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Apple to Buy out Palm?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:58 AM
from the i-can't-imagine-why dept.
from the i-can't-imagine-why dept.
JFlex writes "According to a story over at Personal Computer World 'Speculation that Apple plans to buy handheld maker Palm has been revived by a call from two leading Palm investors for the company to be put up for sale, according to the local paper of both companies.'"
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In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
(Seriously...this "Apple to buy Palm" rumor has been going on forever...)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Around 2001 I was still amazed at how much more usable it was than the winCE alternatives.
It's still my favorite PIM UI, much more elegant than Outlook. I use a Sony Clie regularly. I guess Palm just slipped up in the behind the scenes technology, as well as some of the integration w/ the Outlook Hegemony.
Newton was cooler in many ways, but didn't understand the criticial formfactor issue, and then became a political target.
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Newton-Palm Hybrid (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Newton-Palm Hybrid (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there's some truth to the parent post. A single PDA that merged the best features of both the Newton and the Palm could be really slick. While I'll assume that most people reading this are pretty familiar with the Palm and what it has to offer, I recognize that the Newton may be a bit more of a mystery. I blogged a bit about what the Newton has to offer in 2006 [blogspot.com] elsewhere and won't repeat it all here.
The Newton has actually been mentioned on various news sites [osnews.com] a lot lately, due largely in part to the recent Worldwide Newton Conference [newtontalk.net] but also because of recent advances like the Einstein project [kallisys.com] and the Newton book reader for Firefox [newtonslibrary.org].
I'm personally hoping that maybe some of its innovative user interface ideas get carried over into other projects. Obviously Apple's current Ink tablet handwriting recognition system is a direct port from the Newton. Less obviously perhaps is that its Dock removal animation is, too.
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Re:Newton-Palm Hybrid (Score:5, Interesting)
I've made this comment before (to jcr in fact). If Ink is a direct port from the Newton, they broke it along the way. I have bugs filed (if you could search them) the describe this. I'll give you the short version first: Pull out your tablet on your Mac, write the word 'Rosetta' in cursive (and as typical for most writers, cross both Ts at once). On a Newton MP 2100 it will correctly translate this to 'Rosetta' 100% of the time for me. With Ink it gets translated to 'RoseHa' 100% of the time. Somewhere between Newton's 'Rosetta' handwriting recognition and OS X's 'Ink' recognition, they forgot how to 1) understand cursive, 2) learn user handwriting, 3) allow training of the recognizer, 4) allow the insertion caret to be used for punctuation, 5) correctly understand editing gestures in (almost) all cases -- ever try to join a broken word with Ink?.
For completeness sake, let me include that old bug report (which includes a snippet from a thread jcr and I had going about Ink's flaws compared to the Newton): https://bugreport.apple.com/ [apple.com] Problem ID: 3828160 (this bug is still marked "Open")
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Re:Newton-Palm Hybrid (Score:4, Interesting)
Palm is - at least from where I'm standing - being pushed out from the market.
This is therefore probably good for both Palm and Apple... it's just that I probably won't be able to afford one of those.
*sigh*
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Re:Newton-Palm Hybrid (Score:5, Insightful)
The hype about "iPod phones" is that they'd have a MP3-playing phone that's the ease-of-use equivalent of the iPod.
The iPod, just as a hardware device, is admittedly slick, but it's not that wonderful. It's a hard drive, a funny-shaped battery, a microprocessor, and some controls in a white Lexan box. What gives it most of its value is the integration with iTunes and the automatic syncronization/updating. It's totally brainless -- you never have to worry about what music is on your portable versus what is on your computer (assuming you have one of the larger iPods). When the iPod first came out, this was the selling feature for it, compared to other, smaller-capacity players. You plugged it in, it did its thing, and you could grab the player and go.
I don't know of a cellphone that offers that. You have to add or copy the songs manually, and that's a drag; geeks might be okay with it, but a whole lot of mainstream consumers won't, especially if they use iTunes as their jukebox/music-manager already. People have come to expect total integration from a music player, and anything that offers less just isn't going to fly.
I owned a pre-iPod, flash-based music player. It was called the Pontis, and it was pretty forward-thinking when it was released. It used MMC cards, so the capacity was virtually unlimted, it had great battery life, and it was rugged as hell. But it sucked. It sucked because any time you wanted to add more music to it, you had to fire up a separate program and move the files to it. Later I think they achieved some jukebox integration, but it was with programs that were clunky (Musicmatch) and generally less elegant than iTunes. This is about where cellphones are now; nobody has figured out how to really integrate a cellular phone with the computer, in the same way that Apple integrated the MP3 player.
