Palm's Ed Colligan responds to our open letter!

Ok, so we totally weren't expecting this one, but Palm's CEO Ed Colligan publicly responded to our open letter to Palm. He's brief, but he cuts to the quick: "I forwarded it to our entire executive staff and many others at Palm have read it. ...We are attacking almost every challenge you noted, so stay tuned." Wow, um, alright, we'll do just that. Granted, we'd prefer it if Ed would engage us in a chat about the future of Palm -- you name the time and place, Ed, we're totally there! (It's probably worth noting that he's turned down multiple interview requests with us in the past, so you'll all know right quick if that whole transparency thing changes any.)

Read - Our open letter to Palm
Read - Ed Colligan's response

[kevink @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:10PM]

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.

[Jonathan @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:14PM]

This response alone gives me hope

[Lenny @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:23PM]

Wow that is fucking amazing. Hopefully this will make me a Palm owner again in a year or two.

[randy @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:46PM]

unless you're from South Africa or something, stop using that word.

[yoinkers @ Aug 24th 2007 1:10AM]

I'm with you. It's a fucking atrocity he'd use the word amazing like that.


Here's hoping for the best Palm!

[Rob @ Aug 24th 2007 12:59PM]

fucking South Africans.

[Chuck @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:15PM]

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.

[Frank @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:19PM]

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.

[Billy Kincaid @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:33PM]

The difference is that Motorola can make the same phone in 9 different housings and they'll still sell like hotcakes. Palm can't.

[Bumpman @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:23PM]

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.

[Richard Cartwright @ Aug 23rd 2007 10:49PM]

Err, I think Veronica Belmont has already figured that out about Ryan

[Johan S @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:36PM]

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

[Nick Miller @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:32PM]

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.

[hi @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:39PM]

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.

[Johan S @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:43PM]

@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.

[NSi @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:27PM]

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.

[Nick Miller @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:32PM]

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.

[Michael @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:30PM]

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.

[Phreak511 @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:31PM]

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?

[Chino B @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:34PM]

Thats amazing, its like a love letter full of gifts waiting to bust out. =]

[Karim Hamasni @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:54PM]

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"?

[Dave Hunwick @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:55PM]

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.

[Yon @ Aug 24th 2007 2:10AM]

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.

[Warren @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:56PM]

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?

[tai @ Aug 23rd 2007 9:59PM]

ahhh, this makes me smile! Love companies who at least ACKNOWLEDGE their customers.

[jd @ Nov 25th 2007 1:12PM]

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.

[farfisa @ Aug 23rd 2007 10:00PM]

Ooh! Write one to George Bush!
Or Sony!

[Aaron @ Aug 23rd 2007 10:14PM]

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.

[Mindfield @ Aug 23rd 2007 10:16PM]

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.

[tiuk @ Aug 23rd 2007 10:33PM]

That's pretty cool, hope it changes things.

[nochturne @ Aug 23rd 2007 10:38PM]

My word that is a coquettish pose. Is he trying to be Bill Gates?
http://360east.com/blogfileupload/billgates.jpg

[jjunkers @ Aug 23rd 2007 10:59PM]

Nice work engadget... If they really take everything you wrote seriously I might start buying stock now.

[alotomeat @ Aug 23rd 2007 11:00PM]

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.

[Tim @ Aug 24th 2007 12:27AM]

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

[ak.anthony @ Aug 23rd 2007 11:24PM]

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.

[ark_v2 @ Aug 23rd 2007 11:31PM]

Well, I guess that letter really damaged his pride...

[rick @ Aug 23rd 2007 11:42PM]

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.

[Mindfield @ Aug 23rd 2007 11:50PM]

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.

[BoxOfSnoo @ Aug 24th 2007 7:33AM]

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.

[kompression @ Aug 23rd 2007 11:49PM]

Engadget YOU'RE BADASS!!! YOU GUYS ROCK!!

[victor @ Aug 24th 2007 1:14PM]

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."

[Lumptoe @ Aug 24th 2007 12:20AM]

@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.

[loki2486 @ Aug 24th 2007 12:30AM]

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.

[Mindfield @ Aug 24th 2007 12:56AM]

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.

[stephen Mortensen @ Aug 24th 2007 12:37AM]

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.

[deslock @ Aug 24th 2007 2:10AM]

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)

[Sam Gibbs @ Aug 24th 2007 5:24AM]

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

[roc ingersol @ Aug 24th 2007 9:03AM]

"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

[Jason @ Aug 24th 2007 8:23AM]

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...

[Goreged Bushed @ Aug 24th 2007 10:08AM]

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.