Brett Tabke, speaking in FOO [webmasterworld.com]: Given the current state of Microsoft, I see Palm as a dead company walking. Microsoft is poised to do for PDAs, what they did for spreadsheets, word processors, browsers, disk compression, gui's, fonts, and are doing for video. Give it 3-5 years and they will crush Palm and all other handheld devices that have "not microsoft" operating systems.
So Brett, how much does Microsoft pay you every time you herald Palm's imminent demise? ;)
Y'know Brett, with as often as you post about the grevious security holes in M$ software, and kvetch about their business practices in general, it never ceases to amaze me how adamant you are about preaching the death of Palm.
Macintosh did not die. *nix did not die. Heck, to some true die-hards, the C64 hasn't even died yet, lol... They may not dominate the market, but back when Windows and Mac were on more head-to-head ground the computing market was a completely different animal.
Palm has a huge lead in market share and software availability. When Microsoft first began gaining operating system prominence, the computer industry was just creeping out of the age when every machine required custom-coded software...
A little standardization was no necessarily a bad thing in the desktop computer market, and once M$ caught on to the conceptual foundation of the Mac GUI, the whole concept of a truly "consumer friendly" computer was just being born. They began to dominate the market out of the gate, simply by licensing their OS to multiple manufacturers rather than keeping all the expenses in-house (like Apple did).
PDAs have already become their own market, and MS was late to the game... Given that the desktop computer (or laptop in some cases) is still the central piece of computing hardware in the average consumer's life, the OS of their PDA is a secondary consideration... as long as Palm maintains compatibility with Windows OSs, Microsoft's leverage for "crushing" them is limited.
One of the reasons Windows desktop computers became so dominant so early was the price difference between what amounted to "store brand" desktop machines running Windows and "top shelf" machines from the do-it-all-ourselves Apple line. Palm OS has the price advantage over WinCE machines, because of the far lower hardware requirements... Palm OS has the software advantage over WinCE, because (I assume) they are less complex to code for...
Much like the webserver market... *nix/Apache won't be crushed any time soon. Lower cost of operation, widely available support, lots of available cheap or free software... Much like PERL won't be wiped off the face of the earth by ASP. Much like Palm and WinCE. Each has their place, and I can't see CE crushing anyone from where I'm standing now.
WinCE may have more "power" than a comparable Palm OS machine, but most people don't need it, and have shown their willingness to forego brute power for a lower price in the handheld market.