IMO, it's relentlessly stupid to involve a cable in this integration. A cellphone's integration should be even more transparent than the iPod's, because it ought to do it all wirelessly. Make a playlist in iTunes, and the next time you bring your phone within Bluetooth range of the computer, it gets updated (along with your Address Book, Calendar, etc.). When you have that kind of seamlessness, you will have an iPod equivalent. Otherwise, all you have is a Pontis equivalent.
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Perfect? Like Neck stretched over chopping block? (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, stretched out over the chopping block, Palm really isn't in the perfect postion to do much of anything. Consider what has been thought to be their core asset for many years -- PalmOS, a system designed from the ground up to run on light weight mobile devices. The software quality is crap, and had been for years. Phone vendors are giving up on PalmOS. Palm is giving up on PalmOS. What do they have left? A few patents, a few hardware and software engineers and Grafiti. Well, honestly, I preferred the handwriting recognition in Newton (presently in suspended animation known as InkWell). The quality of other Palm software (which runs on the PC systems they connect with) is even worse, and demonstrates a deep lack of concern for the user experience of their customers. This leads me to suspect that if you scratch the surface, Palm is really not very much Apple-like in corporate culture in many ways.
No offense intended to those of you who might still work there, but the quality of PalmOS doesn't exactly scream, "Hey, buy the company because you'll get a great engineering team!"
The point is: There are undoubtedly a few good engineers left at Palm, but Apple can simply hire the good ones. They don't need to buy the company and get layers of clearly innefective mangement, legions of pissed off customers, and legacy technology baggage like PalmOS and HotSync as part of the deal.
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Scratched surfaces (Score:5, Funny)
Was this a subtle dig at the iPod Nano's screen? Do I really want to run a stylus across a screen made by Apple? *ducks*
-Peter
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Translation: We want to make money with hype (Score:5, Insightful)
If this happens (Score:5, Funny)
Considering the previous technology leading position of the Newton MessagePad back in the late 1990s, and the fact that Steve Jobs killed it (calling it a "damn scribble pad"), coupled with changing demographics due dramatic shifts in the paradigm of handheld computing, if this actually happens I believe I speak for all former Newton owners, when I say WTF??
Re:If this happens (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If this happens (Score:3, Funny)
no, we have an iPod with video. there's a difference.
Good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Palm has access to interesting IP on their hands (Score:4, Insightful)
* BeOS/BeIA code: no idea how relevant it is today, but could still prove worthwhile.
* Palm-sized device expertise: maybe some of the knowledge and technologies palm has could go to make an even-better iPod. (can't wait to see that).
* Application Base: maybe we're going to see an app translator?
* Synchronization software: maybe newer iPods will need to sync apps and documents too. might want to have access to well-established code for that.
Buying palm, or buying BeOS? (Score:5, Insightful)
So it might just be it's not palm, but BeOS they are after. Which might fit into the whole Apple X86 thing.
Re:Buying palm, or buying BeOS? (Score:3, Informative)
So Apple being Palm would get them a bunch of hardware. I don't think Apple needs their hardware.
I don't see much value (Score:5, Insightful)
Another problem is that Palm has been about as phlegmatic as you can get when it comes to promoting their market. If they were like Apple, they could have sewn up the electronic book market years ago. Instead, they seem content to allow the rest of the market to make half-hearted attempts at producing solutions. That just isn't going to work. If Palm wants to grab the e-reader market (a market for which they are extremely well suited), they need to follow Apple's lead and grab the bull by the horns. Since they show no signs of doing this, I see nothing but signs of decline for Palm.
If Apple wants to enter the handheld market (again), I see them developing a new device with a high-resolution, high-pixel density screen. They would then try to add the ability to show documents are precisely as possible, utilizing scaling algorithms. (Many books and documents suffer if their layout is changed a la Acrobat Pocket.) These features could be easily built into a new device OS by Apple engineers rather than trying to overhaul the aging Palm OS.
They would then market it with a new "catchy" Apple brand like "iHand" or "iBooklet", and either integrate it into a new eBook/Portable App section of iTunes, or develop a new iTunes-like app.
So given this scenario, where does the Palm value come in? The name? Nope. Apple would want consistent branding. The OS? No way. Palm is so full of cruft I swear that the developers are ready to shoot it. The device designs? Never. They're way too far behind the curve.
So I think I'm going to go with "rumor" on this one.
