The most glaring deficit is in the available applications. It’s not a question of needing 100,000 to choose from — it’s simply a matter of not having major titles available in the Application Catalog. I realize that Palm hasn’t yet opened up the catalog to everyone, so I don’t entirely blame developers. And I knew in advance that development would be slow for this reason. But I’m getting antsy and tired of waiting. Look at this way — can you name five webOS software titles from major third-party developers? I’m struggling to do so. Even lesser known “brand names” or “web brands” aren’t in the catalog yet. It seems that as each day passes, I hear about a great new app for iPhone or Android, but not for Palm. Recently we mentioned a few of these: Slacker, Photoshop, Remember the Milk to name a few just in the past week or two.

In many cases, I can use the Pre’s web browser to get things done without using a mobile application. Much of my online time is with WordPress, since that’s where this site is hosted. I’m not creating posts on my phones, but I’m reading — and responding to — comments, checking stats, scheduling posts and more. That’s doable in a small browser, but the WordPress iPhone client has me constantly carrying my iPhone in addition to my Pre. And that’s just one of many examples. The few Twitter clients for webOS are usable, but the ones for iPhone and Android are far better in terms of the user experience. Facebook is the same way — in fact, that’s a prime example. Until recently, the limited Facebook web client for mobiles was abysmal to use — I couldn’t even respond to a wall post or comment. It’s much better now, but Facebook on iPhone is where it’s at.

And about that webOS browser — it’s good, but it still needs work. Some of the basic functionality that didn’t work on day one still isn’t there. I still can’t tell where I am on a page because there’s no indicator. And when I try to read a reader comment here on the site, tapping the link to it doesn’t take me to the comment — it simply takes me to the post page where the comment is. I have to manually go and find it myself. Is it any wonder I just use the WordPress client for iPhone?

In any case, I’m committed to give my Pre a fair chance, given the known schedule and constraints. And I do love the hardware as well as the webOS UI. I’ll probably give things until February to sort themselves out. If I don’t see enough progress, I’ll very likely look at what Android 2.0 devices are available at that time. I doubt it will be a Droid though, as I expect even better devices in the first quarter of 2010. Android is far from perfect, but its maturity is happening far faster. And it’s a vicious cycle that puts Palm at a disadvantage — as Android gains market share and features, developers are far more likely to invest their resources in a bigger platform.

Think I’m being to hard on my Palm Pre? Let me know in the comments — just keep in mind that I’m speaking about my own needs. If a webOS device is meeting all of your needs, then you should be happy with your device. I’m not trying to convince you otherwise, nor is this a “jumping on / off the bandwagon” approach. Every one of us should be evaluating the mobile tools we use. If they don’t work, then seeking alternatives is what we should be doing.

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The fact of the matter is that the data plan is a separate item from the netbook, no matter the subsidy. Sure the carrier will knock off a few hundred dollars so you’ll buy the netbook, but the real product they are selling is the data plan. Subsidy or no, netbook or notebook, if you don’t need a two-year data plan then don’t buy it. If the data plan is important to your work or other need, then get it and view the netbook as a throw-in on that deal.

What most fuzzy mathematicians fail to note is that carriers will let you move the data plan to any other device, even if you bought a netbook from them. You can move the plan to a “full” notebook down the road if you decide the netbook is too restrictive. You can move the plan to one of those fancy MiFi devices, or even a USB modem. It’s your data plan for two years and you can do what you want with it (except cancel it without penalty).

So don’t buy a data plan to get a cheap subsidized netbook — they are all cheap already. Buy a data plan because that’s what you need, and if you get the cheap netbook so be it. It’s still a cheap netbook — not a four figure netbook no matter what anyone says.

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See, that’s one of the common responses I get when I talk about Microsoft becoming a potential “also-ran” to Apple, Google and Research in Motion. Folks defend the platform passionately with quotes like “I can install any third party app on my Windows Mobile device and there are tens of thousands of them out there.” Or “Windows Mobile currently has every single other platform beat hands-down in terms of app library due to its long history.” Good points. Apple says there are now 85,000 applications in their store, but I really have no idea how that compares to the Windows Mobile space. Nor do any other consumers.

I know that I’ve used a fair share of third-party applications during my WinMo days. Some of them were outstanding and I’d load ‘em up on every WinMo handset I had. And I suspect that many of you have felt the same joy about certain programs in the past. So why then, isn’t Microsoft defending Windows Mobile in this regard? I’m sure it’s difficult to determine the exact number of applications available for Windows Mobile since there isn’t yet a centralized place to find them, but even an estimate would be handy, no?

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The hardware does indeed blanket your home with better coverage on your handset. But that’s just for the network traffic between your handset and the femtocell — it doesn’t magically alter the wireless cellular signal from the femtocell to the nearest cell tower. So how then, does the femtocell enhance your phone coverage? It does it over broadband, which you have to provide and pay for. The femtocell routes traffic through your home Internet connection to give you better voice, and potentially, data coverage at home. I’m not questioning the value or need of such a device, especially since we cut our landline cord a few months ago. Ultimately, we need solid cellphone coverage in our house. The problem is that the business model is skewed far more towards the carrier. How so?

