What do you want to ask Greg Sharai and Rob Haitani of PalmOne?

miradu · 09/23/2004, 06:57 PM

TreoCentral is excited to announce an exclusive interview with PalmOne. After a month of working things out, Greg Shirai, Director of Product Marketing, and Rob Haitani, Product Design Architect, both long time Handspring/Palm/PalmOne employees have agreed to answer our questions.

But our questions are your questions. What do you want to ask these two people at PalmOne? Some examples are: How do they use their Treo? What design philosophies do they work towards? What was with that whole buzz marketing campaign they did in launching the 600? What is their favorite application or accessory? What were the design decisions that left Bluetooth out of the final Treo 600? How has competition changed your views on the smartphone?

We've created a thread for you to ask your questions of these two individuals. TreoCentral staff will pick 10-15 to send on for Mr. Shirai and Mr. Haitani to answer. The entire process will take about 3 weeks. Please remember that PalmOne is unable to comment on future products, and will not answer any questions regarding those.

Who are these people?

Greg Shirai is Director of Product Marketing at PalmOne. Greg joined Palm in 1997 as the product manager for the Palm III. He joined Handspring in January 1999 as the original Visor product manager and eventually managed the product group responsible for all the Visor handhelds. Most recently, he leads the product marketing team for the Treo smartphones at palmOne.

Rob Haitani is a Product Design Architect at PalmOne. Rob joined Palm in 1993, where he was product manager for the original Pilot and designed the UI for the Palm OS. He managed the product group responsible for the Palm III and Palm V. Rob was part of the founding team at Handspring in 1998. He subsequently was responsible for the UI design of the Treo line of smartphones.

We're excited to provide this new opportunity for Treo users to connect with the people who can create. Thank you to Marlene Somsak, Greg Shirai, and Rob Haitani for helping setup and do this interview.

Bagbklyn · 09/23/2004, 07:45 PM

Does Palmone plan to in the near future release more then one treo per year or is it going to stay the way it is? Will palm one ever go back to the flip design? The reason I ask is because my screen has like 3 pressure marks on it. The main thing that I liked about the treo 300 is the screen protection eventhough it was bulky.

techjunkie · 09/23/2004, 08:01 PM

How much does TreoCentral's Discussion Board realisticly affect their decision-making on requirements / features?
Follow up question: If so, how much resources do they allocate to monitor TreoCentral's Discussion Board?
What are they doing to prevent (or encourage) insider leaks on new products?

LouisW · 09/23/2004, 08:08 PM

Can we ask why they didn't decide to produce Jake Ehrlich's Phantom V design? I thought it was perfect

Chatter · 09/23/2004, 08:23 PM

As a Treo ONLY developer with a unique email solution (Chatter Email) that is considered by many to be the most Blackberry-like software available for the Treo, I would like to be able to get seeded with a Treo 650 (or whatever it's called) so that I can continue to support our mutual customer base. Who is the right person to speak to about this?

I believe that other software developers here have similar interests.

Marc

Rome · 09/23/2004, 08:36 PM

My questions are:

- What kind of new/different technologies and/or features can we expect to see in a smartphone in five years?
- How long does it take a smartphone/handheld product to go from the drawing board to the market place?
- What kind of role does Jeff Hawkins play in the new product development process?

Thanks, Treocentral. This is a great idea.

RWerksman · 09/23/2004, 08:46 PM

The question I would like asked is:

"Are you planning to run a Treo upgrade promotion similar to what Handspring did when introducing the Treo 600?"

If the answer is yes, I have a followup:

"Is there a pricepoint for the upgrade promotion that is currently being targeted?"

RWerksman · 09/23/2004, 08:49 PM

I forgot one:

Is the upcoming Palm Wifi card going to be compatable with the Treo 600 and upcoming Treo 650?

And if the answer is no on either:

Why not?

100thMonkey · 09/23/2004, 09:00 PM

I would like to know *** P1 and PalmSource are going to do to survive when PPC and Symbian are really gaining on them. I am scared Palm handhelds won't be viable solutions in 2006, honestly, especially with the XDA III's huge popularity with carriers and Symbians presence in Europa and now the alliance with DoCoMo

Stickman · 09/23/2004, 09:09 PM

1) On what date will the Treo 650 be released?

2) Will the bluetooth on the Treo 650 be able to communicate with both bluetooth headsets as well as with cars equipped with bluetooth?

Felipe · 09/23/2004, 09:12 PM

i doubt they will talk about the 650, unless the interview happens after the official announcement.

so, ask them if they are happy.

miradu · 09/23/2004, 09:17 PM

As said in the announcement, they will be unable to comment on future products, and most likely certain future strategies. This is a time to ask them about why they did something, or what they did in the past that we don't know about, It's up to you to than interpret their answer to what it means for the future...

archie · 09/23/2004, 09:37 PM

Why is PalmOne (and the PalmSource OS) the only manufacturer of handhelds that doesn't allow Bluetooth proximity detection?

