Tag Archives: Palm Pre

[Pre] Palm Pre Release Date for Germany

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October 13th will be the day many people have been waiting for. The official iPhone competitor by Palm will be released in Germany. The Pre will be exclusively available from O2 Germany.

According to their latest information the Palm Pre will also be available without subscription for about 480€ (=700US$). There is currently no information about upcoming special Palm Pre O2 tariffs.

In Great Britain and Ireland the Pre will be released on october 16th.

In contrast to T-Mobile’s german iPhone tariffs, O2 Germany is gonna allow VoIP applications like Sipgate or Skype (via german Heise.de News).

[Pre] Merry Me again: Update Reunites Palm Pre with iTunes

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The “little Palm Apple battle” goes into its next round. A week ago Apple released iTunes 8.2.1. This update blocked Palm Pre users from synchronizing music and movies with iTunes. We reported about this update and the technical implications of the sync feature here.

Palm has now released a firmware update (webOS 1.1.0) for the Palm Pre. According to Palm’s blog entry this update contains the following features:

  • Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) (including remote wipe, PIN/password requirements, inactivity timeout, improved certificate handling and more)
  • support for emoticons in the messaging app
  • person reminders (“Next time you get a message or phone call from that person, a message pops up showing you a reminder to ask them about their vacation in Maui” ct. Palmblog)
  • and Palm webOS 1.1 re-enables Palm media sync with music, photos and videos with the current version of iTunes (8.2.1).

Got issues with the Update?

Our fellow Heise.de News (german only) recommend not to update your Palm Pre while it is connected to iTunes. In case you did that and your Palm Pre does not interact on USB anymore, do a hard reset with unplugging the battery.

[News] Apple Bar Palm Pre from Syncing with iTunes

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With the latest update of iTunes 8.2.1 Apple eventually blocks Palm Pre users from syncing with iTunes. It seems Palm knew very carefully how to emulate the iPod verification protocol of iTunes. How comes?

Some major Palm Guys are former major Apple Guys

One could ask Palm’s CEO Jon Rubinstein, or Palm’s SVP of Product Development Mike Bell, or Palm’s spokeswoman Lynn Fox. As all of these three guys are former Apple guys. Rubinstein was Apple’s architect of the iTunes-iPod concept, Mike Bell was the Vice President of the Mac Hardware Division, and Lynn Fox was Head of PR at Apple.

Anyway Apple now decided to fix this issue and bar Palm Pre users from using iTunes for syncing. But what looks like a simple update in the first place may be viewed as a strategic answer to Palm’s boldness to make the Pre pretend being an iPod for iTunes.

Some Technical Aspects

According to DVD Jon the iPod emulation was not too complicated. Palm needed to emulate

  • the USB interface so that it responds with Apple’s Vendor ID and an iPod Product ID
  • the structure of an iPod filesystem
  • some XML info about the iPod device using a custom Apple USB command

But the the root USB node (IOUSBDevice) still identified the emulated iPod as a Palm Pre (find more details here).

David vs. Goliath

Does Apple fear Palm here? It seems like Palm is putting Apple under some pressure here. The Palm Pre is widely considered as the only real iPhone competitor and allowing it to sync with iTunes would make it more favourable for users who don’t like the proprietory iPhone concept. On the other hand Apple’s step to block it from iTunes again makes the iPhone and iPods the only choice for iTunes users. Anyway it shows obviously that a little fight is going on between Apple and Palm. This topic is under hot discussion on the PreCentral site.

Palm’s spokeswoman Lynn Fox just responded to Apple’s step “Palm’s media sync works with iTunes 8.2. If Apple chooses to disable media sync in iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience. However, people will have options. They can stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre, they can transfer the music via USB, and there are other third-party applications we can consider.”

[Pre] Palm Pre Goes Europe

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There have been rumors in the last weeks which carrier which offer the Palm Pre in European countries. As of today we know the rumors were true. In Germany, Great Britain, Ireland O2 will be the exclusive distributor of Palm’s new flagship, in Spain the iPhone competitor will be offered by Movistar.

As of now other European carriers seem to be in negotiations with Palm for exclusive distribution. There are no information yet about subscription prices. According to the O2’s german Preregistration site introduction to the german market is planned for october 2009.

