Jack The Scribbler

(We interrupt this blog entry with a very important announcement. No Palm Pre or iPhone 3GS was physically handled nor fiddled with before and during the course of writing the piece below. As of posting time, only the iPhone 3GS is available in the Philippines. Palm has yet to make an announcement regarding its Pre’s Asian foray.)

Is Palm Pre the iPhone killer?
Depends who you’re asking.
Folks at Sunnyvale, California – Palm Inc.’s headquarters – would like to think so.
In fact, the company’s betting the farm on its latest gadget, a WiFi-enabled, bluetooth-compatible, GPS built-in, touch screen mobile device that is shorter but thicker than the latest smartphone from that company over in Cupertino.
The Pre is Palm’s strongest bid to show both allies and antagonists that yes, its mojo remains intact despite its market share (3.9 percent, compared to iPhone’s 19.5 percent and Blackberry’s 55.3 percent in the US).
Much is riding on the success of this eight-gigabyte, iTunes-friendly, $199 mobile handheld, including the business acumen of newly-appointed CEO Jon Rubinstein, who helped develop the iPod.

Palm Pre picture procured from Endgadget.com (there goes the alliteration!)

The Pre is expected to boost phone sales (which have plunged 42 percent year-over-year to 482,000 in February) and increase the company’s share prices (down by 73 percent since March.)
Launched last June 6 in the US, the device sports curves so embarrassingly sleek it makes its chunky predecessors look like they were designed by Soviet engineers fuelled by bad vodka.
Unlike the iPhone, the Pre features a slideout keyboard that has earned two thumbs up for its “solid typing experience,” according to an Endgadget.com review.
But two-handed typing, no matter how comfortable, isn’t all the Pre offers: it also boasts an ingenious multitasking interface in the shape of “activity cards.”
Each card represents an application: say, the phone’s dialpad should you wish to make a call using the touchscreen or its built-in internet messaging (IM) software (that combines SMS and online conversations in just one view; useful in replying via text messaging to an IM chat).
Each active card is prominently set at the center, occupying around two-thirds of the screen’s precious real-estate.
It’s an elegant way of maximizing the Palm’s screen, which is a fourth of an inch smaller than the iPhone’s 3.5 display.
With more than one card open, you can switch between multiple applications at the swipe of a finger – faster and easier than thumbing through a Daiana Menezes centerfold – without going back to the Launcher, the OS’s main menu.
With this multitasking power, you can (for instance) put the Pre on speakerphone, call up your rich spinster aunt and switch to the Memo app to find out what inheritance issues you should settle before the old biddy goes into the hospital for heart surgery.
With older Palm smartphones such as the Treo 650, you’d have had to go back to the main menu and launch an application while you were talking to Tiya Moding in Mangatarem.
By the time you’d finished all the fumbling and gotten around to discussing the will, she probably would already have signed over the whole hacienda to your evil idiot brother who happened to be using a Nokia 5110.
The secret behind the Pre’s multitasking magic is a brand-new operating system: Palm has finally said goodbye to PalmOS and introduced its successor – webOS.
The new system integrates the Pre’s programs into a seamless whole: the company claims the OS will automatically integrate all your contacts, email and Web 2.0 info into one view.
In addition, virtually all of the device’s apps work with the Internet – right down to “over-the-air” backups and updates, including data erasure should your phone be lost, stolen, or used by jealous partners for blackmail.
Those Palm fanatics stuck with dozens of PalmOS apps will be happy to know that the Pre will have an emulator that will allow it to run many legacy programs.
Will the Pre’s features defeat competition? Not necessarily.
News of the Apple iPhone’s death – supposedly resulting from the Pre’s launch – is greatly exaggerated.
Just two days after the Pre launched, Apple introduced its newest iPhone, the 3GS.
Not only is it faster that the two previous iPhone incarnations, it also allows users to shoot and edit videos, all in a package slightly longer yet thinner than a pack of cigarettes.
And get this: the eight gig entry-level model is just $99 (with a plan), half the price of the Pre, which can only play – not shoot nor edit – videos.
The lack of video recording and editing may be a dealbreaker for some, including those indifferent to the online directorial debut of Hayden Kho.
Palm should have known better than to cheat its friends (and users) and waste the chance it has been given with the Pre.
To compensate for this oversight, the gadget has a good camera, according to Endgadget.com.
Besides having a flash, the Pre’s 3.2 megapixel camera has significantly reduced shutter lag time, useful for instantly documenting encounters with celebrities and their respective wardrobe malfunctions, should these occur.
However, the camera alone may be insufficient to create converts nor attract old members of the Palm faithful.
Even before the Pre’s US launch, local Palm smartphone users have already been dismayed by the company’s rush to maximize profits.
Although they were impressed by the Pre’s Touchstone — which allows for wireless battery recharging — they were surprised to learn that the technology involved accessories to be sold separately.
But at the same time, brand loyalty does go the extra mile.
Despite these sore points, a number have agreed to consider getting the Pre once it reaches this side of the Pacific.
Ederic Eder, who uses a Palm Centro but keeps his Treo 650 handy, told this writer that the Pre is “superior” to the iPhone 3GS.
While he recognized that it would be “hard” to defeat the iPhone, the Pre’s features — multitasking capability, physical keyboard, removable battery, wireless charging, unified messaging, among others — “offers useful newness.”
So for fat cats, rich kids, and those with some cash to spare, even in a crisis that has claimed millions of jobs, what will it be? A Palm Pre or an iPhone 3GS? The jury is still out.
Unfortunately, enthusiasts in the Philippines might have to wait a while before they get their hands on the device.
Palm is reportedly concentrating on marketing the Pre in the US and Europe and has so far been silent about when it will introduce its product in Asia.
Globe Telecom Inc., the country’s exclusive iPhone distributor, has already announced that the 3GS is now locally available.
For its part, Smart Communications Inc. has yet to reply to queries made about the Palm Pre.

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From the Thanks, God Dept. Minimal editing for this piece was rendered by Mr. Alan Robles, the Philippine correspondent of the South China Morning Post.

Keeping the Green  

NOTHING is more time-consuming than poring over a newly-acquired or otherwise newly-repaired gadget.

Or at least for a drunkard of my age, temperament, ability, and, for the lack of a better term, social status.

While your geeky, garden-variety, zit-faced, testosterone-infested male adolescent would rather surf the web endlessly for revealing pictures of say, Maureen Larrazabal and/or Aya Medel, deadline-beating drunken bums such as myself are simply content to fiddle with our equipment (Freudian references unintended). 

Which is what I have exactly done in my spare time in the last few days.

Early this month, my Apple eMate 300 was resurrected, after its heretofore dead rechargeable batteries were recelled, thanks to the experts at the Cubao branch of Battery Specialist.*

And as soon as the new set of batteries were installed and charged, I have not stopped from appreciating the beauty and simplicity of this pre-millennium gadget, the world’s first personal digital assistant (PDA) that came with a keyboard. Faintly resembling a proto-clamshell iBook, the Apple eMate 300 mostly came in green (even as there are sightings of black and pink eMates) and with software allowing the transfer of files to and from Mac and/or Windows-based computers. 

While it was made for American schoolchildren — Apple salespeople reportedly dropped the eMate from a building’s fourth floor to show its durability — it was deemed to expensive for the educational market at $800 apiece (circa 1997). Nevertheless, for its time, it was as good as a PDA can get.

Using additional third-party devices and applications, the eMate allowed email and wireless web surfing. Despite its unique form factor, the eMate remained the progeny of the Apple Newton, a handheld device with an operating system of the same name, and most importantly, the world’s first PDA. It featured handwriting recognition which, while criticized for its failures, has turned out to be one of the best in the industry. 

Unfortunately, in 2001, Apple pulled the plug on the platform, four years after it introduced the eMate and eight years after it launched the Newton.

Nevertheless, the so-called Newton faithful remain steadfast. To this day, in an age dominated by Treos, Palms, and Blackberries, Newton users — who encourage each other with slogans such as “Keep the Green,” — remain active in what may well be one of the oldest mailing lists in the world, http://www.newtontalk.net.

Besides featuring discussions of Newtons, eMates, their various issues and incarnations, the list proposes ideas for future third-party applications and latest rumors regarding Apple’s plans to relaunch the Newton, exchanges of which can be viewed online. Among those who belong to this mailing list include this drunken bum, perhaps one of the only two Newton users based in the
Philippines.

Like most members of the Newton faithful, I’m doing my best to keep the green in this part of the world.  

Which is why this blog entry was written on the eMate, the best little green gadget ever to come out of the world’s greatest computer company. Now if only Apple would think about launching the Newton once again… 

From the awards department. This space sends its congratulations to Fritz Dacpano, currently an understudy at the Manila office of the Agence France Press, whose work was chosen as one of the finalists of the Jaime V. Ongpin journalism awards. Dacpano, for some reason or other, remains one of the few readers of this blog.  

*As implied by its name, Battery Specialist not only recells old batteries, it also sells batteries of old gadgets, including obsolete cellphones such as Nokia 5110s. Service is quick and excellent especially after the staff agreed to follow battery recelling instructions indicated in Frank Gruendel’s website, http://www.pda-soft.de. Battery Specialist has branches all across Metro Manila.