At 1:34 PM -0700 4/14/99, Jason Dawes wrote:
>No, it wasn't. Palm didn't have to do any work, they just had to agree to
>let someone else do the work.
Gosh, I guess that means we could fire the entire licensing group! Cool,
more bonus money for me. :)
Sarcasm aside, it actually does take fairly significant work for a licensee
to do a product, more even than just 'support' work.
>Can you name a single thing Palm has done since version 1 that modified
>battery life substantially? i.e., they have never added anything that has
>a substantial drain, even if it would have been useful.
Truth be told, we've probably done more to *increase* battery life than add
stuff that uses it. We use lower power components, are more careful with
power usage, are really incredibly careful with memory so we don't have to
keep doubling it every year, and have optimized the software so we execute
even fewer instructions.
That's the whole zen thing. We have a slower CPU, yet stuff like switching
apps or looking up phone numbers is faster. We have smaller batteries, yet
you can use our devices longer without changing them. We have less memory,
yet you can run more applications and store more data in our products. We
have fewer features, yet end up with a cooler product. Less is more.
That doesn't mean more is necessarily less, by the way, it just means that
more also isn't necessarily more. :)
--Bob
P.S. Michael Yam wrote "it can be argued that Palm devices have more
*usable* memory."
I think it's more than just arguable. We have a 'stress test' data suite
with something like 2000 names, 1500 pages of notes, a ton of calendar
entries, etc, that we use to make sure the (2M) devices don't get really
slow when they're full. A while ago, we tried to load that data into an 8M
WinCE based device, and it just plain wouldn't fit, and when we got a
subset of it to fit, it took MINUTES to search for a name. Any user could
easily do this test themselves to verify my claim.
So sometimes it bugs me when people slag Palm for not having more memory,
while somehow forgetting that you can do more with what you got. I mean,
my motorcycle only produces about 1/3 the horsepower of any decent muscle
car, but I can go 0-60 in less than half the time. What's more
interesting??
