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Palm Pre Review Roundup
It launched yesterday in the US for $200 on an 2 year plan, but what do the reviewers think of the Palm Pre? It’s been snuck out a couple of days before the inevitable iPhone update, offers (for now) syncing with iTunes and an impressive operating system. Here’s an overview of who said what:
Wired thinks the look and feel of the Pre are superb, the OS is good but multi-tasking drains the battery too quickly. The keyboard is a plus but is too small in use, and the iTunes syncing is a plus for as long as Apple doesn’t block it.
Engadget has a mammoth three page review that concluded the Pre is a great phone, despite not being perfect. Palm has got an astounding amount of things right, and this will only improve with some more work. Battery life is OK for what the Pre can do, but not great.
Gizmodo concludes that while the OS and apps are ‘agile, smart and capable’, the hardware is a liability. They go on to say the OS offers something genuinely different to the iPhone so deserves support.
The Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg says the Pre is a ‘smart, sophisticated product’ that is ‘thoughtfully designed, works well and could give the iPhone and BlackBerry strong competition — but only if it fixes its app store and can attract third-party developers’
PCadvisor conclude that the Pre’s ‘eye-catching design and smooth operation make it the most exciting device’ they have seen in a while, even if the lack of memory is a big dissapointment.
My own feeling is that WebOS offers some previously unseen abilities in a smartphone, but some features like iTunes syncing (if it lasts) and lack of memory are ill-conceived. Apple announces new iPhone hardware tomorrow, widely rumoured to feature 16-32Gb of memory, so 8Gb in the Pre already looks dated. If Apple comes in with a budget 4/8Gb iPhone any advances in the Pre’s WebOS could end up being canceled out by a much lower iPhone price. I can only hope the Palm Pre is enough of a success to stabilise Palm, as the more innovating players there are in the smartphone market the better off we consumers are.
Mac VM’s – November 2008 Part 1
It’s been a while since I took a look at three Virtual Machine packages for the Macintosh, and all three have moved on from the previous versions. Parallels has recently seen a step to version 4, VMware Fusion is now on version 2 and so is Virtualbox. With the release of Parallels came claims of big speed improvements so it’s time to try all three again and see if one has edged ahead of the pack.
To start I decided to try a simple task. Most users will likely be installing Windows (Vista was used here) in their VM, so the first tests are how long does it take, how many steps are involved and how good are the default options chosen for you. Read more…
MobileMe 60 day trial – part 2
Part 1 detailed the initial setup of a MobileMe 60 day trial, and the issues I encountered with logging into the web account. The update at the end of part 1 explained that syncing had become more consistent with contacts, calendar items and bookmarks syncing across my hackintosh, macbook and iTouch. The problem with speed delays has now been explained, with several sites detailing Apple support document TS1155, ‘MobileMe Push: About automatic syncing’. From the article:
Selecting Automatic in Mac OS X allows your computer to immediately sync and update when there are any changes on the MobileMe servers. Those changes can come from your iPhone, iPod touch, the MobileMe website, or another computer. Changes made on your computer will be synced to the MobileMe “cloud” once every 15 minutes (or every hour in Mac OS X 10.4.11). Read more…
MobileMe 60 day trial – part 1
MobileMe offers many useful features for anyone with more than one computing device, and since I am using a hackintosh, macbook and iTouch it could solve all my synchronisation needs. A sixty day trial is available just like the now obsolete .Mac service. I signed up to see how well it would work, specifically with my non-apple hardware. Read more…
iPhone 3G news
First reviews have now started to appear for the iPhone 3G, along with the usual rush of unboxing photo’s. I’m not looking to get one for a while (if at all) so I’m more interested in the version 2 software for the iPod touch. For those looking for iPhone news, here’s a list of links to the news and views.
Walt Mossberg reviews the iPhone 3g at allthingdigital.com
David Pogue reviews the iPhone 3G at The New York Times
Edward Baig reviews the iPhone 3G at USA Today
O2 warns of shortages ahead at appleinsider.com
