Gabor Torok's Forum Nokia Blog - Thoughts on Palm Pre

You are right about patented things, as described in this news:
http://osnews.com/story/20826/Apple_Hints_at_Legal_Action_Against_Palm

Re:Korsun14

such error it happened to me even on firefox

sorry for the second comment, some error of opera9.6

the "revival" of the palm is a very good news, because palm PDAs always were very quality and not very expensive

But we already have wireless inductive PC mouses on market, which charged from their pad. I concede what that technology is not perfect right now, but sure it's become better in future. After all, even now we can make microwave-like charger which can charge devices inside and does't pollute environment. I'm not good in phisics too, but hope Palm have some significant progress in that field so they sure enouth to present touchstone to market.

My colleagues didn't buy the idea of Touchstone

Well, I talked about the idea of Touchstone with my colleagues and interestingly their first reaction was that it's both inefficient and unnecessarily pollutes its surrounding. I remember that I was not too good in physics ...

Palm Touchstone

As for me, Palm Touchstone is much more interesting then whole Palm Pre. I'm sure future belong to wireless charging system and Nokia should look (hope they already working on that) in that direction too...

Looking forward to your article :)

Hi,

Thanks for your comments, Jack! I'm really looking forward to your article, because - as I've mentioned - I'm not a Palm developer, but still eager to hear other people's opinion possibly those, too, who do have experience in developing for Palm.

I have heard of that it would be HTML5 support included, still I can't see how that will help in developing such applications that I have listed above.

"you simply can't solve everything with the HTML/CSS/JavaScript trinity"

Well, the Palm gives you a JSON-based message bus to tap into a wide range of device services, including contacts, calendars, and location.
Please also note HTML5(!), Flash and the others ;-) We need to wait for SDK to judge this...

When I find more time, I'll write a new post, because I see it in a different way ;-)

I think almost all the existing Palm developers have moved on already

It's been such a long time since there were any new and interesting Palm devices. This new OS release has been in the works for years, probably about 2 or 3 years too long.

Plans are plans - no commitment is needed

Well, iPhone's case is different compared to Palm's: Palm has an existing user and developer-base. If they promise full compatibility-break then they can easily lots of users. A plan (if they really have one) is just a plan - no commitment is needed. But it would be great to tell people that hey relax, we're taking care of you, don't worry - just everything in time.

It's exactly what they did on iPhone though

Why commit to releasing a native SDK before you know if the platform will take-off?

Development - it was badly communicated then

Well, there was no reference in the speech that there would be other way for development. Since there was nothing mentioned about it, it doesn't exclude it, either. Nevertheless, I'd say that we add other support for development at a later stage then IF we really intend to.

Legal issues

I assume that either Palm think they've found a way around the Apple patents (slightly different implementation not covered by the patent) or they've licensed them from Apple.

Personally I expect the Pre to be a bit of a flop, particularly with the exclusive Sprint deal (with Sprint still losing subscribers last time I checked).

I also expect, if Palm survive that long, for the "web apps only" thing to be temporary, just like it was on iPhone. It'll just buy them some more time to get an SDK and some documentation together. However, I see very little reason for non-web developers to support this platform - we really don't need another one, it's unlikely to be licensed by anyone else since most of the other platforms are free and so likely to have a small user base. Basically Palm are too late to the party with this effort and, sadly, this was probably their last chance.

Mark