Tag Archives: Palm Pre

Initial Impressions of the Samsung Epic and Android

A few nights ago, my Palm Prē got dropped, causing a hairline fracture in the touch-screen. Since it would no longer take any screen input, it was suddenly an even less useful device than usual. I’d been thinking of switching to an Android phone anyway, so I am now the (proud?) owner of a shiny, […]

How Failtastic Can One Phone Be? Just Ask Palm About the Prē!

Here are a few things that I consider to be basic requirements for functionality in a smartphone, along with notes on how my Palm Prē fails to deliver: When I press the power switch, the phone should turn on. (Assuming the battery is charged, of course. And I’m willing to accept that a modern smartphone […]

What Would an Ideal Portable-Computing UI Look Like?

Right now, the question of what you need in a mobile computing platform is most often phrased in terms of “Do you need a netbook or a full laptop? Or perhaps one of the new high-end smartphones will manage?” I think the question isn’t one of capabilities as much as it is a question about […]

Solutions For Palm Prē “Signed Out of Palm Profile” Endless Loop

Yesterday, a wonderful person who goes by the handle of pzil on the Palm Prē forums gave me a solution to my “You are signed out, there is no escape” woes. You can read pzil’s solution as posted on the Palm forum, but just in case, I’m also reproducing the meat of it here, in […]

A Chat With Palm Tech Support

We’ll see if anything useful comes of this… I wasn’t too happy with the rep’s cluefulness at 2:55, I must admit. 2:50 PM Connecting to Rescue Gateway: control.app51.logmeinrescue.com… 2:50 PM Connected to Rescue Gateway. A support representative will be with you shortly. 2:51 PM Support session established with Kade. 2:51 PM Kade: Hello. 2:51 PM […]

A webOS 1.2 Upgrade Experience That Couldn’t Be Much Worse

The following is a copy of what I just posted on the Palm Prē forums: I woke up this morning to find that the webOS 1.2 upgrade had been pushed to my Prē automatically. I was happy, until the reboot finished and I saw: Signed Out You are no longer signed in to your Palm […]

Palm Is Lying, Not Just Spying

So, Palm was recently caught spying on its users. Major kudos, by the way, to Joey Hess, who initially broke this story. For those who haven’t kept up, various other news outlets and blogs have also been reporting on it. Palm’s response to this problem is a single paragraph of corporate PR-speak: Palm takes privacy […]

An Installation Shell-Script for Palm Prē Developers

Last week, I wrote that I’d been working on a script to easily install homebrew apps on the Palm Prē. It now looks like there are much better ways to handle such things — I’ve become quite a fan of fileCoaster, myself, and of course webOSQuickInstall is a wonderful piece of work, as well. But just […]

Productivity on Various Fronts

I’ve actually made some progress on coding projects this weekend. My Palm Prē “Magic 8 Ball” application now responds to the Prē’s accelerometer: if you rotate the Prē, the app stays right-side up (including readjusting the position of the backdrop image). Even cooler, you no longer have to tap a button to trigger the fortune; […]

Palm Prē, Day Three: The Good and the Bad

So, I’ve already posted my anguished wail over the completely unusable state of the Prē’s memo pad app. Considering that Palm started off as a company that sold PDAs, whose main apps were contacts, date book, and note pad, the collapse of one of those three items seems pretty embarrassing. But aside from that, how […]