Re:I don't see much value (Score:3, Insightful)
You're probably right. The current market cap of PALM is just under $2G, si figure Apple would pay around $3G to buy it up, for a company expected to make about $100M in profit over the next year. That's easily affordable for AAPL, but a 3% annual ROI isn't worth the trouble unless they have some IP AAPL, really, really wants. The Treo? Maybe, but I don't see it.
And PALM stock if off a little this morning (Score:4, Interesting)
So, the market doesn't believe the rumor either
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there is a lot of value! (Score:4, Insightful)
Palm on the other end has a great device (the Treo) and some farily good ones (the high end PDAs, such as the Tungsten TX). The weakest link is currently the OS. It seems that they are hanging around using a bit of everything. PalmOS in its current version (5.4) is a dinosaur, patched to make it running modern applications. Palm does NOT own PalmOS, being developed by PalmSource, a separate coumpany own by the Japanese company ACCESS. Palm has no control over PalmOS. THey have the 700w running windows targeting consumers. They would like to use Linux too. basically they have no direction, developing a new OS wouldn't go into a device before 2-3 years. Palm would gain A LOT from Apple. An OS to start with, either a scaled down version of MacOSX, or a scaled up version of whatever OS inside an iPod.
It's a win-win deal, that should have been done long ago!
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Favorite Newton Joke (Score:3, Funny)
Q: What's 2 + 2?
A: Farm
Not good new for Palm (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I can easily see Apple producing a product of superior technology with as good an interface, based on the iPod. In fact, my iPod supports full motion video, gigs of data, and a simple interface. Start adding features and you face the Palm conundrum: How do you change the interface to a vastly successful product, and keep your customer base?
Part of Palm's other dilemma was its success. I have had the same Palm Pilot since it came out five years ago. It does everything I need, it syncs to my desktop, keeps outlook happy (oops that may be an Apple issue), and allows me to handle the things I want to. It will be interesting to see if iPod suffers the same issues.
If you want to make me a happy camper - make an iPod version with a nice 4" screen, support for palm like applications (notebook, address book, calendar, etc.) and support Ebook formats. Then provide a truly open development environment. One of the great things about palm was how many 3rd part applications were available because Palm wined and dined independent developers. But that means you (the platform owner) do not control everything on your platform.
Such a tool would allow me to hold my videos, books, and all the last things my palm does today. But none of these require palm to provide.
But wait -- what about the phone? Forget it. While some people do use the phone to replace the palm, most never do much but store phone numbers. Further, people are used to a phone being replaced every two years - for free. That is a market that pays for itself in the marketing of minutes. Not a good place to play.
Not news (Score:3)
The news business used to be about reporting things that actually happened.
Re:Not news (Score:3, Interesting)
The news business used to be about reporting things that actually happened.
/You see how rediculous your statement is?
Does this mean that BEOS is coming back? :) (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe they will dump OSX and make a 64 bit version of BEOS!!!!
YAY!!!!
We all knew Jobs couldn't keep his hands off BEOS.
(I'm being levitous)
This is just one of those rumors.. (Score:4, Interesting)
As a pissed off PDA user (Score:3, Interesting)
I still use my Palm T|C but its definitely showing its age with no other alternative in sight. WM2003SE was crap, and WM5 is still crap. It is neither reliable nor big on usability.
Give us something, Apple. I believe you're the only hope for something in this arena that "just works".
Newton + Apple + Palm = NAPalm (Score:4, Funny)
How bizarre. (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt it's true, but it would be nice.
Rokr (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple will do the right thing (Score:4, Interesting)
The Palm products look like a good match for Apple. Like the iPod they are personal, portable devices that litterally define the niche they fill. They don't exactly compete with the iPod but are technological cousins that could be combined into a killer product.
Having said that, I'm not so sure that Apple needs Palm. Why would they? They have a partnership with Motorola where their product is already married to a phone which incorporates many of the most necessary features of the Palm devices! It seems to me that it may be a smarter move to work with Motorola to come up with a product that is one thrid cel phone, one third iPod, and one third PDA. This would cut their risk in half and would be far less expensive than buying another company outright. The only downside would be that they would have to share revenue with another company. I'm not even sure that would be so bad, the Motorola production capability combined with the Apple marketing savy may mean they could sell far more units than if they tried this on their own.
So, while Palm may look like an attractive pickup, once you got into bed with her, maybe the excitement wouldn't be there (and you would certainly offend your current partner.) Maybe staying in the marriage that you already have is a better option although far less exciting.
I don't know all the angles to this. What I do know is that the Apple managment has been savy enough in the past to recognize opportunity and also understand their market far better than anyone else. This is the primary reason why they are where they are today. Anyone else who has followed the path they did would have fallen in one too many potholes and been burried. Apple is still in the race. This tells me buy or no-buy, they will make the right decision.
