Tag Archives: iwork

Seven features that make the Palm Pre better than the iPhone

There was a glow on the face of every Palm employee we saw today, and deservedly so: the new Palm Pre is a hail mary product. It’s probably going to save the company.

And it is, in many ways, better than the iPhone.

via Seven features that make the Palm Pre better than the iPhone – Boing Boing Gadgets.

UPDATE 3: Video courtesy Ars:

UPDATE 1: Oops, forget the all-important specs… Kudos to iLounge.

Palm today introduced its latest handset, named the Pre. Featuring a 3.1-inch, 480×320 touchscreen, a dedicated gesture area below the display, a vertical slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and more, the device is aimed at the same market as the iPhone. Other technical features include high-speed wireless (EV-DO Rev. A or HSDPA, depending on the model and carrier), GPS, Wi-Fi, a 3-megapixel camera with LED flash, 3.5mm headphone jack, microUSB connector, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP, 8GB of internal storage, an accelerometer, ambient light and proximity sensors, a removable rechargeable battery, and an optional wireless charger. Pre is exclusive at launch to Sprint.

Folks, I’m not going to kid you on this one – Apple actually have a real fight on their hands here, for these three reasons:

Firstly, it runs Linux. This, in and of itself, will silence all those “the iPhone is locked down, proprietary, user’s can’t do what they want without jailbreaking, etc, etc” people who think Apple is the worst thing since the drop toilet. SQLite features as the database here.

Secondly – it has all the “wow” features needed to knock the iPhone of it’s most gigantic pedestal. The menu bar *cough*DOCK*cough* apparently has this cool feature where you slide your finger up from below the screen, and the dock pops up with your finger. This is possible because the touchscreen (with built-in) multitouch actually extends BELOW the actual LCD – which makes for cool features like this. And you thought Shazam was cool… this feature blows Shazam out of the water. Like Shazam, it’s one of those “OMGZ THATS AWESOME” times when words escape you and you’re left with nothing but pure adoration.

And finally, Facebook and Gmail – the integration is said to be “top notch”. None of this “have facebook as a seperate app on another home screen” business like the iPhone – instead, imagine being able to send a photo or text to Facebook from withthin every photo management app, every mail application, every web page, with the same features being applied to Gmail. PLus, you can choose to pull down your contact’s Facebook’s profile pic, so that when they call you, you can see their lovely face as it shows on Facebook. ZOMG! AWESOME!

…and I lied, there are actually four things. System-wide COPY and PASTE is the last feature that will make this a serious “iPhone Killer”.

Hopefully, it’ll have the hardware to match up to the software. The only way I can see this becoming a massive fail is due to a sloppy processor, or a battery life that just doesn’t quite cut it.

It’s for these four reasons that Apple had better make iPhone OS 3.0 a dammmmed good release. A couple of things for them to work on: MobileMe (integration? Don’t make me laugh), iWork.Com (a mobile version is a good start, now we need more integration), App Store (it’s far from perfect), Push Notifications (please don’t make this into another MobileMe fiasco…), and FRIGGIN COPY AND PASTE! SRSLY!

…and hopefully, something awesome that will blow us all away, like battery life that doesn’t actually suck, full-bluetooth capabilities, a user-accessible file system (instead of each file storeage app having it’s own… wtf) or even a dash of multi-core iPhones

I’m scared. Scared at how badly Apple could have just lost the smartphone war, especially after it was doing so well… Scared at how easily it was to expose and exploit the disadvantages of the iPhone… Scared at how much of a contender Palm have come back as. Scared of how Android will respond to this new opponent.

UPDATE 2:
Links for further reading:
gdgt’s Palm Keynote live blog (lots of pics)
Engadget’s Hands On with the Palm Pre
Engadget’s In-Depth Impressions on the Palm Pre
Engadget’s Ominously Titled “The Palm Pre”

Apple. Do us proud!

Average Macworld is Average.

C’mon, Phil.

We didn’t want huge product demos. We didn’t want explanations of every single new feature. We didn’t want the constant stalling, the in-depth promos, or any of that stuff. Most of all, we didn’t want to pay $2100 for 4GB more RAM in our new MacBook Pro 17″, a machine that already costs $4499. 😮

$2100 for 4GB more RAM in the new 17.

$2100 for 4GB more RAM in the new 17".

…nor did we want to pay extra for a matte screen. 😮

$90 more for a matte screen? GTFO.

$90 more for a matte screen? GTFO.

We wanted new products. We wanted an iPhone OS 3.0 demo. We wanted Snow Leopard, Mac Minis, and an iMac speed bump.

What we got was 8 hour battery life. What we got was iLife 09, iWork 09, and the Keynote Remote. What we got was iWork.com, DRM-free iTunes Music, and the iTunes Music Store available over 3G/EDGE networks.

Sure, the updating of the 17″ MBP to a Aluminium Unibody with dual graphics cards for $100 more was nice of Apple, but I’m currently sitting on the fence – 8 hour battery life vs inbuilt battery. 😕

iWork 09? Meh, could be better. With the addition of iWork.com, this can be seen as an above-average update. Collaboration, sticky notes, and more!

Download the Trial today!

Download the Trial today!

iLife 09 actually looks alright. I have now fallen in love with iPhoto all over again – and now believe that the Mac platform rules for that kind of thing. You can’t go past Facebook/Flickr integration.

Facebook integration for the win!

Facebook integration for the win!

…those tagged names now come down to your iPhoto! Also new is geo-tagging, “Faces” (awesome new facial recognition), and “Places” (which obviously links into the geo-tagging). All come with that special Apple polish we all know and love!

Faces, and Places.

Faces, and Places.

The other thing that got me excited was the iWork updates. Full screen Pages, new text transitions in Keynote, and some funky features I didn’t really care about in Numbers.

iCONic.

iCONic.

New features in Pages 09

New features in Pages '09

New features in Keynote 09

New features in Keynote '09

However, the introduction of the Mac Box Set was a really huge improvement, but something they should have done a while ago.

They should have called it the Macs Box Set, as in Max. Box. Set.

They should have called it the Macs Box Set, as in Max. Box. Set.

One more thing – DRM-free iTunes music! You can upgrade your music right now for 50c per song to DRM free, which comes in 256kbps AAC.

I can haz DRM-free Music plz? Kthx.

I can haz DRM-free Music plz? Kthx.

However, even with all the song and dance, I couldn’t feel there was something missing. Where is our Mac Mini update? Where were the iMac speed bumps? Where was the multi-touch Mighty Mouse, Aiport updates (thanks, adamd), or Cinema Displays, Mac Pros, Home Media Server, or the Mac Tablet, iPhone Nano, or even the fabled Mac Pro Mini?

End of the day, it’s just another Macworld keynote. For now, download the iWork 09 trial (warning, it’s 500MB), and enjoy the rest of your day.