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Palm Cancels Foleo

I don't comment that much anymore, but I thought I would on this.

Palm has been actually reading the presses... amazing.

1. Engadget tells them to dump the folio and focus on the smart phone, for good reason.
2. Palm hears that Apple is moving their entire hardware product line to their core OS.
3. Palm realizes they don't have the resources to support a product that they never thought would be big to begin with.

The iPhone Factor (sorry, can't help it)
Seriously though. The Folio didn't even have tabbed browsing. If you have ever used an iPhone you would know you don't need a big screen for the web... just good software.

This large hunk of metal had 256mb of RAM, didn't actually get email directly from a cloud, didn't have tabbed browsing, needed 3rd party apps for a calendar... for the bargain price of $599.

I don't think anyone saw this coming, most companies release bad products only to discontinue them months down the road... that's what I think makes this so shocking.
 
zap2 said:
Not leave...thats what a bad CEO would do....Mr. Dell's famous quote about Apple in 1997?

Personal I would
Drop Windows Mobile...if Palm wants to get back to its old self, they can't be playing catch up....Windows Mobile is fine(not nearly as bad as XP or Vista), but Palm needs something to show they are different.

First I would have released Cobalt a while ago, but its too late. We need to ship Linux on our smartphones NOW! We need media support, play video, music and photo out of the BOX, right plug-ins for iTunes, Windows Media Player and popular media programs for Linux..all the big ones. Support for Mac OS X, XP and Vista and most of all Linux...if our platform is built from Linux, we need to support the desktop users, this brings in a large market that Neo 1973 is try to go after. Team with Opera and get Opera Mini as Palm's main browser...its promise already, and Palm can surly use it the right way.

We'd make 2 Smartphones(for now), simplify the line. 1 Treo

Treo 800p
Brand new Linux platform...with support for lots of older Palm OS app...emulation, until more dev start supporting the new Palm OS.
4Gb Flash Memory, with Micro SD slot.
Slim it down...lots!
High Rex Screen
Push email
Wi-Fi,BT for god sake! This isn't 2001
4MP Camera
Price- 349 2 new year agreement, 599 without

Centro-Replace the Treo 680p(good idea, entering the lower market, but bad job of doing it)
Micro SD slot
BT
Brand new Linux platform...with support for lots of older Palm OS app...emulation, until more dev start supporting the new Palm OS.
Touch Screen(something most low end smartphone lack)
Full Keyboard(one of the best thing Palm has done on the Treo)
1.3MP camera
Price it at 99 with 2 year service agreement, 249 with out.

Most important court developers! Reach out to them, get be excited to make apps for Palm. Start fighting back! Make deals with software companies...get support from Google(recently read a quote saying google won't support Palm because they are dead, or almost), YouTube, Facebook.


**Note, I'm digging this Palm stuff on Macrumors!
Click to expand...

You nailed it brother. I would just add - a slide out keyboard (like the HTC Mogul) behind a full-size screen. Basically if they would just one-up the HTC by using a similar formfactor but dumping WinMobile and putting in a 21st century OS then they would have one heck of a device, way more functional than anything out there.

You are right about them trying to cater to WinMob, it doesn't really accomplish anything and your device is impaired by failings of the OS you have no control over.
 
Wow........really didnt see that coming.
I guess somewhere behind all this is Engadget's letter to the CEO of Palm.
Did you guys happen to read that?
 
I may be the only one but I think canceling the Foleo was a stupid move by Palm.

They should have simply changed a few things and it would have opened up a huge market for Palm.

First off drop the tethering to a Treo requirement and make it just an option.

Second beef up the processor so that it can run video on the browser (Palms CEO is quoted as saying something like I wasn't aware of this limitation and we are working on it.')

Make sure that the Foleo can do the following well.
office apps
mail app
calendar/schedule app
browser

If it could do all that it would be perfect for business. The Foleo only does what they need it to do for business and its cheaper than a full blown laptop - plus its probably safer than windows. make it easy for the IT dept to manage and you got yourself a winner.

Secondary market is all those not so tech savvy family members that just need the basics in a laptop.

Sort of sounds like Palms approach with their original Palm PDA doesn't it?

Come on Palm don't give up that easy - how about tweaking a few things and making this thing work/
 
Where is the update to Palm Desktop for Mactel? It has not been updated for ages!!!
 
If the iphone was never introduced this would be the worst post ever. MacRumors.com. Atleast put it on the iphone page arn! ;)
 
tribulation said:
I used to love Palm and still would, regardless of the iPhone. The iPhone as mentioned so many times, is closed. Hacks or not, that's nowhere near the true openness of the Palm OS. Anyone that tries to argue that there's no need for 3rd party applications is either insane or just totally apple-brainwashed.
Click to expand...

