On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, Kenneth Albanowski wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, Tom Zerucha wrote:
>
> > ZDOC is free, and you can edit records, and there are other free...
> >
> > Palm should consider a shareware/freeware/demoware directory ...
>
> This isn't the same. There's sure to be some subset of the Palm users who
> have never used shareware, never used freeware, never downloaded stuff off
> the Internet, never installed third-party software, etc. (A sad fact for
> third-party developers, of course.)
The number of people with this objection is small, otherwise a replacement
memopad would be profitable for under $20 and would be selling briskly at
the CompUSAs and the like. And everyone installs 3rd party batteries.
> Unless I seriously miss my mark, shareware/freeware/demoware on the CD can
> only ever count as a "bonus" feature that only some of the users will get
> to. In addition, Palm would need to think long and hard about "suggesting"
> anyone use a specific piece of third-party software: if they do, customers
> will want Palm to support the software, never mind who wrote it.
Your original point was that Palm is losing sales because it can't store
items over 4K. Well, it can, just not with the original Memo Pad program.
Palm could come up with an enhanced MemoPad, but it would have to be
installed. And they do have some extra apps - mostly games - on their
disk. I am sure they could add their own DOC reader if they thought it
was significant.
There are a lot of things CE devices cannot do out of the box either. I
take it you asked them and they universally said they would never add any
application to their PDA whatsoever? (And I don't think a Nino can beam
an app to an E-10 and have it work).
> > Or you could simply say "no". And offer to beam them a DOC reader/writer.
>
> Which only works for the set of folks who own IR capable Palm units who
> run into someone else with an IR capable Palm unit (or at least something
> capable of communicating _with_ a Palm unit)...
[One wonders how humans find time to replace the population, what with the
probablilty of CommIrDA interruptis so high, but they seem to do it]
Happens to me all the time. "Oh, you have a palm III too?... There is
this neat app... [Beam] Do you know of anything that does ... Sure...".
Most Palm apps don't require reading docs (which is why I am to this day
discovering new modes or shorter ways of doing things - I didn't realize
that lists (popup or fixed) would scroll with the hardware buttons until
last month). It is why I like Palm better than CE (and Mac better than
Wintel). Honestly, how many apps have you read the docs fully - not just
to glance or to find out how to do something obscure? I think if they
buried a ($100 to the first 50 people who report this box) in the fine
print in the manual they would still have most of their money.
And beaming takes only a few seconds. I have three internal apps that it
is actually faster for me to walk around and beam to update the units
around here instead of telling them to hotsync the .prc on the network.
(Beaming occurs at 57600 baud after the inital exchange, same as hotsync,
and you don't have to play with your desktop).
> This technique is useful for convincing folks, I'll grant, but won't do
> much for driving sales.
They need to be able to give them away for 3 hours. That is the
incubation period of the addiction. I couldn't tolerate accessing more
than 4K of info on the CE palmtop devices I have seen.
Except word-of-mouth. Though I am still waiting for a Macish ad - maybe a
palm V in shadow with the opening strains of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" in
the background, and a primate throws a bone at it and the backlight turns
on to show the splash screen, and the primate, turned human wearing a suit
grabs it and heads off to a busy day - fade to "The organizer for the 21st
century" type of thing.
I have yet to see an ad for the Palm in any non notebook/laptop/palmtop
specific venue. But it doesn't seem to be hurting sales.
> Text fields can go larger (but I assume the 4K choice was an efficiency
> trade-off.
The only slowness I have noticed with larger text fields is with reverse
scrolling (scroll to the bottom, drag upwards).
Theoretically if you can find the resource you should be able to change
the maxfieldchars to something larger.
