Right on schedule, the Palm Pre has started shipping to Bell Mobility customers. The Bell exclusive marks the first international launch of Palm’s little savior and to celebrate, we’ve got commercials — a pair of knee-slappers featuring real live Canadians. And you thought that the mirror on the back of the Pre was only for the ladies.
Still rocking that Palm Zire with your new Intel-based Mac? Then you might just want to reconsider that upgrade to Snow Leopard, as Apple has apparently decided to ditch its support for legacy Palm OS devices in the latest incarnation of iSync. That, as you may be aware, had previously acted as a conduit for Palm’s aging but still available Palm Desktop software, and let folks easily sync up their contacts and other data from their Centro, Treo, Zire, Tungsten, or even a venerable old PalmPilot. Of course, that doesn’t quite rise to the same level of controversy as the whole Pre / iTunes situation, especially considering that Palm itself has mostly moved on from said devices, and there are still some third-party sync solutions available for folks that want to keep the Palm OS dream alive.
Holy moly. We thought Sprint’s ad explicitly targeting iPhone customers was a desperate move. But Canadian carrier Bell’s TV commercial for the Pre wins first place for the nipping-at-Apple’s-heels contest. It looks so much like Apple’s iPhone TV ads that you’ll think it’s a joke. Nope, it’s real, and after you’re done laughing it’s actually kind of sad.
Ed Colligan, who stepped down from Palm’s top position in June, has recounted some questionable business proposals on the part of Apple head, Steve Jobs. According to Colligan, Jobs approached the former Palm CEO back in August 2007–shortly after the launch of the first iPhone–asking him to enter into a deal wherein neither company would hire the other’s employees. “We must do whatever we can to stop this,” Jobs reportedly told Colligan.
The proposal came on the heals of Palm’s hiring of former Apple exec, Jon Rubinstein. “Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal,” Colligan reportedly responded to Jobs.
Such communications may likely pique the interest of government officials charged with enforcing anti-trust laws, given the current investigation of the connection between Google and Apple.
Imagine the scene two years ago, August 2007 to be precise. Palm was busy preparing to launch its Foleo and the OS that would save Palm was still expected to be coming from ACCESS. In fact, things were looking so bad for Palm in August that we penned an intervention letter that then CEO Ed Colligan responded to. Apple, for its part, was still enjoying the glow of the golden halo rising above its iPhone launched just over a month prior with the help of 2% of Palm’s hired workforce, according to Bloomberg. Oh, and Apple had just lost Jon Rubinstein, the man leading its iPod division, to Palm.
Now Bloomberg is reporting that Steve Jobs approached Palm’s Ed Colligan in August 2007 with a proposal to refrain from hiring each other’s staff (read: quit poaching our employees, Ed!). Colligan refused, saying,
Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal.
Two months post-launch, the Pre remains the only official game in town for webOS, but we all know how Palm rolls — there are unquestionably other phones in the pipeline, and they’re going to be available on a variety of carriers. By all accounts, the so-called Eos (or Pixie, if internal codenames are more your thing) for AT&T is going to be the next model to come out of the chute, and now that we’ve all gotten bored with our Pres, the world seems to be turning its attention to more pressing matters like a release date. To that point, we’re dealing with two ends of the spectrum right now: at one extreme, Digital Daily cites a Morgan Joseph analysts as saying he believes the Eos will hit AT&T at some point beyond the holidays, thanks in part to the $99 iPhone’s continued strength. On the other end, the Chinese language Commercial Times out of Taiwan says an HSPA-powered version of the Eos will rock a 2.6-inch display and start volume deliveries from ODM Compal to Palm in October of this year with a CDMA variant following on in the first quarter of next year. Ultimately, both reports have the reassuring solidity of Jell-O — so what have we learned? The Eos (or whatever it’s called) will ship when it ships.
Read – Analyst likes Eos launch next year Read – GSM Eos in October, CDMA version Q1 ’10?
Each day I get a little bit sadder that Billy Mays is no longer with us. Good thing there are so many spokeassholes vying for position in the marketing pantheon.
UPDATE: Looks like there was a late entry to our list of current top spokesassholes: Miss Julia Allison has just signed a yearlong deal to peddle Sony’s wares. About time that her attention-whoring went global! [Sony Insider via Gawker]
Some of us were near tears when T-Mobile decided to drop Zeta-Jones as their official spokesasshole, but the good news is that she’s back. The bad news is that as soon as we heard her nerve-grinding accent, we remembered that those were tears of joy.
It was difficult to deem Sir Richard Branson as a spokesasshole. He is such a nice man and only wants innovative technology to reach those from “all walks of life”—assuming that they make $40 million annually, of course.