100% agree. I had a Sony Clie running Palm OS and it was a great little handheld. I had all sorts of apps that I liked- a "night sky" astronomy type app, a tide calculator, games, dictionary, you name it. I never crashed the device no matter what I installed on it.

Luckily, the iPhone supports MOST of what I used my Clie for... contacts, calendar, etc. But it would be nice to have third party apps. I'm realizing this more and more. IMHO web apps don't cut it at all. However, some of the apps I used on the Palm platform might not port over well to the iPhone since we have no stylus. Well, actually we do, but it is the size of our index finger. Kind of a klutzy stylus for precision interaction with the screen- say, for playing SimCity or something intricate.

Don't get me wrong, I love my iPhone. It is a device I will use daily which by itself separates itself from PDA's and things I've owned before that I lost interest in because I didn't want to carry yet another gadget around. The iPhone is my iPod, home & cell phone, and PDA. But, 3rd party apps are going to be a must or people will get bored with it. I hope Apple realizes this.
 
ariza910 said:
I may be the only one but I think canceling the Foleo was a stupid move by Palm.

They should have simply changed a few things and it would have opened up a huge market for Palm.

First off drop the tethering to a Treo requirement and make it just an option.

Second beef up the processor so that it can run video on the browser (Palms CEO is quoted as saying something like I wasn't aware of this limitation and we are working on it.')

Make sure that the Foleo can do the following well.
office apps
mail app
calendar/schedule app
browser

If it could do all that it would be perfect for business. The Foleo only does what they need it to do for business and its cheaper than a full blown laptop - plus its probably safer than windows. make it easy for the IT dept to manage and you got yourself a winner.

Secondary market is all those not so tech savvy family members that just need the basics in a laptop.

Sort of sounds like Palms approach with their original Palm PDA doesn't it?

Come on Palm don't give up that easy - how about tweaking a few things and making this thing work/
Click to expand...

Basically what your saying is that they should have made a small portable computer......
 
This thing was a dud from the word go. I've owned over 10 Palm devices over the years. I was in the camp of people who thought that some day (like in 1995) everyone would own a Palm Pilot device. Turns out that everyone owns a cell phone. Phone is the killer app, not traditional PIM apps like Palm has focused on.

But, Palm had such a head start, great developers and thousands of third party apps.

Palm should, at least, be the Nokia or LG of today. They should have created a few $99 phones and some free phones. They should be the software company getting money from monthly sub fees, not Apple. The Treo focused on the corporate market and then RIM kicked them there.

Palm and Palm Source and Handspring. Then PalmOne, then Palm, Cobalt OS is no where...then a new OS based on Linux, then licensing Windows Mobile, what a mess.

They now look like a company stuck in the 1990s. They've fumbled too many times. Not sure if they can come back at all now...

Not sure if Hawkins even believed this quote but he said:

"Foleo is the most exciting product I have ever worked on," Hawkins said. (Again, he worked on the Palm Pilot and Treo) "Smartphones will be the most prevalent personal computers on the planet, ultimately able to do everything that desktop computers can do. However, there are times when people need a large screen and full-size keyboard. As smartphones get smaller, this need increases. The Foleo completes the picture, creating a mobile-computing system that sets a new standard in simplicity."
 
Wow, this is shocking. I'm very surprised that Palm would be doing this. Hopefully they can get their act together soon..
 
Palm was trying to figure out solve the problems in the smartphone market, and they were going to float a product they though might generate some interest. What changed is that over the last few months Apple has made it clear that Palm's thinking was all wrong.

Hopefully they're starting to realize that when their customers say "the keyboard is too small" they don't mean they want a bigger keyboard. They might say they want a bigger keyboard, but they don't. They're just talking about keyboards because they have one in their hand.
 
Wasn't Palm's CEO the one that was trashing Apple when the iPhone was announced.

As a paraphrase I seem to remember him saying that Apple has no experience with Smartphones and it will take them years to get a solid working product like Treo, Don't be surprised if the iPhone's a flop, ect...

I feel sorry for Palm, it used to be such a darling company in the tech world.
 
when i saw this thread i said to myself, "what the hell is foleo?" so i googled it on my iphone and learned that this stupid mini laptop i heard about this summer was for real(not for long though) and had even been given a name. i had just been calling it 'stupid' all summer long, silly me:D
 
Analog Kid said:
Hopefully they're starting to realize that when their customers say "the keyboard is too small" they don't mean they want a bigger keyboard. They might say they want a bigger keyboard, but they don't. They're just talking about keyboards because they have one in their hand.
Click to expand...

