Palm's Ed Colligan responds to our open letter!
By Ryan Block 
posted Aug 23rd 2007 9:06PM
posted Aug 23rd 2007 9:06PM
Read - Our open letter to Palm
Read - Ed Colligan's response
Please note: If you're a current Engadget commenter, you do not need to re-register. Simply login and you will be prompted to select a username.
first in.
That is amazing, let's see if they take it to heart. That article was great and addressed the problem without insulting them. Also, I liked how you also offered solutions instead of just complaining too.
This response alone gives me hope
Wow that is fucking amazing. Hopefully this will make me a Palm owner again in a year or two.
unless you're from South Africa or something, stop using that word.
I'm with you. It's a fucking atrocity he'd use the word amazing like that.
Here's hoping for the best Palm!
fucking South Africans.
Way to go palm!
I hope you guys actually consider the things in that letter. They really are great points for improvement.
Everyone WANTS to like palm, just give us a reason to Ed.
I got the same sort of response from Ed Zander when I wrote him about how crappy Motorola was doing with it's products. That was 4 years ago.
The difference is that Motorola can make the same phone in 9 different housings and they'll still sell like hotcakes. Palm can't.
The fact that everyone at Palm has probably had it forwarded to them by now says a lot about how accurate you guys were. From now on attractive women will realize how powerful and articulate Peter, Ryan and Joshua are. They will all be very impressed.
Err, I think Veronica Belmont has already figured that out about Ryan
Let it be true that they listen to the advice of engadget. Especially when it comes to increasing the resolution of the display. If you don't have at least a 800 pixel wide display .. don't include a web browser -- most sites require that many pixels width .. and horizontally paging about on qvga is annoying.
So, they need 4 things.
1. high resolution display .. minimum 800 pixels wide
2. integrated gps
3. a camera that has enough clarity to take readable pictures of newspaper text (most camera phones by the time the camera is far enough from the text to be in focus lack the resolving power to make the text readable - try it ..even for magazine text)
4. videoconferencing
Videoconferencing....Really?
I don't know about you, but I don't WANT videoconferencing on my cell phone. The masses are not ready for it. We've all seen the schmucks that get high-end devices just because they have money, and then make asses of themselves trying to use them. Here's a scenario for you. Some MBA get's his new Treo with "video conferencing" and decides to carry on a face-to-face meeting, while driving down the road! No thanks, my highways are bad enough with TXT'ers.
Full Disclosure- I design and install corporate video conferencing systems for a living, so you could say I'm fairly familiar with it as a technology.
It appears that "Nick Miller" has alot to lose from videoconferencing on cellphones, too. I'll be not listening to his advice.
I'll second videoconferencing, although it's probably a long ways away.
@Nick
May be too late already, the new Motorla RAZR 2 will have it (if you get the accompanying AT&T Live Video Share service).
I dont think executives will be using this feature while their phone is placed attached on their dash (after all they will probably look like crap). I think instead it will be used for "let me show you what I am looking at" stuff instead. Like if you see something cool happen or want to confirm with the wife that you're buying the right thing at the grocery store. Corporations can use it for user tech support purposes.
I want to believe. I really do. But the simple fact that they have let things get this bad for so long overshadows this nice response from Cooligan. They need to show us that they really mean it, and very soon. I think I can *hear* the sound of thousands defecting from the Treo every day.
And I don't think Palm will (or can) stop the Foleo. They're already in too deep and they probably think they will look much worse if they cancel the product than the slow spectacle of the Foleo crashing and burning in the marketplace, covered up with PR and sexy product shots.
While I thought the letter was a bit iPhone-centric, I agreed with almost every single point you guys made. If Palm follows through with their response, they will finally win me over as a first time customer. Thank you for speaking for the community, Engadget. This is a prime example of the fact that it doesn't take Uncle Walt to shake up a large company.
