At 12:00 AM 3/30/2001 -0800, Steve Sabram wrote: >jacky Cheung wrote: > > > If Palm users feel that in two years their hand held is a piece of junk, > > what are the odds they'll buy another Palm? > >To keep using the same software they are already used to using. Bingo - I was in a meeting with several executives of my employer, talking about the churn in the small device market. When you tell them that Palm is making an effort to make sure their next-generation ARM devices can run the software from their previous (Dragonball) processors, their eyes open wide. Look at Microsoft Pocket PC's - their ability to run back-rev apps is improving, but it's still not adequate, even for the same processor family. It is a huge technical challenge to come up with the 100% all-portable scheme. Palm and co. are (almost) struggling with the opposite problem - too much control has slowed down the upgrade path (along with a lot of other intangibles such as the spin-off from 3com). > > Or if they do, why not buy a PocketPC which has much higher hardware > specs that might not become obsolete as quickly? > >Because there are not that many titles for it AND the user experience is >too cumbersome. Am using them for a project right now - everybody grumbles about the user experience but loves some of the underlying technology (multi-tasking/connectivity and improved displays are the sellers here). > > One of the selling points of the Palm platform is you're supposed to be > able to do cool things without needing gigabytes of ram > > and gighertz processors. You have an appliance that 'just works" and > doesn't need constant upgrades. Supporting older OS's is > > part of the price. > >No necessarily, it considers what you customers have. In general the >newer the machine the use has, the better chance they will be >applications. It's not "cool things without gigabytes" - it's providing a good user experience. Palm/Handspring have done a lot of things right here (along with some good marketing and excellent developer outreach - keep it up!). The competition has found some weaknesses (the Blackberry "alway-on" connectivity and graffiti versus a thumb keyboard come to mind) but has yet to hit a better formula - they're close, however. - Tom Frauenhofer, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/tech/support/forums/
