Steve Jobs: Palm 'good' at making software 37
by Dieter Bohn Fri, 16 Jul 2010 3:48 pm EDT
In the Q&A after Apple's big iPhone 4 Antenna press conference earlier today, Steve Jobs followed his old business partner Woz's lead in giving Palm a compliment:
And we're pretty good at making software, we showed that in the iPod... other people are good at it too, like Palm, but we brought great software to the smartphone space
How gracious! No wonder Apple considered purchasing Palm before HP snapped them up.
37 Comments
RECOGNIZE! (First)
I read this as:
Palm is "good" and making software, and has it on phones, but Apple is "great" and better and we are the first to really pushed the smartphoen market.
BAH!! Palm is a hell of a lot better then Apple and was there way before Apple knew what a phone/PDA was. Its that Jobs/Apple ego coming out again.
It doesn't matter who was there first. What matters is who is there now.
I stick by Palm and WebOS. I know with the right marketing they can show average people WebOS is much better than Android and IOS
To quote from one of my favourite movies, "Pirates of Silicon Valley"
Steve Jobs: "We're better than you are, we've got better stuff."
Bill Gates: "You don't get it, Steve, that doesn't matter!"
You do remember the Newton? It's the PDA that Apple invented and sold from 1992 to 1998.
Nice!
For His Holiness to acknowledge another company even exists without a blatant insult is pretty impressive. Possibly unprecedented.
This is heads up to HP and Palm that he IS watching them, and knows that they are and will be a formidable competitor in the smartphone market.
Smart man...
(I love being right!)
:)
feels good ;-)
wow.. That's all I have.. Jobs doesn't say good things about competitors..
I wonder if Apple is paying Palm licensing fees for some of the patents Palm holds that iphone uses and vice versa.. That would also explain why Apple doesn't file patent suits against Palm and vice versa...
funny how corporations work behind the scenes.
Now HP/Palm should take note and build some hardware more like Apple. I would love a Pre without my oreo effect.
Besides my Pre is now over a year old and the "itch" for a new phone is getting pretty intense and I am not sure I am sold on Android yet, the the EVO and Epic both look pretty nice.
it also makes sense Steve said this because they just reemployed the guy who came up with notifications for the Pre - i imagine something similar may come their way at some point. IMO of course.
All I wanna know is how much longer do we have to wait for three hugely important things to happen that will challenge the iPhone completely:
1. 3.5 inch Pre Super Mega Plus
2. No more frickin Too Many Cards notifications
3. Flash for Pre
Lastly, can someone get Stevie outta those turtle-necks?! Ain't there an APP for that?!
harharr
On the turtle necks... no can do.
They hide the scar where they put his head on a body that had a working liver. funny how no one is reporting on that little fact. Boy Genius, you have been scooped...
@workerb33 Do you realize just how sick and cruel what you wrote was? That wasn't just juvenile and douchy-that was just frighteningly sadistic...
I mentioned this in a thread and a previous story's commentsm but I can't help but think what Jobs is really thinking, "Of course they make good software, a good chunk of their staff came from Apple".
So it's still a bit of a self-serving compliment.
Of course! if he says something kind, you will have to *imagine* something nasty, and THEN respond to that!
you'll never run out of ammunition that way, my friend! Good job!
I just have a natural distrust of almost anything coming out of Apple these days. It is not without merrit.
The whole 'we were just shocked to learn the algorithm used to calculate the signal strength was in error' was the tipping point for me.
There was also the history between Apple and Palm poaching one another's employees in the back of my head when I made that statement.
So forgive me if my first inclination was to think it wasn't a truly sincere comment.
oh the arrogance. he said Palm is "good", and that's fine... but he DIDN'T say "magical" and I believe webOS is worthy of the superlatives "awesome" and "magical".
So, let's see if Steve will bow to pressure and apologize for insulting webOS in such a public forum...
...oh, wait...
I guess its better than the way he insulted Android and HTC users.
That is nice. Also a bit of a dig at the other big boys: Android & Blackberry.
Anyone else take this as a second pat on Apples back? Just because some (not all, but some) people defected from Apple to Palm and then Palm created WebOS. I for sure wasn't just the Apple people but giving praise to Palm is kinda like Apple saying, 'Well they were at Apple first so that may have had something to do with the reason their [WebOS] software is so good.' I dunno, seemed that way to me.
I made a similar comment a few posts above -- we are definitely on the same page.
hey JonVisc do some research on WebOS.. The people from Apple didn't defect and create WebOS... It was already being made and Palm asked Jon Rubenstein who was a friend to take a look and give some advice on what they should do with it and what he thought of the OS..