Awesome. Companies should have more contact with their customers. I'm tired of all these companies that act like they are better then the people they sell products too. I think Jim Jannard (owner of Oakley and Red) did a wonderful thing when he got on the internet video messageboards himself and started asking people what they wanted out of a new digital cinema camera. As a result he got a lot of support, a lot of word of mouth advertising and is making his customers happy by giving them what they want. Even if he would have failed I think the community would have said "hey man, thanks for trying anyway". More company CEO's should be like that.
I think maybe it takes a certain amount of pride swallowing for a CEO to do these things. But the end result is best for everyone. Congrats Mr. Colligan for taking a step in the right direction.
Now that was pretty cool.
This is amazing he responded (much less read the Open Letter).
Just curious, if Engadget ever wrote an Open Letter to the CEOs of Apple or Microsoft, would they respond?
Thats amazing, its like a love letter full of gifts waiting to bust out. =]
Lets not all jump the gun and praise Ed's response. Now, let us all sit and dissect the possible depth of the statement "Although I can't say I agree with every point". Oh and how many is "many"?
Palms sorry ass has been seriously owned by Apple and I for one love it! They make shit and if I remember they were talking shit before the iPhone hit the market! I say make it quick and painless and close up shop Rosy Palms.
Dell said the same thing to Apple once, back when they had let their product age and were on the verge of being irrelevent...
I could see a few parallels if I looked carefully.
My wife had a Treo 700 for a while - and jumped ship to the Q because to her it was just so 'sexy'. The Q didnt have all of the great functionality of the 700 - but since we are an all Mac household and the 700 just wouldn't play nice with OSX - the Q kept looking better and better.
Ed, if you read this - and I hope you do - please realize that thin and sexy go a long way. People are willing to look past some missing functionality for a phone that looks and feels great. Im not talking about cool colors - lets face it - that orange was just...ugly. Just let your imaginations run wild - what would be the coolest thing to ever happen to a phone? Real time GPS Google Maps? Video conferencing? Ability to scan a piece of paper into the Palm using an adapter?
ahhh, this makes me smile! Love companies who at least ACKNOWLEDGE their customers.
i think the highest piority in palm's war room is redesign the treo.
honestly, that thing is ugly. i would buy samsung's smart phone just because it catches my eyes.
Take Motorolar's Razr as an good example. One good design has made the company very profitable and well known in the cell phone field.
Ooh! Write one to George Bush!
Or Sony!
LOL. I agree.
I also agree with everything Engadget said above. Geez, I remember the innovation with Palm products like the T1? The cobwebs have definitely formed over door to the Innovation Department at Palm.
Amazing. Palm listened. Or at least, they read. Whether they _listened_ remains to be seen. Maybe I've become jaded over the past few years, but I can't help but get the feeling that while they may try and implement some or most of the points outlined in the open letter, they'll end up misinterpreting it, getting it wrong, or just having no sense for how something _should_ be implemented. Palm defined the PDA. Ever since then they seem to have been holding on to the same basic UI and functionality and thoroughly failing to understand that their competition was getting better and more stylish -- and gaining market share. Palm will _really_ have to make some drastic changes if they want to get back into the game with a competitive unit. And I mean _yuuuuuge_ changes. The old PalmOS is so stale it's starting to petrify. Whatever they do it's gotta be new, slick, intuitive, fast and feature-rich -- and for god's sake build some multimedia functionality into the OS instead of relying on third party developers to write their own kernels. PalmOS's biggest stumbling block has always been multimedia -- movies, music, and games -- because the OS had only the briefest of nods towards audio/video handling, really just enough to make the OS functional and not a whit more. That's why Windows Mobile has been progressively kicking PalmOS's ass. For all of their faults, Microsoft recognized that these devices were being used for more than just business apps and designed CE to be a multipurpose OS that could handle whatever you threw at it. Palm's gotta do the same thing. Screw Access; what little I've seen of their implementation is pedestrian, circa-2004 Nokia crap. It was crusty-looking when the first screenshots appeared. Start over. Re-invent PalmSource in-house -- and if you don't have the talent to do that, hire it or contract a developer who's got the chops for it. If you don't, you're toast, and I'm buying a Flame.