» German 02 preregistration for the Palm Pre…

[News] Steve Jobs back in Business

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We’re almost sure, you read it already all over the net: Steve Jobs is back in his office. Rumors say he was transplanted a liver about two months ago and he is in good health condition.

Our comment

Does all these news affect anything? Currently it seems no.

Apple’s presentations can also be run by Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, Bertrand Serlet, and Scott Forstall as we’ve seen on the last WWDC. But what about the future? What about the products?

This year’s WWDC

This year’s WWDC did not have new big products. It was all about the operating system update to 10.6. (called Snow Leopard) and iPhone 3GS that mainly has been speed improved and now got features that many people said to be overdue.

The future?

What will be the next WWDC presentation about? Yet another Mac Book Super Pro? Or another iPhone 3Gs2?

Who will be the wholistic spin doctor who feeds the company with ideas and innovations? This is the main question. And we’re gonna find out within the next few years.

Competition

We suppose competition will become harder at least in the field of cell phones. As Palm hired Apple’s iPod architect Jon Rubinstein three years ago it seems Apple has lost someone knowing how to design user interfaces for digital media.

What leads us to the bold question: why not buying Palm to stop those “separatistic” tendencies and make Jon Rubinstein Steve Job’s successor?

[Pre] Palm Pre to Sync with iTunes

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In the beginning there were only rumors, now it’s a fact. The upcoming iPhone competitor “Palm Pre” will allow seamingless integration into iTunes. Thus making synchronization between photos, DRM free music and contacts almost hassle free.

Moreover the “Palm Pre” will be organized as a mass storage device. Which means you can also just copy and paste your data to the Pre from the device tree in Windows’ “Explorer” or the Mac’s “Finder”.

The Palm Pre will be released on June 6th, 2009 in the U.S. of A. Sadly, there is still no release date available for Europe.

This video is courtesy of AllThingsD by the Wall Street Journal:

[Pre] New Rumors about Palm Pre’s Release Date

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On the SprintGurus.com forums Coal – one of the admins – seems to have had access to internal Sprint documents. Coal says there might be “2 release windows, one is around 6/7/09 – the other I cannot say much on”.

This could match rumors from EverythingPre.com, who have been informed by an anonymous guy that the first shipment of Palm Pre’s has left Hong Kong in route to the U.S.

As this is rumors all over, we’d better wait and see. Let’s not get into hysteria. The Palm Pre will come with a bang anyway.

The picture is courtesy of Palm.com…

palmpre.png

[Pre] Palm Pre’s Release Date

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According to phonenews.com the US american carrier Sprint will be the official distributor of Palm’s new flagship “Pre”. phonenews.com is referring to internal Sprint memos that there are two possible launch dates.

If Palm can deliver enough units the launch might be on May 17th, 2009 or if not the release will be delayed until June 29th, 2009. The end of june has also been mentioned by Palm when referring to the iPhone. At the end of June, the first iPhone subscribtions will be finished and people might want to search for an alternative.

In our opinion the Pre is a very strong contender to the iPhone. Its Linux based WebOS looks also very interesting to developers and hackers. Moreover the Pre supports multi-tasking. Let’s see what the new iPhone models will feature.

palmpre.png

[iPhone] Rumors about 3rd Gen iPhone Features

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Apple’s policy to upgrade devices once a year seems also to apply to the iPhone. A new iPhone – 3rd generation – is expected to be released at the end of june/beginning of july.

Rumors are circulating about the following features:

  • Developers who are already working with the latest beta version of iPhone OS 3.0 now report new drivers for WLAN chipsets allowing 802.11n connections to access points (according to MacRumors.com)
  • Also the camera could get an upgrade to 3.2megapixels as those CMOS image sensors have been ordered in large quantity (according to the asian Digitimes.com)
  • A video capture function seems to become integrated (according to EngadgetMobile.com)
  • A video editing function might become available (according to austrian Benm.at)
  • USB tethering might become available (also according to EngadgetMobile.com)

Will the 3rd gen iPhone be the same success story like the 1st and the 2nd generation? Let’s see.

We are very curious on the battle against the Palm Pre, that has been designed by the former Apple Manager and iPod architect Jon Rubinstein.

By the way: iPhoneBuzz.com has already released a comprehensive comparison between iPhone OS 3.0 beta and the Palm Pre. And StuffTV.com yet allows themselves to summarize the Linux based Palm Pre will be superiour to the iPhone. See here: