Palm and Verizon looking to take shine off Apple and AT&T

I agree with many of David's points (above). I travel all over the continental US, and with the exception of some big chunks of more uninhabited areas (Idaho, for example), I get rocking broadband speeds through my Treo 700P (tethered to my Macbook), and now with my Pre, which I love. Huge Mac user in the studio for the last 15 years, love all things Apple, have an iPod touch, which I also love, but Sprints affordability and (for now) superior 3G network make it a simple choice for me to get the Pre over the iPhone 3GS.

I do prefer a physical keyboard, can type pretty well on the iPod touch, but still would rather have the real thing. Coming from the Treo 600/650/700P, it took me about 2 minutes to acclimate to the Pre's keyboard. Love it. And the multi-tasking is off the hook, I really have been using it just like I use my Macbook, switching between a web browser, a twitter app and mail while pages are loading or mail is coming in. So I'm very happy with the Pre. The current lack of SDK and pitifully small number of apps in the App Catalog don't really bother me, I know they're coming, and currently the Pre does everything I want my phone/pocket computer to do. Come Janurary 2010 it'll do Flash, too, which is killer.

I hope Palm succeeds with the Pre, as many have noted, only good things can come to consumers if there's healthy competition out there..

Brent Daniels [Free]

I've been a Sprint customer for 10+ years because no one can touch their bang for the buck. No network has great coverage everywhere, not even Verizon, but those who say Sprint sucks were unlucky enough to have poor coverage at their home, office, or hangout, but I've been all over this country and found few coverage issues. Verizon may have 5-10% better coverage, but their prices are 50% higher. Not a great deal in my book. I'll stick with Sprint.

I LOVE my Pre. It's FAST, responsive to navigation and loading web pages. I love the keyboard, the form factor is much better to cradle in your palm, universal search is awesome. Yes, build quality is not as solid as the iPhone, but no one's is, nor is its UI as refined as the iPhone's, and the iPhone app library is HUGE. But for me, those aren't as critical for me as the physical keyboard, additional speed, multitasking, and a MUCH better network. And the biggest thing: Palm cares what I want while Apple refuses to give people a keyboard, Flash, a network I want, MMS and cut and paste until competitive pressure from Palm, and instead tell the customers to adapt to their omniscient ways. Ever since the original Mac Steve Jobs' arrogance has stymied their growth (you don't need color or a 13" screen, a sharp monochrome 9" screen is enough, you don't need two buttons on your mouse, you don't need expansion slots, you don't need to run PC software, etc.).

Before I found out that the OS X Address Book could sync with Gmail (tonight), I got desperate to sync and downloaded the Missing Sync. But I think I'll try the Gmail thing again and figure out how to publish my iCal to WebDAV and see if I can do this cloud thing without physical link to my computer.

David

I bought a Pre on launch day. The amazing thing is that I hardly ever use my Pre with my Mac. Other than to sync some iTunes playlists, podcasts, and videos, everything is through the cloud. On my Mac, I use iCal and Address Book that sync to Google Calendar / Gmail contacts. I use Gmail via Firefox on the Mac, so that's web-based anyway. I don't need to sync with iTunes that often since I have Pandora on the Pre. The beauty of the Pre is that it's the first cloud-focused smartphone! Just like Palm left HotSync behind, Palm is leaving all other PC/Mac-dependent smartphones behind.

Re: Link to John Gruber on Ed Colligan, this link is better:

http://daringfireball.net/2006/11/colligan_head_stuck

Quote below is from that link before the iPhone was officially announced (I hope I’m not breaching copyright here -- please remove if I am):

It’s also possible that Colligan is not so clueless as to believe what he’s saying here. Maybe he’s actually got the night sweats thinking about an Apple-designed Palm-killer. What’s he going to say? “Boy, if Apple produces a cell phone they’re probably going to kick ass”?

If he really believes what he’s saying, it’s probably because he has no clue how Apple would approach this market. An Apple phone wouldn’t do more than a Treo or a BlackBerry or a Razr — it would do less, and what it would do, it would do really well.

Much like Slashdot founder Rob Malda’s day one dismissal of the original iPod — “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.” — an Apple cell phone is sure to be greeted by existing quote-unquote “smartphone” aficionados as utterly underwhelming. It’s hardly got any features! It’s just well-designed!

Meanwhile, the line at your local Apple store will stretch out the entrance and down to the mall’s food court. If they make one.

I see lots of comments about functions and specs.. pretty insightful, however, i have two concerns, is there any turn by turn navigation simialr to sprints( which comes "free" with your data plan:) Also I have issue with ATT hunger to gouge customers with extra charges for text messages. i don't see whu one would want to pay extra to sent/recieve SMS. Maybe one could forward texts through AIm/Yahoo, other wise you get royally screwed so to speak.

* yeah there's typos in my comment but this is not grammar sch ,y'all know what i trying to point out.

Verizon offers the best coverage where I am, but AT&T is catching up fast and they've putting in new towers around the area.

Sprint is waaaay too far behind for anyone around here to consider, and I don't think there's any way for them to catch up before the contract with Verizon and AT&T expires, especially with the LTE going around now.

The customer is the winner in this scenario, but long-term, and Sprint is the loser. They can't compete with AT&T and Verizon, and once the Pre/Sprint agreement ends, and the iPhone comes off AT&T, people will switch around and you can bet it won't be to Sprint. I see T•Mobile making it big before Sprint does.

The Pre isn't the iPhone killer... AT&T is.

Push th' litlle daisies and make them come up,
Push th' little daisies and make them come up,
Push th' little daisies and make them come up,
Push th' little daisies and make them come up!

Pre to take shine off Apple.

iPhone 74 days to 1M

Storm 72 Days to 1M

iPhone 3G 3 days to 1M

Pre?

Palm Web os is good. So was Netscape.

Let's discuss in September.

itunes sync has been seemless.