That's pretty cool, hope it changes things.
My word that is a coquettish pose. Is he trying to be Bill Gates?
http://360east.com/blogfileupload/billgates.jpg
Nice work engadget... If they really take everything you wrote seriously I might start buying stock now.
Not a Palm user myself, but my wife is. I'm just reading the two open letters for time-killing purposes, and I think Mr. Colligan's response is impressive and professional. I agree with Jeremy. Mr. Colligan's open-minded response alone makes me respect Palm, the company, more. Kudos to Engadget and Mr. Colligan.
Look at the number of people who posted the link on their blog on the last entry:
http://blog.palm.com/palm/2007/08/treo-700-series.html
Wow. It is great to see a company actually hear and respond to a list of comments from the community. I have been a long time owner/user/defender of Palm, and it has gotten harder to defend recently, but I have stayed the course. Thanks to Engadget for this site.
Well, I guess that letter really damaged his pride...
Thin would be great. Tis truly a fat bastard in today's world. But I still love my old 650.
What I don't get is why palm thinks it has to just choose one strategy.
Why couldn't they have a really small palm with a touch keyboard or grafitti, and still offer one with a full keyboard? A variety of phones makes more sense than evolving just one and hoping they pick the right features.
Because Palm seems to have developed a dogged persistence in sticking with the things that made them successful if it kills them. The PalmOS was hailed as revolutionary -- quick, responsive, easy to get to your most important data in a snap with a clean, easy to use interface. In 1995. In 2007, it still is. Looks almost exactly the same, works almost exactly the same. With the Treo (once they took over Handspring) they had a nice keyboard and the fabled PalmOS -- two great things that went great together. And they still do. The problem is that none of them have changed to any significant degree. There has been no innovation, no diversity -- really, no _improvement_ of any significance, because Palm has stubbornly held on to the belief that what worked so well in the beginning is still good enough today, even as their competition is waving cheekily at them in their rear-views. Don't get me wrong, it still works. It just isn't enough anymore, not by half, and there's no other choice for Palm lovers. That's the thing that Palm has failed to understand. They found a few models for success in the past and they clung on to them even long after their competition started offering more and better.
Excellent point, Mindfield.
The problem Palm maybe doesn't realize fully that people's "most important data" has changed a lot since the 90s. Now text files aren't enough, we need - for example - music, and especially everything the web can deliver. They need to redesign what they did in the first place, or Apple will do it for them.
Engadget YOU'RE BADASS!!! YOU GUYS ROCK!!
Haha, "stay tuned"... translated from ExecuDoubleTalk:
"In 6 years Garnet and the fifteen dot-dot-dot versions of it will be dead and buried. Mostly because all those batteries will have finally died. Oh, and we're adding a laser pointer on the WinMo version of the Treo. That is all. Smithers, release the hounds."
@Nick Miller
The iPhone is the bar right now and regardless of some of the other blogs opinion the Palm doesn't have anything close to it. I keep hearing about Palm having a stable OS but it doesn't. I know that 3rd Party apps lead to this but without the 3rd party apps you just have a good cellphone. I have a 700p and it is the worst. I have used just the default software and the device crashes. Opera Mini is good but far (very far) from perfect. Even the stable version manages to lock up the device. My current configuration is all of the default apps and Patience and I get lockups once a week. But if anyone can tell me their perfect config I will try it out to see if it locks up.
@Warren
To get a Palm to play with OS X get Missing Sync. It's just works right out of the box!
My Palm Wish List:
- Open it to developers
- Widescreen
- Improved the CPU! It shouldn't take 8 to 10 seconds to change a page on a PDF.
- Update the Interface! Some of these apps look like System 7.6 apps. I don't want transitions between actions I just want a modern look. Look around at the web 2.0 interface simple and clean.