Jon checked it out said he really liked what he seen and the new direction Palm was taking could open up new doors and be a ground breaking OS. He first had to wait for his no compete contract to expire from Apple.. Once that contract was up he joined Palm and redesigned some aspects of the phone.
the original design had a good ol pressure sensitve touch screen like Palm had been using all these years.. He said no we have to put the same kind of capacitive touch screen the iphone has because that's the future of touchscreens..
then he looked at the OS and it was good but needed some polishing. At which point Jon snatched up various Apple employees that used to work under him when their contracts were up and they came over and put the finishing touches on WebOS.
shortly after the Palm Pre was released that's when Palm made Jon Rubenstein CEO.. Honestly Steve Jobs making a compliment towards Palm makes a little sense considering while Rubenstein was at Apple he was Steve Jobs right hand man....
so in hindsight it would not surprise me if there was some kind of friendship between the 2 companies that isn't known about.
but as for snatching Apple employees to create WebOS.. Nope they were brought on only to smooth the edges out... It was already being developed and almost finished when we got apple employees.
Yes but Apple has software AND hardware. Step up HP!
It's a pretty accurate comment. My Palm Treos did what iPhones did years before the first iPhone came out. They just weren't slick and well integrated enough to break through to a broad public, while the iPhone was.
The Pre is now comparable to the iPhone in slickness and integration (better in some ways, worse in others), but it came out a couple of years too late to be the first smartphone that broke through to the general public.
well let c ... A few of the people that made webos worked for apple before and the people that make our apps make apples apps and palm used macs lol ima apple hatta but hey I gess he has a right to say what he said but WEBOS IS BETTA !!!!! Just newer and a little behind in the game right now and that will soon change thx HP lets eat some apple now !!!!! Make a few piezzzzz!!!!!!!
he only mentions PALM to try to slow down DROID
Before the HP purchase, I'd agree. Palm was too small a company to be a real danger to Apple. Now it's a different playing field entirely. HP's 2009 revenues exceeded Apple, Google and HTC COMBINED.
Maybe HP needs a phone hardware gigant like HTC ? That will deeply wound Google.
Do HP have their own hardware factories?
At the speed Apple revenues are growing they will equal HP within less than 5 years. Last year they made 40 billion, this year it will be more than 60 billion.
I wonder why he didn't say that Adobe makes good software.?
Not surprised. Steve Jobs has recently said "Just because we're competing with someone doesn't mean we have to be rude." in an interview. He's always been respectful of competition so I don't really find this as a surprise.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Steve-Jobs-Google-Android,10567.html
You must be talking about a different Steve Jobs, because the one at Apple is even rude and condescending to his employees.
Steve Jobs isn't usually disparaging of other companies. He's actually pretty respectful of them and can give them praise. It's good that he can recognize that Palm makes great software- but he said nothing about their hardware because let's be honest... Palm doesn't make good hardware. My Pre Plus has in my opinion the best mobile os and software in the world on it and I love it, but the hardware... it sucks. Screen is plastic and scratchable and way too small, the processor is slow, the slider is fragile, the sleep button is a pain to use, and the battery is just a complete piece of shit. Now, they could've made better hardware if they weren't strapped for cash so we'll see what comes out of Palm now that they've got HP behind them- but that's for another day. Point is, Steve Jobs didn't go into any of that. He doesn't like to attack his competitors too much. He could've easily brought that up and seized the opportunity- he didn't though. He can be a bit passive agressive sometimes (Microsoft is the main one who gets this- Windows Visa and Zune launch were easy targets of course) but usually he's respectful. I think that's where Rubenstien gets it- look at him during the D7 interviews and you'll see. Of course, he could've just been trying to tell McNameeNow to think before speaking and to stop digging his own grave own stage :P Now, look at Googe during their I/O keynote. They were really, really going after Apple at every opportunity. They claimed to make Android to free us from a draconian future of "one man' one carrier, one phone, one OS"- Please Google, stop with that bullshit. Google is a company, they're in the Android business to make money by selling apps to users and OEMS (gApps aren't free as in beer or speech, sorry) to buy their apps and to get the Google name out there more and, of course, to get ahold of all the location, usage, and analytics data they can get. Google, during the keynote. came off as acting very weak and defensive- they can't stand on their own as making a good product. I like Google and have lots of respect for them, but they act like they're not even a multibillion dollar corporation. Now, Apple has their own issues but they don't need to badmouth competitors. Steve Jobs isn't a jerk- he's a very persistant man and highly savvy CEO and businessman who is a complete perfectionist and appears to undoubtably have so very severe obsessive compulsive disorder. I know OCD when I see it, trust me. I don't understand why so many people are so cynical about Apple... corporations are just that- corporations
Apple is not that gracious. That attacked a slew of other companies for an issue that only the iPhone has. Yes you can cause signal degradation while holding the entire body of a phone. The iPhone though, loses all service, both data and phone, by touching the bottom WITH ONLY ONE FINGER! How is this the same?
This post shows video of the iPhone 4 dropping all service when touched by only one finger.
http://wp.me/pv73k-1Au
How is this the same?
This could only be me, but the way I understood his comment was that he wasn't necessarily referring to webOS, but that instead he saw Palm OS as good software and the iPhone as the first device that put great mobile software on a smartphone.