Essentially, you need a femtocell in the home because the carrier that provides you service simply can’t cover that service in your house. Instead of the expense to add another cellular tower nearby, they’re offering you a mini-tower, which takes network traffic off of their network. Put another way – you’re paying the carrier extra money each month because they can’t provide you service that you’re already paying for. They benefit from the decreased traffic on the rest of their network. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — instead of charging consumers $5, $10 or $20 a month for femtocell use, they should instead be crediting customers that amount to help with their coverage and network issues.

Update: I see Gizmodo agrees with my rant, although they use slightly more colorful language. ;)

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Lee mentions that the “typical Windows Vista netbook runs from $300 to $500.” That’s an accurate statement, but I’d argue its relevance. Why? Go out and look at netbooks for sale in a retail store or online. Now out of the lot of them, how many run Windows Vista as opposed to those that run Windows XP? I’ve been watching this market since it became a market and I’d say netbooks with XP outnumber those with Vista by at least 8 to 1. So why utilize Windows Vista to draw sweeping generalizations about the Intel Atom and netbooks as a whole? It simply doesn’t make sense.

The culprit, Lee says, is bad marketing research. People want lightweight portable computers with long battery life, so that’s why netbooks are made and sold. My question to Lee would be: if that’s what people want and computer makers are willing to build them, what’s the issue? Actually, is there an issue at all? Last I checked, netbook sales were up and growing in a what’s otherwise a down market for PC makers. Surely, there are a few happy customers in the tens of millions buying netbooks, no?

I understand that Lee is pointing out how limiting an Intel Atom netbook can be when compared to full-featured desktops. That’s not in dispute. But the fact is — proven by those big sales numbers for a market that’s not yet two years old – there’s a place for low-powered computing devices in the world. No, they may not handle Windows Vista well, although they’re pretty capable with Windows 7. And Lee’s right that “games like Flight Simulator are a joke,” but the fact that he even installed such a game on a netbook tells me that his expectations of the device were flawed from the start. It’s simple once you understand what both the Atom and netbooks are for: basic computing for several hours in various locations. Once you have that expectation in mind, I think you’ll find that both the chip and the device are well suited to the task. If instead, you need heavy duty multitasking, high-definition video and 3-D gaming, you’ll have to step up to a more expensive and power hungry chip in a what’s likely a larger device.

How about it, netbook owners? Netbooks and the Intel Atom certainly don’t do everything well, but are they doing enough of what you need on the go?

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Lenovo has done a masterful job with the multitouch on the T400s. It is light touch, as good as that on any smartphone, and can sense up to four points simultaneously. It can detect two-handed operations; even two people can manipulate things on-screen at once with accuracy. The multitouch feature is implemented as well as it can be. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change my opinion that the feature adds little of value to notebook usage.

There are no doubt special work functions that can reap a big benefit from the addition of multitouch screens on the notebook. I can imagine those who work in 3D modeling could really use the ability to manipulate objects on the screen. Perhaps professional Photoshop jockeys can gain good mileage in much the same way. Those are just a couple of tasks that come to mind that could benefit from the special multitouch features. That’s assuming that applications exist that can take advantage of multitouch, and I don’t know if that’s the case. Not very many of us would routinely do that, anyway.

Regular users will find the Windows 7 touch features to be cool, at first. Executing things by gesture on the screen looks pretty special, and is something new and exciting. The excitement only lasts for a while, however; then the reality sets in that it’s not comfortable to keep reaching out to the screen and touching it. Notebook ergonomics didn’t evolve with direct screen manipulation in mind, and you soon start to feel that. You find that you quickly go back to using the touchpad and keyboard to do things like before. In other words — the novelty wears off pretty soon and it’s back to business as usual, with the touchscreen rarely touched.

I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t being unduly harsh on the technology, so I’ve had my wife using the T400s a fair bit. She’s a typical notebook user who does the things that most folks do on a laptop. She used it for hours and when I asked her about her experience she hesitated for a bit prior to answering. She went on to explain how the multitouch features were very cool at first, that she enjoyed the “novelty of the experience.” But it didn’t take long for her to realize that the ability didn’t add much value for her uses, and she noticed after a while that she rarely touched the screen again.

She did say that if the notebook was in fact a convertible tablet that her impression might have been more favorable. Rotating the screen around to slate form would make the notebook a more comfortable form for manipulating the screen directly. I agree with that assessment 100 percent. The standard notebook form factor just doesn’t fit well with touchscreen use.

I will be showing off the nice touch implementation that Lenovo has with the T400s soon. It must be seen on video to appreciate it fully, and that’s what I’ll do. Then you can judge for yourself if I’m being too harsh on the technology or not.

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My email is pure Gmail, so the outage affected me like all the other Gmail users. My email went down, stayed down for a while, and then came back up just like yours. Did I panic? No, I knew it would come back, and pretty soon at that. Did the lack of email kill off my productivity? Nope. I just worked on other things.

Let’s face it, email is hosted on servers, whether Google’s or someone else’s. And servers go down from time to time. It’s a fact of life — nothing runs forever. Sure we can jump up and down and scream at Google, but why? I knew Gmail would come back and sure enough it did.