- Run old Palm apps in an emulator and forget about backward compatibility
- Get a version of Gecko running on the device.
Yeah... Ed's letter claimed that innovations are on the way.
But when is the last time that Palm put out anything that is truly innovative?
The LifeDrive? bomded
The tungsten series.... maybe a few successful models like the T/X but how much did they take from sony clie's influences.
The Treo... they got that from Handspring.
High res support... sony
320x480 support... sony
VFS memory card support...sony, HandEra (TRG pro)
Multimedia... sony
virtual graffiti... HandEra
If you think about it... Palm itself has very little to do with their products innovating... they just took the innovations by their licensees and incorporated into their products. As the number of their licensees dropped, so have their features. When Sony pulled out... noticed the sharp decline in the models produced by Palm and the lack of features forthcoming from Palm.
So Ed can say that they are meeting the challenge... blah...blah. They have never done anything by themselves since the Palm V.
You know, that's what I really miss in the Palm world: The competition. I totally _loved_ my Clie' SJ33 for the year-plus that I had it, and I drooled endlessly over the Clie' NX80v. Damn, that thing was sweet. But they pulled out of the PDA market in '04 -- likewise all the other competition; Symbol, TRG, Garmin, etc. You'd think that this would have been a wakeup call to Palm, but evidently the thundering loss of all third-party hardware support didn't seem to register on their Richter scale. Now, no one makes Palm devices. (Fossil doesn't count. That died, too.) Palm's gotta open whatever new OS up to third party development and get some competition flowing again.
I couldn't agree more with your original plea and I'm glad at least Palm heard you. Wether or not they actually listen is another matter entirely.
As a Treo 700p user I have a bit less than a year on my contrat left. I WILL get a new smartphone when it's up. If Palm doesn't have a WiFI/WiMax Linux-based Treo with a decent amount of storage and the rest of the goodies we demand in a good phone these days, I will jump ship. To what? I don't know. I will be staying with Sprint and as a Mac user I honestly cannot say anything positive comes to mind when I think about jumping to a WinMo device except vastly superior hardware to the treo and god awful windows mobile (IMO, don't flame plzthx) but yeah, this is your last chance Palm, I know I'm not even close to alone on this one either, you've really got to raise your game in every possible way. You're working on the Linux OS, fine, but that's absolutely unrelated to flat out pathetic hardware design over these past couple of years. "Stagnant" is being too kind in many respects. I mean if the best you can do in three or four years is take off the antenna nub, make the SD slot into a miniSD slot and hide it away and shave like two millimeters off the thing, something is wrong with you and you had better get your shit figured out soon or you won't have a Palm faithful fowllowing to bank on to drag your ass through the tough times ahead in the migration to a new OS, the impending doom of the Flopeo and whatever boneheaded moves you make along the way.
Please listen to Engadget on ALL counts wether or not you agree with it. the shareholders will thank you and your customers even more than that.
I'm a longtime PDA user who started with a Pilot 1000, switching back and forth between Palm OS and Pocket PC/Windows Mobile for years. Frankly both platforms are crap... as others have written, the iPhone has set the bar (in terms of formfactor, interface, browsing experience, battery life, and stability). Palm will have to do something special to get me back.
Also, where's support for the iCal standard? (ie subscription and/or synchronization to Google calendars)
I really hope Palm get it together again, I feel exactly the way you guys do in your open letter. It'd be a shame to see the single company that revolutionised my day to day activities with my orginal Pilot as I expect it did many more gadget nuts about today
"Although I can’t say I agree with every point, many are right on. We are attacking almost every challenge you noted, so stay tuned."
Read: "but we -like- the foleo" /sniffle
I'd say it's conservative to think that we're going to have to wait almost until 2009 to see what kind of "innovation" Palm can produce.
In 2008 GPS will be a mid-range feature {if it isn't already?}, and WiFi is headed for the lower end of he mid-range in 2008. A LOT of handsets will have it.