Lisa, Lauren, and Giampaolo are the biggest spokesassholes in the Laptop Hunters commercials. Lisa shatters eardrums with her exclamation of “WhaaaaAAAAaat?!?!”, Lauren followed the ads up with claims that they were unscripted, and Giampaolo is just plain smarmy.
Maybe one day he’ll button up the shirt and put on some sunglasses that don’t look like they’re his girlfriend’s. I hope he didn’t quit his day job (waiter? male prostitute?) when he landed this gig, because it won’t last long.
Verizon Probably Only Merged With Alltel To Get Rid of Chad
Verizon and Alltel may have merged, but we’ve still seen Chad’s picture looming around Alltel’s website. With his spiky blonde hair, laid back walk, and inability to take a hint, he’s a true menagerie of what this gallery represents.
Zune Spokesasshole Wes Moss nearly broke our douche point scale. If you can stand watching this Zune spot, after those Laptop Hunter ads, you’ll see why.
Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine are two ridiculously wealthy guys who decide, in their spare time, to become even more wealthy by peddling some overpriced headphones. Even if you ignore the fact that they’re distributed by Monster, and even if you admit that the headphones aren’t that bad—there’s no way the duo can’t escape the spokesasshole brand.
It’s not much of a secret that some of us here are Apple fans, but not even that stopped us from pronouncing Apple’s “I’m a Mac” guy and his smug attitude and thinly veiled disdain for PC as spokesasshole material.
Tamara Hope in the Return of the Stoner Commercials
The Palm Pre commercials started off terribly and only got worse until we stepped in with a remix. Though since it seems that Palm was really giving a nod to Ellen Feiss of Mac Switcher fame with these creepy “What is she on and where can I get some?” commercials, we’ll only rate actress Tamara Hope as half a spokesasshole.
We can forgive Michael Bay for not sharing video footage of Megan Fox washing his car, since he at least had her show a bit of skin in Transformers 2. What we can’t forgive him for his display of spokesassholery in this pitch for Verizon FiOS. By the fifth “AWESOME!” things turn from funny to “Please walk into the next exploding building, Michael.”
You’ve got to hand it to Kutcher. The man with a million Twitter sheep has risen from underwear model to annoying spokesasshole and GI Jane toy-boy. Though we can’t help but see Kelso every time he’s fumbling around on screen.
Love the Pre? Love code? Love money? Well it’s your lucky day. Palm has just announced that it will begin accepting applications for developers interested in producing for-pay apps for the webOS App Catalog. The company says that requests taken now will make devs eligible for inclusion in the mid-September launch of its e-commerce program. Just like Apple and Google, Palm will be splitting profits of paid apps with developers 70 / 30 (the devs get 70 percent, don’t worry), and go figure — credit cards will be accepted. Of course we’re pumped about paying $.99 for a to-do app someday soon, but we’re hoping this will also herald in a new age of steady releases for the Catalog, which is still looking frighteningly bare to us. Hey, that’s what homebrew is for, right? Full PR after the break.
Having created an aura of surreal creepiness around its handset, Palm seems ready to talk about the Pre’s features (not just its feelings) in its latest video ad. Whether the change is in response to viewer unrest or a natural progression of the advertising campaign is unknown. But if princess waiffy pants could send a calendar late notification while pulling into a downward facing dog, well, that would be an ad worth watching. Maybe next time. Check the latest after the break.
Studies just released by RBC Capital and ChangeWave Research polled iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre owners on their respective levels of satisfaction with their devices — then compared them. In the studies, 200 iPhone 3GS users and 40 Palm Pre owners were polled. Overall, 99 percent of owners of Apple’s phone proclaimed themselves to be “satisfied,” while 82 percent of that number declared they were “very satisfied.” The poll of Pre owners showed that 87 percent are “satisfied,” and 45 percent of those owners describe themselves as “very satisfied.” Interestingly, the 42 percent of “very satisfied” customers are the highest score ever attained by a Palm device, and it’s a number that’s only ever been bested by RIM and Apple. When asked about their respective reasons for buying their devices, Palm Pre owners listed the touchscreen interface, ability to multitask, and ease of use in the top three, while iPhone users cite its touchscreen, ease of use and faster web browsing as its biggest draws. So what about drawbacks? iPhone users (a whopping 55 percent of them, in fact) say that AT&T’s network is their main gripe with the device, while Pre owners list short battery life and lack of third party apps as the devices biggest drawbacks. All in all, a pretty good showing for both — though the microscopic sample size (especially for the Palm Pre) makes us wonder about the validity of the findings a bit.
Read – Apple’s iPhone 3GS has 99 percent satisfaction rate Read – iPhone vs. Palm Pre: Satisfaction bakeoff
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