Recently Google Voice made its return to webOS in app form and it looks and feels like it was part of the OS all along. What is even more remarkable than the fact that it took this long for a developer to find a workaround for the problems that killed the old Google Voice apps, is the revelation that the developer who finally figured it out is only 14 years old.
It’s a happy headline, and a sad headline, all wrapped into six delightful and painful words that boild down like so: Skype support is finally coming to webOS, but it’s only coming if you’re on Verizon. Thanks to an exclusive deal between VoIP giant Skype and American cellular behemoth Verizon, only phones on Big Red get to have access to the sweet Skypes. Blessedly, at least current Verizon webOS devices should also get access to Skype, as soon as the webOS 2.0 update is pushed down to the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on that network.
Read the Press Release
Multitasking. Unified email inboxes. Multiple Exchange accounts. Welcome to the future, our iPhone-toting friends. Well, eventually you’ll get there. Apple last week provided a preview of iPhone OS 4.0, and it looked vaguely familiar to those of us that have been using webOS. There are two truly big features that will be part of iPhone OS 4.0, with multitasking being the one that most users will care about. The implementation, however, is less than impressive.
Here’s the thing, as Rene Ritchie over at TiPb has pointed out before, webOS’ cards metaphor for multitasking seems to be an extension of what Apple did for managing multiple open pages in mobile Safari, with a dash of gestures thrown in for good measure. If you were to ask me, I’d say that’s more than likely what Steve Jobs and Co. would have preferred to do (and probably were preparing to do) for multitasking on the iPhone. But as important as multitasking is for the future of the iPhone platform, their perception as a leading innovator is also important, so just copying what Palm has done would be a PR disaster.
If you’re a Sprint subscriber and you live in an area of spotty cell service, you’re probably familiar with the AIRAVE, the company’s CDMA femtocell. If so, you’re also probably familiar with the gadget’s limitations, namely its lack of 3G and VoIP support.
We’ve been expecting updated hardware to come down the pike for some time now, and a tipster has recently made us wise to the fact that a refresh to the popular device is neigh, citing an internal Sprint email that’s being sent around picturing a revamped AIRAVE boasting VoIP landline and EV-DO support. Corroborating this tip is a FCC filing recently dug up by the folks over at Engadget.
We’re still digging around for the details on pricing and availability, but it’s probably safe to assume that it’ll be priced similarly to the current offering (free for some, $99 for others, with monthly fees starting at $10). As far as availability, when draft manuals start getting emailed to employees and filings bubble up on the FCC’s website, you can assume that it will be "soon".
Current AIRAVE users: are the upcoming enhancements enough to warrant an upgrade for you?
Thanks to gilligan793 for the tip!
Here’s some of what’s being discussed in the forums.
We look forward to seeing you in the forums. Not a member? There’s no better time than the present to become one. Registration is free, and the benefits are immense.
One of the things that I have never had much personal use for is VoIP. I don’t; use it on my computer and I have never felt the need to give VoIP a shot on my mobile phone. Some people feel differently though and if you are a Pre user you will have several VoIP [...]
While we wait and wait for more apps to become available in the App Catalog for the Palm Pre, we can at least whet our appetite with news of new apps that will eventually be available to us for download. Later this year, VOXOFON will have a VoIP app available to Pre users. This app [...]
The year was September 2005. Palm was riding high, having sold close to 500,000 Treo smartphones the preceding quarter. The dominated the fledgling consumer smartphone market, and were putting up stiff competition against Research in Motion’s BlackBerry line. Fast forward two years to September 2007: Palm’s sales were up to 689,000 units for the quarter, but RIM had moved 3.2 million BlackBerries worldwide and Apple had just introduced their iPhone to the tune of one million sold on AT&T alone. A year later, they’d move that many of the next generation in three days.
Up until recently, things had been looking pretty bad for Palm. Delays, aging software, and shrinking marketshare made it look like Palm was about to sink into oblivion. Back in 2000, Palm stock traded at an ungodly $669/share (adjusting for splits and dividends), today it’s at just over $11 (up from a low of a pitiful $1.14 last December). While the past nine years have had Palm stock suffering a decline of 98%, Apple is up 282% while RIM is up 188%.
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Stock analysis website 24/7 Wall St. has seen fit to include Palm’s perceived failure to fully translate from PDA to smartphone and subsequent enormous stock devaluation as one of its top ten biggest tech failures of the past decade. Palm has joined the ranks of operating system Windows Vista (though Microsoft is still going strong), decimated PC builder Gateway, defunct disc format HD DVD, crumbling VOIP provider Vonage, Google-owned money pit YouTube, satellite radio provider Sirius XM, Microsoft’s Zune MP3 player, $5 billion satellite phone failure Iridium, and odd-ball people-mover Segway.
Is there hope for Palm? While they’ll have trouble ever hoping to topple RIM and Apple, and Palm’s executives have made it clear that’s not their goal, the memories of Palm’s market dominance collapse are still fresh in the minds of many. Maybe, just maybe, the Pre (and webOS by extension) will be that breath of life that Palm needs. Though we’re never going to see $669 a share for Palm stock ever again.