I won't look at a Palm unless they offer a device that allows me to operate carrier free when I want to. That means GPS/DMB/FM/WiFi/WiMax/etc...
Well as long as they are listening, instead of killing of the LifeDrive, they could have added (more memory) a built in gps (TomTom) and really gave it a new Drive for the money. Everyone is doing it and at about the same cost. Hey were is the linux? That was the other thing I was waiting for.
That's the best news I've read all year. I hope they continue with what looks to be the start of an amazing 180.
I have been a palm user since the original Pilot, due to constant problems with my 700P Sprint sent me a 700WX as a replacement. WM5 is so much more advanced than PalmOS and much more stable. Now that I have transitioned it makes my long time loyalty to palm less important, it would be very easy now to move to any other companies WM handheld.
I feel the same way, except about their non-smartphone line of PDAs. Could use a little more forward-thinking there for sure.
While it's nice that he responded to the letter I can't say that I'm confident yet that Palm 'gets it'. There was a time when they did innovate, stood for 1 device in an elegant form factor that did everything asked. Part of that innovation died with their OS. The rest when they made more change in organizational structure and naming than in product. Rather than innovate the complained about the challenges and said that it could not be done. Others, not just Apple, have. Time to man up or close your doors.
I've been a loyal customer for 11 years (pilot and various treos) but I'm not going to wait for them to turn it around before I buy again. My next window is next May. The clock is ticking the real response is what product can you get out the door by then.
Colligan says "Let’s remember that it is very early in the evolution of the smartphone". Who is he kidding?!? The cell companies and the manufacturers have been re-hashing mostly the same old lackluster re-designs for years with no concern as to what users actually want (oh how we ALL love tiny screens with useless keyboards). Hooray for iPhone, it has lots of flaws (that I bet get fixed quickly) but I hope it buries the competition!
We've heard the talk. Time for action Ed.
You guys are WAY too forgiving. The CEO responds with vaporish comments, says nothing, proves nothing, clearly states he doesn't understand the market (e.g. "Let’s remember that it is very early in the evolution of the smartphone" - what planet does this guy live on? Smart Phones have been around for years - Palm used to make good ones, remember the 600 when it first came out years and years ago?).
Folks - lets wait and see what they produce, instead of fawning over a simple PR response. My money is on complete and utter failure for Palm - (because they dropped the ball and their response is going to be way way way too little and way to late).
I'm with vonskippy on this. He said NOTHING, other than "message received".
Had he wanted (been able) to prove they are actually working on these things, he could have tossed us a bone and mentioned ONE thing that's changed. We're all waiting anxiously -- any little crumb of information would have been gratefully accepted as proof.
All we know now is that they read it. To me, nothing's changed, and they only have a few months before I move on to something else.
IF the Engadget plea turns into a smartphone, I'd buy it. My blackberry was free for me, provided by the company. But I love me some palm and would spend a good $500 on the Palm Treo EE. Thats Engadget edition.
$600 is too much for a phone and iPhone owners wouldn't understand a smartphone anyway.
What if Palm adopted a model that is the complete opposite of Apple?
Why don't they create an open discussion forum, requesting feedback from YOU, the ultimate end user. Take notes, create polls to solve discrepancy, conduct a lot of real market research based on the information they have gathered.
The next step, create a design competition, where everyone out there can submit what they think the phone should look like. Work the features into the design that gets ultimately picked by user votes.
Open source the software, create an emulator for the software long before its release so developers can get a head start on creating the software that'll power this thing.
And through it all, set realistic deadlines, MEET the deadlines and publish your progress.
Imagine a phone, made from the recommendations of hundreds of gadget junkies. I'd buy it.
I was heartened to read the Open Letter to Palm blog-post whose good fortune it was to have been concisely written and published on the mighty EnGadget, thus forcing a response from Palm.
This is in stark contrast to the stock response of "none-at-all" to past presentations of essentially the same points in other more palm product-specific fora.
