Palm Foleo pulled, or I should have been a technology analyst

Jeff Hawkins unveiling Foleo in May (courtesy of PC World)

The Associated Press and many others are reporting that Palm has pulled it's Foleo device, just before shipping it to market saying the company "needs to focus all its resources on developing its next-generation smartphones." Uh, ya' think? More info from the AP article available here: Palm Cancels Foleo Companion to Treo.

As I mentioned here and here when the Foleo was first announced in late May, this thing was a solution in search of a problem. Like many Treo users, I am proud to have been one of Handspring/Palm's early adopters for the the past 7-8 years, so when someone aching to love your product and evangelize it to the moon can't find something good to say about it, you've got trouble ahead.

Despite my continued annoyance with the company and their lack of a new, updated Palm operating system and more non-Windows devices, I'm glad to see them making a decisive move like this one with the Foleo. The sooner they stop wasting time and money on that thing, the sooner they can move forward with good stuff for the Treo and new Linux operating system. Until then, I'll putter along with my Treo 650. It's almost two years old and a bit haggard, but it still allows me to continue my power-user tasks.

Big Treo announcement tomorrow

I use a Palm Treo 650 phone/PDA for just about everything: phone, e-mail, mo-blogging (mobile blogging), writing and editing documents with a foldout keyboard like the one on the left, web surfing, getting driving directions, listening to MP3s, and more. In a word: power user.

So you may be able to understand my excitement to learn that Palm's founder Jeff Hawkins is planning a big announcement tomorrow at the D5 conference organized by Walt Mossberg and Kira Swisher of the Wall Street Journal. Info about the Palm announcement is available on the CNET blog Crave.

I've been with the Palm operating system since they were used in Handspring PDAs. I even had the goofy first generation Handspring Visorphone attachment that slid into the back of the unit and made the already-chunky device bulkier than a Maxwell Smart shoe phone, for those of you old enough to remember that mid-1960s comedy about a hapless spy with wacky gadgets. I didn't care: I was a convert and I evangelized the device to everyone I knew, eventually convincing at least two co-workers in my newsroom then to jump on the Handspring bandwagon.

Seven years and multiple devices later for this early adopter, I'm itching to up upgrade again. But I don't want one of Palm's newer offerings with Windows Mobile OS. I want to stick with the Palm OS because of all the third party software that's available for the devices. So I sit. And lust after smaller, cooler, smartphones from Japan with smaller bodies but bigger screens (think supermodels of the PDA set), faster connections, wi-fi, and more, and consider switching. But I can't!

I've waited this long. Guess I'll cool my jets and see what tomorrow brings. Some rumors say Palm will roll out a Linux OS that's been in the works. Others says it'll be an iPhone killer, which is surprising, since the iPhones have barely hit the market yet. But Palm and Hawkins have revolutionized the industry before, so I'm not alone in my eagerness. We shall see if the actual announcement lives up to the hype.