I heard all kinds of complaints when Gmail went down. People saying that email service X would never go down like that. Or others saying that Google OWED us to keep Gmail up and running. Give me a break, stuff happens. When I was in the corporate world it was oh, so common to hear employees at some large company or another wandering down the halls claiming that “email is down again.” And this the fancy corporate Exchange Server that only has to keep their own employees working. Stuff happens.

I had my own hosted Exchange Server for a long time and while it rarely went down, sometimes it did. The fact is that email servers are on the web and sometimes access to the server (or the web) is cut off. Stuff happens and we just have to get over it.

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After much anticipation and waiting, Windows phones get a grand introduction on October 6th. These are the handsets that will feature Windows Mobile 6.5, which was officially introduced back in February. Yes, they’ll run WinMo 6.5, but Microsoft says that “most people who carry a Windows phone don’t realize it’s running Windows Mobile,” hence the new Windows Phone branding. The new devices will arrive on various carriers worldwide:

• In North America: Mobile operators AT&T, Bell Mobility, Sprint, TELUS and Verizon Wireless, and phone manufacturers HP, HTC Corp., LG Electronics, Samsung and Toshiba Corp.
• In Europe: Mobile operators Orange, Deutsche Telekom AG and Vodafone Group Plc, and phone manufacturers Acer, HTC, LG Electronics, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba
• In Latin America: Mobile operator TIM Brazil, and phone manufacturers HTC, LG Electronics and Samsung
• In Asia Pacific: Mobile operators NTT DOCOMO Inc., SOFTBANK Mobile Corp., SK Telecom, Telstra and WILLCOM Inc., and phone manufacturers Acer Inc., HTC, LG Electronics, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba

Aside from the new Windows Marketplace, which launches the same day, this effort looks more like a re-branding and less of a platform evolution to me. That’s not to say that Windows Mobile isn’t evolving or it has no place in today’s mobile world, because it is and it does. But based on relative market share and more modern platforms, it seems to have less of a place than ever before.

Microsoft Exchange support, always rock-solid with ActiveSync, was the biggest advantage Windows Mobile for me over other handsets. But now most of the major platforms license that technology or offer it through third-party solutions, so that advantage is lost. There are definitely other features that Windows Mobile provides that might be better, but I’m not sold that they’re key features that most people want or use on a daily basis. These days, it’s all about apps and the web.

While Windows Mobile offers a huge array of great applications, it’s lacking natively in the web. Yes, consumers can add a highly capable version of Opera or some other browser, but if they’re new to smartphones, they won’t likely know to do that. And if they already own a smartphone with a capable WebKit browser, do you think they’re going to move to Windows Mobile for a third-party browser? I suspect most of them won’t — regardless if the phone is called a Windows Mobile phone or just a Windows phone. It’s a shame that Microsoft let Research in Motion beat them to the punch by purchasing Torch Mobile and their WebKit browser technology for Windows Mobile. I’d probably feel differently about Windows Mobile 6.5 if that happened sooner and the new mobile OS used WebKit for Internet Explorer.

Yes, I’m now ducking from the onslaught of commentary from the WinMo faithful. ;)

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Aside from the operating system and handset makers getting in on the app store action, the carriers are doing it too. They’ve actually done this for a long time, but some — like Verizon Wireless — are renewing their efforts, based on what I read in Colin Gibbs’s 33-page GigaOm PRO briefing (subscription required) this week. In Colin’s survey of the mobile app landscape, the market looks more diluted than I originally realized. Colin offers a detailed overview of the competitive advantages and disadvantages each player faces, along with the challenges each individual app store is up against for consumer and brand awareness. I still say one platform should equal one app store tops, but then again, I like a neat and tidy space. ;)

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The AT&T and Apple relationship roots run very deep now — the two have dated on an exclusive basis since the initial iPhone announcement in January of 2007. If they keep this relationship up until 2014, some states would consider them in a common-law marriage! As long as AT&T carries Apple phones exclusively, I’m not sure they’ll offer an Android handset.

I actually wonder if Cupertino has enough influence to prevent that from happening, to be honest. Obviously, I don’t know. But if the mobile space becomes a two-horse race as some are thinking it will, I can’t see why Apple would let AT&T have an affair with Google. It would be good for AT&T — and its customers — to offer a choice of solid smartphone platforms. Apple might lose some of its favored status, though, and I’m not sure it would be too happy in that situation. If AT&T does offer a modern, new Android handset in the next year or two, I expect some heavy-duty relationship counseling sessions between the carrier and Apple.

With the current situation in the U.S., Google actually looks like the winner in all of this. The company already has two Android handsets available to T-Mobile customers. There are rumors that an upcoming Motorola Android handset is coming to Verizon Wireless in late October. And although Sprint is currently focused on the Palm Pre, that exclusive deal runs out around the end of the year. Dan Hesse of Sprint has alluded to waiting for Android to mature — which it has, thanks to the Cupcake update and more apps — so I’m expecting Android for Sprint customers, too. In the end, Google is well-positioned with the AT&T and Apple fling — it can play the field and gain more customers overall with a wider net. Thoughts?

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