From: Chris Edwards (crashrepair_at_btconnect.com)
Date: Thu Oct 02 2003 - 07:57:13 PDT
Palm chiefs 'learned from Newton'
By Jonny Evans
Palm will divide into two separate arms – PalmOne, the hardware
vendor, and PalmSource, the OS developer – “in late October”.
Palm empoys a major cadre of ex-Apple people, with the corporate
headcount said to comprise a third of former Apple employees.
Palm executives admit they learned from working on Apples Newton PDA,
which discontinued in February 1998.
Two of these – PalmSource vice president business development Albert
Chu, and senior vice president worldwide marketing Gabi Schindler –
spoke to Macworld of the lessons the company learned from Apple.
The company will also acquire handheld-device maker Handspring, which
was created five years ago by Palm's original founders, Jeff Hawkins
and Donna Dubinsky.
While at Apple, Chu was responsible for the Newton, which launched in
January 1992. He said: "Newton was good technology. It had a lot of
great features, but when we launched it, it was not launched as part of
Apple.
“Yes, it was ahead of its time and was a great exploration, but it was
just not ready for primetime: handwriting recognition did not work, for
example."
Schindler, who was also involved in the Newton project, added: "It was
a great personal information manager in and of itself, but it didn't
connect to anything. It was a stand-alone thing and it just became
another organizer."
Following
Despite its marketplace failures, the Newton attracted many converts.
Some still use it today. Schindler said: "It showed there’s a need for
these devices. People loved it, people wanted it. I think that is what
happens usually – there’s a product, not necessarily the most
successful product, but it shows the direction. And I think that's what
Newton did, it clearly showed a direction."
She continued: "One thing we’re doing at PalmSource is deliberately
seeking licensees and making this into a truly open platform. With
Newton and Mac OS, we weren’t looking for licensees in a serious
manner."
Chu and Schindler agreed on four key lessons they learned from their
time at Apple which Palm has been able to apply in its dealings in the
handheld space: open standards, the user interface, strong
partnerships, and diversity.
While Palm OS could be construed as a proprietary system, becoming a
developer couldn't be easier. Potential developers need only register
online, download the software, and they can begin work, the executives
agreed.
"With the Newton, we weren’t interested in licensing the operating
system, because we didn’t have the experience we now have at Palm. If
licensees are investing in your platform, you have a lot of
responsibility to make their business successful in order to make your
own business succeed," said Schindler.
"At that time, Apple was competing head-to-head with its licensees,
which you shouldn't do. In terms of a business model we could later
apply at Palm, we learned quite a bit at Apple," she agreed.
Apple began licensing its operating system to third-party manufacturers
for Mac 'clones' in November 1994. This experiment ended September 2
1997.
Open development
Licensees are critical to PalmSource, however: "Every licensee is very
important to us. We work to make sure their software and hardware work
well together. The result of that work is that we now have a wide range
of diverse and innovative products, because they can innovate on top of
the OS. This works because we want different devices; people want
different things," Schindler said.
Apple's clone model required third-party manufacturers to stick to
rigid designs. "We don't believe in that kind of model," Schindler said.
Apple and its Mac users remain important to Palm, said Chu. "We very
much value the Mac user community," he said, conceding that Palm needs
help from third parties to deliver what it cannot deliver –
applications such as Missing Sync. "At least in the interim, we are
working with third parties to ensure that Mac users have solutions for
their platform and for Palm," he said.
Palm's desire to maintain feature parity for users of Palm-powered
devices despite their choice of platform is hindered by Apple's famed
corporate secrecy. Chu described the hurdles faced by third parties
tasked with keeping pace with Apple's fast-changing OS:
"Apple is very secretive with developers, and isn’t revealing when the
next OS releases are due to take place, or what's on the road map. This
means we need to be reactive, not proactive. This is a lot harder for
us to plan for because we’re trying to get our platform to work with
another platform.
"Apple's secrecy isn’t helping us plan ahead, so if we knew, for
example – and I certainly understand why Apple wouldn't want to tell us
– that it would release on this date with these different features,
then Palm can plan for that. But we just hear about it maybe the day
before, whenever – and by that time, we can't come up with everything.
"I think in the end the customer ends up losing because of that," he
said.
"Luckily, we have third parties who are very much into the Mac and can
react more quickly than we can. It isn’t perhaps a perfect answer, but
that's part of the reality," he said.
Chu added that in recent years, "Apple has done a tremendous job of
getting a whole bunch of open standards to work with the Mac platform."
Looking forward, the PalmSource executives see critical trends that
must drive the handheld industry: wireless connectivity, including
Bluetooth and WiFi; multimedia; communications; and data security.
Looking ahead, Schindler said: "I think that wonderful, usable, diverse
and innovative devices are part of the future."
"I'm just curious myself where it's all going," she said.
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
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