Wow. That's brilliant. :) Seriously, that phrase sums up Apple's vision with many products. And it tottaly makes sense. Brilliant.
 
Palm of the 00's reminds me of Apple in the 90's. They both have a strong brand, but like Apple once was, Palm has become worn down and an easy target to criticize.

They were once innovators in the field, and now seem to be outdated and suffering from a leaky-ship in terms of the top-engineers, Usability experts, R+D/Innovation, and Industrial design, not to mention all the shareholders and consumers who are steeing clear.

Palm needs to seriously focus on what they do best, and get back to being at the top of the industry. I'd love to see some decent competition to the iPhone.
As a Mac user, I'm not too much of a blackberry fan and I personally feel that Palm would be able to do a better job than RIM at providing a smartphone that talks to the Mac natively. I'm sick of putting up with hacked-together bloated third-party syncing software.

I want the fresh palm back, creating devices that we lust over, rather than crummy devices created by some tasteless outsourced developers.
 
I find this a sad story, while I didn't quite understand the very concept of the foleo I still like palm as a device maker. I just loved the palm when it was introduced and I still love my lifedrive even though it has been discontinued. The only drawback I can find to it is native mac sync (I just find it stupid to have to press the hotsync button while iSyncing).

If I were palm, I would be worried sick of the pda market (i've never been a smartphone fan) and would just dump windows mobile...

As for the foleo, I'm sorry that they wasted that much time and money that could have been spent on improving their treo and pdas
 
It looks like the clocks at Palm are finally starting to work again for the first time since 2004--that was the last time they updated their OS or released anything really new. The fact that these guys went from such an innovative company to one so devoid of creative intelligence is incredible. Kinda like watching a horrible car accident in slow motion.
 
I'm surprised that they ever got it past the prototype stage. It's an interesting idea with an almost exclusively niche market.

Once again, it's a lack of a visionary and a lack of a vision. They need new blood.

When Handspring was young, they had an add-on module to make your Visor Platinum et al. a phone. It wasn't long after that when the Treo series started, first as an organiser only and then, as a phone.

Obviously, Palm gained a lot from their acquisitions. The Treo line has probably kept them going. They're just all over the place with what they want to do.

All I know is that they continue to make good products with big flaws, like the child's thumb keyboard. Apple was there 10 years ago but things changed.
 
I'm going to go against popular consensus and say that I didn't mind the idea of the foleo and this disappoints me somewhat. I really like my treo 680 and I'd really love to ditch my 12" powerbook for something much lighter that I can carry around the hospital on a daily basis. The foleo seemed to fit that bill perfectly. Hopefully apple will get their at together with a light-weight compact replacement for the 12" in the near future, although the rumours have been rather quiet on that front.
 
Palm is a fine example of what happens when there is no real competition. Pocket PC tried but was garbage. This led to a complacency that drained their intellectual resources until they woke up one day and said "Sweet Jesus! Look at that iPhone! Where the hell did that come from!"

I think getting back to their core is essential. And if Palm can get in gear, the competition will be great for Apple as well. Two innovative providers can CREATE a bigger and growing market. And their innovations would propel each other.

I am amazed at how many people actually wanted the Foleo. Palm didn't abandon it, just decided to release a better version...later. That's a good decision I think, it may be too early for it. And besides, a fancy device isn't much good if your platform is garbage.
 
propynyl said:
well done palm...definitly the right move, that thing made me loose so much faith in palm, I sold my Treo and bought an iPhone...the iPhone is the future, palm is the past.
Click to expand...

Yeah, if you want to be tethered to the worst network in America on a closed platform.

I would have bought a Foleo for lack of a better product in the segment. They probably had problems getting it to work reliably with the Treo. I used Bluetooth DUN with my Treo and Mac, and the Treo's OS is complete crap. Really. Half the time I have to disable Bluetooth and re-enable it and then re-establish the connection on the Mac. It's awful (but I can work at the beach when needed, so I live with it).

The Foleo would have sunk because the Treo sucks, not because the Foleo would have sucked. It's running a nice linux core that's due to be the basis of the next-gen Treos, available in a few months. Once they have that out in the field and debugged *then* they can introduce a better keyboard/mouse/screen device, but it can probably be USB, and doesn't need to run its own CPU.

The Foleo was the best Palm could do with existing technology - somebody very wise @Palm decided that wasn't good enough. And with the Apple merger happening in late 2008 or 2009 they need to tidy up their house.
 
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