I am left wondering if fewer stockholders, boardmembers and stakeholders would feel blindsided when articles such as this appear were they to follow the dedicated Palm community blogs and boards listed on Palm's own blogsite [Note: these are purportedly read by Palm, and include EnGadget].
Perhaps they would feel the need to telephone Palm Corporate demanding a response earlier in the process...
Say, When the timing really is "very early in the evolution of the smartphone and there is enormous opportunity for us [Palm] to innovate."
Unfortunately, what we saw was just a lovely bunch of fragrant flowers falling from the virtual keyboard of Mr. Colligan's iPhone...
-JohnCarter
Ed's response is typical "I feel your pain" corporate-speak. Regardless of whether or not Palm takes these suggestions seriously (which I doubt), they're obviously following a different path. Where's 3G PalmOS functionality? Smaller form factor? They're already *years* behind the competition.
Deeds, not words.
Colligan supplied the CEO version of -
"Thank you for your call. Your business is important to us. We are currently experiencing higher than normal call requests. Please continue to hold and we will get to you in calling sequence or visit our website for further information" - followed by muzak, loops of the same message and, eventually, a disconnect.
In replying, Colligan did the very least possible to appear as if the Company cares without actually doing anything.
And for him to suggest that his passing on this article to others within Palm means that they are taking the article seriously either implies that they think we are idiots (we've all seen where many of these sort of memos get 'filed' in many, more successful, companies) or that they are suddenly taking an interest in their users - something they haven't done in years.
The Centro and Foleo are distractions from the core product line that used to be Palm's domain entirely and which corporate ennui has whittled away to a near embarrassment now. Now they're lagging (with both hardware and software) behind MS Mobile, RIM, Symbian and - heaven help us - Apple. Before they start to create a whole new product line they need to fix the one they've got.
Meanwhile, Corrigan deigning to raise his head over the parapet doesn't mean he's interested in the view...
I would agree somewhat, but then again, you never know, maybe they'll surprise us all. However, he says he doesn't agree with everything Engadget wrote, and who knows what that means, exactly?
He also says "...it is very early in the evolution of the smartphone and there is enormous opportunity for us to innovate". Um, sorry Ed, but no. It's not very early. Smartphones and connected handhelds have been around for years and in this industry, that's an eternity.
He affords a very leisurely, if not overly optimistic, attitude in regard to how much opportunity they have to change things, but doesn't seem to understand that they're racing a clock here. The window of opportunity is not huge, nor is it going to remain open for them indefinitely or for as long as they wish. They're just a piece in a big puzzle, and time is also their enemy. They're not an island unto themselves, free to play by whatever rules they see fit. They're going to have to move, and move swiftly, otherwise the few who are left who would even bother to care but for a moment, no longer will - they'll just move on to something else, forget all about Palm and their futile efforts, and never look back, as so many of us already have. And while they daydream with a smile on their faces, other market players continue to gain more and more of a foothold.
Unless Palm has something phenomenal, which would not be possible without implementing what Engadget suggested, what makes them think that they could ever sway people away from all the other innovative choices out there, that have been and continue to root themselves in the hearts, minds, and pocketbooks of those who make use of those products?
They're also going to have to seriously consider integrating GPS, as well. Because that's where everything is headed, and by the time they roll something out that would ever be construed as worthwhile, if they don't have this technology, they won't be able to compete.
It's going to take an enormous effort on Palm's part to do what they need to do, and acknowledgment is half the battle. Quite frankly - and I realize some people will disagree - I don't think they have it in them. I say this only because I don't think Ed is truly connected with what needs to take place. Naturally, I could be wrong about that, but it's just what I pick up.
Once again, maybe they'll surprise us. Like all things, time will tell.
Bravo Ed. A Palm user since the Pilot 500 waaay back, on my 7th palm now, a treo 700p.
Amen to engadget, I would love to be side toting a new power palm device.
- Knaf
Palm needs to keep the dpad the same. no innovation is necessary here. Its perfect for game playing.. the dpad on the new centro is horrid looking.