[MW Forums]

Palm is meeting with bankers to discuss its strategic options, The Wall Street Journal reported. more

[samrod]

Why did Palm sabotage itself like this? Former Apple people found Palm, then found Handspring, then Palm buys Handspring, spins off its bread & butter: Palm OS, killing off any chance for innovation, and finally releases a Windows CE PDA. WTF?!?
You look for innovation in the tech industry and most of it is in software. The main progress in hardware is speed, power efficiency, and miniaturization. It's the software, stupid! How does Palm expect to innovate and compete without an OS?
This is only the second worst self-sabotage to MetaCreations jettisoning all its lucrative assets except its free MetaStream browser plugin, renaming itself to MetaStream, and then disappearing into oblivion after acquisition by Viewpoint Data Labs. And Bryce, Poser, Carrera, Painter, Expression, Canoma, Headline Studio, Kai's Power Tools, Kai's SuperGoo, Soap, and others are just gone. Poser, Painter, and Carrera are barely limping along with no marketing and promotional resources.
Is Deneba Canvas still alive?
How about PSA & TWA?
Anyone miss Standard Oil?

[Jamus]

I hope they don't linger. The Treo brand should have been spun off into it's own company long ago.
Palm had it all, then squandered it away (greed? no follow through?). I hope they now go away quickly so some other company can come along and take their place.

[madgunde]

I was a big palm fan since the beginning, having owned 5 different Palm PDAs over the years (starting at the USR Palm Pilot Personal). I agree with the above posts that Palm has squandered it's success and basically done absolutely everything it could to sabotage itself. Every business school should use Palm as a case study to show students what NOT to do. I just sold my Palm TX, and plan to never buy another Palm or Palm OS device again.
Palm had pretty good hardware, but their software still feels like it's 15+ years old. They should have reinvented their OS twice over by now. Where the hell is the Linux-based Palm OS? Oh, right, it's not even called Palm OS anymore, it's Access Linux Platform, and Palm doesn't seem to have any interest in it. As someone already stated, IT'S THE SOFTWARE STUPID!!!
Good luck selling Windows Mobile based phones and dying Palm OS based PDAs there Palm Inc. Now that the iPhone is coming out, I wish nothing but a quick death for Palm, Inc. They certainly deserve it. I give Palm a year, the Palm brand won't exist past 2008.

[kwill]

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Palm is discussing a range of options with bankers at Morgan Stanley, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the discussions.

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Wow, if you can't trust your investment banker, who can you trust?

[kwill]

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Now that the iPhone is coming out, I wish nothing but a quick death for Palm, Inc. They certainly deserve it.

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Comments like this are inconsiderate of families employed there or users who benefit from the technology. I hope Palm is able to continue innovating -- this of course will depend upon their having control of their own OS.

[grvaughan]

Well, so far Palm has done an admirable job of copying Apple's downward slide, but is there a chance that their founders, like Steve Jobs, will come back and pick up the pieces? Without the OS, what is there to pick up?
It's amazing how many stupid things managements of various companies have done in the computer industry. THAT should be the case study - how could companies so full of smart, brainy people do so many stupid things.
I doubt the folks at the big survivors like Microsoft and Oracle are that much smarter than at the other companies, but I guess these survivors have managed to make less whopper-size mistakes (though the delays/problems with Vista may turn out to be one).
Flash memory keeps getting cheaper, and the iPhone is likely just a harbinger of many new capabilities in handhelds. I still love my old Visor Deluxe, but as someone noted, within a year or so, Palm handhelds with their paltry memory and old OS should really seem like dinosaurs.

[Nobody]

Where is the new updated Palm Desktop appliation for Mac OS X? It has not been updated for ages. Support for unlimited characters in Memo and "Other Information/Comments" inside Addresses as well as unlimited fields for phones, etc most needed.

[mdawson]

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Is Deneba Canvas still alive?

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The Canvas story is truly a sad one. It does still exist but hardly in its former glory as the do-all application for intermediate to expert graphics users that do not wish to spend over $1000 on several apps from Adobe or others. Deneba was acquired by ACD a few years ago around the time Canvas 8 was released; ads for Canvas soon disappeared from any Mac-centric periodicals. ACD is a Windows-only developer, and apparently based on the forum chatter for Canvas, acquired Deneba to implement some of the technologies used in Canvas to their flagship image browser ACDsee when in fact the exact opposite should have been their objective.
Standalone image browsers are a dime a dozen. By this point, ACDsee should have become a feature of in Canvas, but instead ACD is effectively letting Canvas wither on the vine. Canvas, now at version X (10), is very unstable and even long-time users like myself are now reluctant to suggest the software to anyone. ACD does continue to make both Mac and Windows versions of Canvasthe use of the X moniker would indicate strong support for OS X; no such luckbut from what I have seen on the forums the Mac version is far more problematic than the Windows version. Go figure with a company that has never bothered to offer their products on the Mac. Since installing Canvas on my Mac in December of 2005, not a single update or bug fix has been offered and ACD is mum on universal binaries. When Deneba was the developer they were very responsive to Canvas users and frequently posted updates and bug fixes based on user feedback.
Many people have large catalogs of Canvas-created graphics and are now facing losing access to those files in the long run. I state that because it seems to me that ACD is just dragging Canvas along on minimal life support at this point. Perhaps Adobe could get their hands on Canvas and offer it as a Photoshop/Illustrator-compatible alternative for mid-level graphic designers that cannot justify the price of CSx need image editing, illustration and page layout in a single affordable package. Adobe could also benefit from some of Canvass features, such as SpriteEffects; SpriteEffects allows the user to apply image filters to illustrations and text non-destructively by using lenses.
It is a shame that such a good product has fallen into the hands of a company that had no intention of realizing its full potential.

[dshan]

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Palm is discussing a range of options with bankers at Morgan Stanley, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the discussions.

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Wow, if you can't trust your investment banker, who can you trust?

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Indeed. One of Palm's biggest problems is they keep listening to bankers and "investment analysts" instead of engineers and technologists. They did what the analysts said they should do - license their OS - and then listened again and spun the OS off into a separate company, and they were both disasters. Not using PalmOS 6 when it was finished and ready to go was just insane! Then it got sold off (again Wall Street said this was a 'good thing' instead of the disaster it so obviously was) to the Japanese who decided to rewrite in using Linux, and nothing has been heard of it since. What a mess.
Palm's only hope is to work day and night to build innovative new phones (and WiFi-based PDA/internet communicators) using a greatly improved version PalmOS/Garnet and a radical new suite of simpler and more cross-platform development tools (freely distributed) to kick-start software development for the platform. Unfortunately if they keep talking to investment "experts" that will not happen and they're doomed.

[deasys]

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Good luck selling Windows Mobile based phones and dying Palm OS based PDAs there Palm Inc. Now that the iPhone is coming out, I wish nothing but a quick death for Palm, Inc. They certainly deserve it.

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I couldn't agree more. Had the original visionaries stayed in control, the company may still have been viable. Unfortunately, it's way too late now...

[samrod]

Ugh, just depressing. Thanks for the story.
ACD made a version of ACDsee for Mac at one point. It sucked and I haven't heard anything about it since.

[Martian]

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It's amazing how many stupid things managements of various companies have done in the computer industry. THAT should be the case study - how could companies so full of smart, brainy people do so many stupid things.

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Perhaps this started with the Xerox suits squandering the genius innovations from PARC (roots of Mac lie here).