Palm/Apple (PApple?) need to do something very soon if they're going to anything or Windows PPC Mobile will take the market, which would be a crying shame.

What should PApple do to secure their market share? Take the T|X add an iSight mini, iLife lite, and nail the seamless syncing between the PApple OS and Mac AND crucially MS Windows Outlook stick in the cellphone gubbins (which'll take next to no room judging by the Moto SLVR) and bump the battery life. Keep the price below £300 without a contract and build a great big factory to keep up with demand.

[Seasought]

I personally don't see much of a prevalance of PDAs any more. Not at work, or expos I attend. Perhaps the bulk have converted over to blackberry phones, but still, for the most part, people just have laptops.

[d_saum]

I personally don't see much of a prevalance of PDAs any more. Not at work, or expos I attend. Perhaps the bulk have converted over to blackberry phones, but still, for the most part, people just have laptops.

Well, I don't know what kind of work/expos you attend, but I know in my industry PDA's are the majority (usually people have both laptops and PDA's). PDA's just make a ton of sense because you dont need a chair or desk as you do with a laptop. You can work on them while standing or walking. Also, you can get access if you have a cell signal as opposed to having to have wifi or ethernet.

(by the way, I work in the mortgage/real estate industry)

[IJ Reilly]

The really hot ticket these days is the Blackberry. It doesn't make much sense for Apple to buy Palm unless they're interested in creating a killer phone/pda combination, and don't think they have the software expertise to pull it off themselves.

[d_saum]

The really hot ticket these days is the Blackberry. It doesn't make much sense for Apple to buy Palm unless they're interested in creating a killer phone/pda combination, and don't think they have the software expertise to pull it off themselves.

I have 2 things to say to that..... 1 - duh?? (in regard to the phone/pda statement) and 2 - Are you kidding??? (to the software expertise part)

[IJ Reilly]

I have 2 things to say to that..... 1 - duh?? (in regard to the phone/pda statement) and 2 - Are you kidding??? (to the software expertise part)

That's just my way of saying "it ain't gonna happen." ;)

[freiheit]

Palm holds some good (valuable is debatable at this point) patents from their purchase of Be Inc. circa 2001. Among them is the rights to the BeFS (BeOS File System) which was years ahead of its time and had most of the features of Spotlight without any of the hassle and heartache (eg. OSX pegging the CPU to index a newly attached Firewire hard drive without even asking if the user wants it indexed). HFS+ is pretty nice, and gets better with each release, but holding the rights to something even nicer could never hurt Apple. Besides, Palm obviously isn't using that kind of stuff whereas Apple could.

There's also a little point of truly amazing multi-threading technology that was built into BeOS that made even a single CPU run like a dual CPU system and made dual CPUs look like God's gift to the computer. If Apple were able to acquire any insights or patents or whatever to make OSX and all Apple apps that much faster on their new dual-core chips, it would be worth it, especially when people inevitably start evaluating Macintosh versus Windows on the same hardware platform (x86).

[asherman13]

The way I see it:

Apple takes an iPod, tosses a phone in it, and makes the screen a touchscreen...ergo, an iPod/PDA/phone. I understand that this is probably vastly complicated then I make it sound, but I think it's definately possible, and, as done with the iPod 5G, it can be always advertised as an iPod first, PDA second (since we've had iCal/Address Book sync for a while now), and phone third (unlike the ROKR or the SLVR).

[d_saum]

The way I see it:

Apple takes an iPod, tosses a phone in it, and makes the screen a touchscreen...ergo, an iPod/PDA/phone. I understand that this is probably vastly complicated then I make it sound, but I think it's definately possible, and, as done with the iPod 5G, it can be always advertised as an iPod first, PDA second (since we've had iCal/Address Book sync for a while now), and phone third (unlike the ROKR or the SLVR).

Yeah, that would be great. I just wish there was some more news out there in regard to this. I would love to drop nextel/sprint as soon as possible but will only do it for an apple phone. Otherwise, I'll just wait for my contract to expire and then, if there is nothing new from apple, I'll probably go cingular and get the latest ROKR or whatever.

[jeffreyfort]

I joined this forum primarily to express my hope that Apple would create something akin to my Trea 650. I have always thought that the digital hub idea was a great guiding light but missing a crucial part -- personal communication. The Treo is so close. Its problems are easy and effective syncing with AB and iCal. If Apple could do an iPhone/PDA, I think they would have a winner. An SD card with iTunes generated mp3s, PDA info, internet and phone connectivity..... There is a broad market out there in my opinion and Apple is missing a chance to fill it. They need to do something whether it involves buying Palm or not.