Why do they not allow the Mac to connect to the Palm unit via Bluetooth?

Will the Palm OS ever allow Bluetooth connections to be initiated from external sources?

Why did PalmSource NOT license Bluetooth 1.2 for use with the upcoming Palm OS v 5.4?
*edit: (e.g. Treo 650)

mwylde · 09/23/2004, 09:37 PM

When will we start seeing Palm OS 6 handhelds?

Also, what are your plans for the future of smartphones?

Iceman6 · 09/23/2004, 10:20 PM

Why do we care why you did things in the past?
Why won't you answer questions about the future?
Some excellent GSM smartphones (Motorola MPx, Nokia 9300) have been announced, and the announcement drove the price of your stock down. Does that mean PalmOne is toast? Do you think any GSM phone represents a competitive threat to your business?
I think the second most important feature of a phone, after its ability to be a phone, is its ability to be a Web browsing terminal. What do you think? What data capabilities will the next generation of Treos have?
Sprint and Verizon are busy constructing EVDO networks. How long do we have to wait before a Treo will run on an EVDO network?

vw2002 · 09/23/2004, 10:21 PM

1) will there be a family of new treos this november?
ie. camera, cameraless, etc

or will there only be a single model smartphone?

2) what percentage of palmone`s profits are derived from treo sales?

nrosser · 09/23/2004, 10:43 PM

the questions being posted are all about future products - did you guys not read miradu's disclaimer that they won't be able to address futures - ? So all the stuff about 'please tell me what and when' is a waste of energy.

g.711 · 09/23/2004, 11:13 PM

I would like to see their views on Product Reliability, What are they going to do to reduce the vast amount of returned units, doesn’t it cost them to have such a large amount of defective units out of the box? Why can’t the Cadillac of cell phone work for some of the basic features Loud Ringer, Speak breakup and the dreaded network search?
Who; tell us just who ok'd an SD card slot which pops out?
Why not a standard size earpiece?
Why not a removable battery?
Why Low Res 160 screen when all other phone are 320
Do they fear the M$ giant sneaking up on them?
Do they feel the love us T owners have for the unit?

But my main concern is Quality Assurance! since the 650 is coming out. This should and must be be JOB NUMER 1!

Expat · 09/23/2004, 11:32 PM

Ok, like everyone else most of my real questions relate to future questions but as they're not going to answer them then here goes:
1) What the hell happened to the build quality of the Treo 600, it was complete crap, what are they doing to prevent this occuring in the future?
2) Why does the Treo crash so much, I know it's related to 3rd party applications but that's not the whole answer as I had a PPC for years, ran lots of applications on it and it never had the same reliability issues, don't they provide a robust development environment (or is it as bad/outdated as the Palm Desktop)
3) Why is the SDIO slot completely useless/underpowered (it would have helped them recover from the missing features (Bluetooth, wifi etc. of the 600)?
4) Why is Bluetooth not supported by the 600?
5) Why's the battery not removable?
6) When's the Palm desktop client going to be brought up to par with it's competitors?
As currently it's a joke (can't duplicate meetings, can only search on last name etc.) and it's showing no sign of improvement.
7) Why should we believe in Palmone's long term viability (if they want us to pay $100s for a new device (650 or whatever) then show us why it's a reasonable long term bet?

bmacfarland · 09/23/2004, 11:59 PM

The box and manual that I have from my purchase of a Treo 600 says that the SD I/O slot is capable of supporting bluetooth and wifi cards from select 3rd party retailers. It's been almost a year since I owned it, and I haven't found one third party retailer that proves such cards. One news outlet, which may or may not be reputible says that the Treo 600 doesn't have the power for wifi (http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=6334). TreoCentral itself says it's "not the time for bluetooth on the Treo" (http://www.treocentral.com/content/Stories/451-1.htm).

I realize there are a couple of questions here.

First question: What's the real deal with wifi? PalmOne (or at least Handspring) seems to claim that I can buy a wifi card. 3rd party manufacturers claim that they don't have the tools and/or the Treo 600 doesn't meet the requirements for any wifi cards they can build. Why can't I buy the PalmOne wifi card for the Treo 600 and have it work?

Second question: Why is it that "Presumably PalmOne has not supported any effort to add Bluetooth to the Treo 600" as it was a main selling point when I bought the Treo 600.

I realize that PalmOne is not Handspring. However, PalmOne for a longtime made the same claim of the SDIO slot of the Treo being capable for wifi and bluetooth (I think the evidence has since been taken taken down from the PalmOne website). Plus PalmOne has many Handspring ex-employees (including Greg Shirai). Handspring seems to have been founded on one principle of expansion (i.e. the Springboard). Why is it that expansion is the one thing that was promised and not delivered?

I realize this is a tough line of questioning, but it stays within the rules of not asking about future products.