Re:Good for Apply Maybe, good for Palm - NO! (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple will do it correctly if they bring in a pocket PC product. They are not the leading seller of MP3 players for no reason, they did it right when others didnt.
Re:Good for Apply Maybe, good for Palm - NO! (Score:4, Informative)
Palm is already working a new version of Palm OS with Linux as the kernel, effectively creating their own "OS X" story. Whether they'll be as successful as OS X is remains to be seen.
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Re:Good for Apply Maybe, good for Palm - NO! (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see that as being a very good idea. Linux (the kernel) is a fast-moving target with constantly changing abilities, features, and APIs. (No comment on the moving ABIs.) For something like a new Palm OS, Palm really needs a stable base that won't require them to redo a lot of work, or suddenly and unexpectedly shift directions because of a major kernel change.
Palm could always fork L
Re:Good for Apply Maybe, good for Palm - NO! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. I've developed for it before, and it's got cruft coming out of its ears. It was designed around the idea that a device would never have more than 8 Megs of RAM, and that the controls/screen would be fixed in their design. In addition, memory is partitioned into small "databases" with explicit record sizes. These databases are the only thing keeping the data separate. If something goes wrong, one database can easily overwrite another. No MMU exists to prevent this.
Other issues include:
There's more, but those are just off the top of my head.
It's hideously expensive to rewrite software from scratch and a lot of companies will fail in the process.
My best suggestion would be an emulator. Given that a new OS would be able to take advantage of the greater speeds of modern ARM processors, most software could be run under a port of the current desktop emulator that developers use today. Performance critical software would do best to port, but new versions have always been an issue for them anyway.
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Re:Good for Apply Maybe, good for Palm - NO! (Score:4, Interesting)
While the OS is kind of primitive, writing, testing and publishing a small program for the original 68K devices used to be much easier than for WinCE or QTopia PDAs that existed at the same time. There is a nearly-perfect hardware emulator, Metrowerks supports C++ exceptions unlike embedded VC++ and on-device debugger is perfectly usable even over the serial port. It's too bad they decided to go with the hideous Eclipse/cygwin based thingy for native ARM development.
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Re:Good for Apply Maybe, good for Palm - NO! (Score:4, Informative)
But PalmSource has been working on Palm OS Cobalt, their next gen OS, for the last few years. They actually had a preview ready at the Palm Developers' Conference I attended in 2004: it has next-gen databases with a built in sql-like query language, next gen PIM applications, threading, real process separation, berkeley socket networking, well-thought-out security model, etc. It is a Real OS.
You've been able to get an emulator and tool suite since that conference: if you want, you could develop a new Cobalt app today.
The problem? No hardware. Since PalmSource didn't have a hardware division anymore, they couldn't force anybody to actually use the OS, and Palm opted short-sightedly to stick with Garnet.
Thus, the move to Linux, to make the platform more attractive to phone manufacturers. But keep in mind it's just the underlying kernel that's Linux: on top, everything is Cobalt, both to the user and the developer. The advantage is that phone makers can reuse more of their existing software infrastructure (drivers, etc.) if they've been developing Linux phones.
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Re:Good for Apply Maybe, good for Palm - NO! (Score:5, Informative)
Palm Source isn't owned by Palm. It's owned by a Japanese company whose name I can't remember.
Palm don't own their own OS these days.
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Re:Good for Apply Maybe, good for Palm - NO! (Score:3, Informative)
ACCESS. See the PalmSource site [palmsource.com].
Re:The iPalm? (Score:5, Funny)
-Rick
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Re:The iPalm? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:so what will happen to the treo (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why /. Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Have we reached the point where "you must be new here" comments can be shorthanded as "YMBNH"?
Slashdot is a news digest and discussion forum which the editors prefer to run like it's a cute little personal blog, rather than one of the most popular news sites on the Internet. There is no formal criteria for what does and does not get selected.
Re:competition goes both ways (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple needs a completely new line. Product diversification.
Re:Something, Anything (Score:3, Funny)
Idiotic (Score:4, Informative)
You obviously got modded "insightful" by an Apple-basher. Yes, Apple is down 20% from its peak, but it's still up 600% in the last two years, up 80% in the last year, up 50% in the last six months, and up 10% in the last three months. That performance whoops ass on just about any other investment out there.
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Re:BeOS (Score:5, Informative)
Mod down. BeOS was formerly purchased by PalmSource (not Palm) which was recently purchased by Access of Japan.
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