Edible Apple

Sachin Agarwai of Silicon Alley Insider recently decided to dump his Palm Pre after just 3 weeks of use. While his experience is obviously not universal, his complaints about the Pre’s touchscreen and other software shenanigans seem to be a recurring theme.

For the benefit of Palm management, here’s a list of all the things that pushed me over the edge:

• The touchscreen is atrocious. Having to hit the call or hang up button six times for the press to register made me want to throw the Pre against the wall on a daily basis. (This is probably something relating to the OS or memory or something, but when I tapped the touchscreen, it didn’t work the way it was supposed to. So I’m blaming the touchscreen.)
• The battery life is atrocious. The device would barely last the 16 hours between when I left for work and when I returned home.  If I missed a charge, the phone went dead.
• The GPS is atrocious.  Apparently, this is somehow actually Verizon’s fault as they’re pushing people to their ten-bucks-a-month Verizon Navigator.  But I paid for Navigator and the GPS on the Pre Plus sucked just the same.
• Having text messaging and instant messenger in the same app is clinical. Yes, they’re both text. No, they are not anywhere close to the same thing. If I wanted to receive IMs on my phone, I’d have the IM app open. Signing in/out of AIM in the Messaging app isn’t the same as just opening the IM app when I want to use it.
• Copy and paste? I’m told it’s on the device in the user manual. It never worked. The iPhone does it well. Palm should have just stolen Apple’s implementation instead of trying to do their own thing.
• Editing text is atrocious. Again, Palm should have just stolen the magnifying glass from Apple. Instead, I have to hold down the gray (orange on original Pres) key and try to move the cursor slowly. I ended up just erasing whole words and re-typing.
• The apps are underwhelming.  Finding new apps in the App Catalog is an embarrassment. You’d think Palm would be able to do a decent job with just 1,500 or so apps. You’d be wrong.
• There was more, but I’ve forgotten them already. That’s how uninspiring the phone was.