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09/25/2009, 07:41 PM
#100
 Originally Posted by hparsons
I always find it interesting when people talk about Palm and the features that they've "always had". I've "been there", almost since the beginning, and the nostalgic look backwards is typically incorrect. I'll use your small list as an example.
You said the list of things were on "all of their previous smartphones". I disagree.
- A working cut/copy/paste system
I don't remember when Palm first introduced cut and paste on the Treo, I'm almost positive I remember having it on the 270; however, the "working" aspect of it is debateable. Add-ons to make it more functional were sold succusfully, and very popular. As I remember, the biggest complaint about C&P was the small buffer, but there were many others. - Native support for Yahoo and Windows Messenger
Nope, didn't come on the 270, the 300, nor do I think it came on the 600, but I could be wrong. Again, 3rd party developers filled the void. - Voice Dialing
Nope, not on the 270, the 300, or the 600, may not have even been on the 650. Sprint offered a service, but it was poor. As a matter of fact, I was still paying for a 3rd party voice dialer on my 755P, because there was nothing workable that was native. - Video recording
I'm almost postitive this was introduced with the 650. Definitely not on the 270 or 300. - Text message forwarding
I don't think the 270 and 300 even did SMS. I was never much into text messaging, so I never bought any of the 3rd party apps for it, and don't even know when Palm started making it standard, but it wasn't on the originals. - Faster calendar
I'll grant you this one, the calendar was faster. But then, it wasn't reading from a bunch of other calenders on the net. I like the newer version. This is though, one of the things that so many folks look back on "fondly", but mistakenly. The calender functions of the orignal Palm PIM, including the early Treos, were not great. It lacked many features, so many that there were multiple 3rd party developers that did quite well. Palm even incorporated a "lite" version of Datebk in the 600, but they did not develop themselves, or in house. - Voice recording
Sorry, not in the early phones either. Initially offered by third party developers, and Palm eventually added it.
My point is that all of these added innovations occurred over a period of years after the Treo was introduced. Often, they were out and out purchased from third party developers. Those that were developed "in-house" were developed by people that are long gone.
New device, new operating system, new concept. Things take time.
Good post and valid points. I realize it's hard to keep up with who is complaining about what, but I am patient about most things you listed and even agree with you that they can take time.
About the calendar. True, it was never stellar, but it was fast and efficient. It's all I'm expecting from the one on the Pre. It's great that it pulls in multiple calendars from the cloud, but why does this advancement has to come at the expense of proven functionality from the old Palm OS calendar?
Specifically, the problem areas are time and date entry and moving between views.
Palm preserved the condensed day view, maybe because it's now obsessed with all things visual, but watered down the Details widget, which let you see which day, not just day number, you were entering, and gave you a spacious calendar widget to tap on for selecting a day. The time selection widget, which Palm actually used as an example of proper design in its Palm OS UI Guidelines book, was replaced by a primitive and fiddly set of scrolling wheels.
These have nothing to do with time constraints, they are design flaws from someone who doesn't understand what was good about the old OS, if they even used it.
Similarly, not having an agenda view might have been fine if moving between page views was smooth as scrolling through an agenda list. But the lag makes this very frustrating. That it pulls down multiple calendars has nothing to do with the lag, there is no technical reason for the lag to exist, it's just bad implementation. There are also bugs with the calendar reminders but this can be a matter of time to get fixed.
So while I agree and am plenty patient about the other items you mention, the calendar is inexcusable, and from reports on release 1.2, it doesn't appear that Palm thinks the calendar is a priority.
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