> One observable consequence of this is that Steve Jobs who gave us so much is widely reviled, while Bill Gates who destroyed the packaged software industry
Hahaha, what? iOS set a huge negative precedence and pretty much killed off any hope for a mainstream phone that wasn't focused on consuming pre-approved content.
That's unfair. Before iOS you typically had to go to your carrier's app store to download anything. Verizon's policies about who gets listed and how much it costs were much worse than iOS.
Was the WM store really that different from the iOS store? I seem to recall there was a verification and certification process (and it cost a lot more than $99/year)
Yes, when I had a Palm, IIRC I scouted around for apps and there were many, probably not just on a Palm company store, but third-party sites too. I remember one called Pippy, which was a port of Python to the Palm. Used it a bit. But it used to crash somewhat often, so gave up trying to do any real apps with it on the device. A pity. Would have been cool to have custom apps on it, that too done in a productive language like Python, and maybe accessing / controlling the hardware.
Nope. I lived it. I joined QuickOffice (now part of Google) in 2002. We built apps exlcusively for PalmOS back in the pilot days. The idea that only a handful of apps existed is nonsense. Handango had a thriving Palm community surrounding it for several years.
Palm ultimately failed because the leadership at Palm failed to recognize what they had and simply refused to innovate into the smartphone world until it was far too late. Still they showed that an app marketplace was something peple really wanted. Well before the iOS walled garden.
I had a palm III and the handspring palm V, both were gifts and they were ok. Losing everything multiple times when the AAA batteries died was very not fun.
I remember a few little games and calculators. Never felt compelled to pay for anything.
When I had a palm windows mobile thing circa 2004, that was when I saw the light. As horrible as the platform was, having a browser and google maps on the road was like having superpowers. My wife and I took a 5 week Road trip honeymoon, and basically pricelined our way across the country. Amazing.
Hahaha, what? iOS set a huge negative precedence and pretty much killed off any hope for a mainstream phone that wasn't focused on consuming pre-approved content.