.FLYINGHEAD FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
.TITLE An open letter to Palm CEO Ed Colligan about finding the win-win position
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY Are you out of your fracking mind? Let’s see. Happy developer. Makes fun little product that celebrates your new direction. Your own existing customers like it. What do you do? Do you feature them on your home page? Do you celebrate what they’re doing? No, of course not. You send a cease and desist letter.
.OTHER
Dear Ed,
Oh, Ed, we so need to talk. I know you’re all excited about your upcoming Pre and you’re hoping it’ll turn things around. The past few years can’t have been easy for you. And now, you’ve got a sexy new product that just might be the toast of the town. But that doesn’t mean you have to be crappy to your friends.
I was shocked to find out that you let your legal dogs loose on the very nice folks over at [[http://www.tealpoint.com|TealPoint]]. TealPoint?
.CALLOUT Are you out of your fracking mind?
Could you possibly have more loyal friends than the guys at TealPoint? Have you looked at their products recently?
Do you see any iPhone apps? No.
Do you see any BlackBerry apps? No.
Do you see any Google phone apps? No.
What do you see? Go ahead. Look around. I’ll wait. Yep, you see 32 Palm OS applications, ranging from TealPaint to TealPhone to TealOS. Oops… TealOS. That had to have gotten your teeth gritting and raised the hairs on the back of your neck.
.TEASER To read the rest of this article, tap here.
After all, this most loyal of Palm developers wrote an application to make all your old, soon to be completely obsolete Palm OS products look just a little like your branny-new Palm Pre running WebOS.
TealOS is a product designed by one of your most loyal developers to be sold to your most loyal of customers, who happen to be excited about your new product.
Let’s see. Very loyal developer. Makes fun little product that celebrates your new direction. Your own existing customers like it. What do you do? Do you feature said developer on your home page? Do you celebrate the fun little product?
No, of course not. You send a cease and desist letter. Are you out of your fracking mind?
TealPoint was around when we were just starting PalmPower Magazine back in 1998. TealPaint is one of the most popular tools for getting screenshots to write about your products. Independent developers like TealPoint are the primary reason Palm gained so much ground early on. And they’re probably the reason you’re still providing some level of value with your pretty-much obsolete offerings.
I know. You don’t want people (and by "people", I mean Apple and Google) to get the idea that they, too can clone the WebOS. Because, lord knows, Apple sure isn’t doing well with the iPhone.
.H1 What you should have done
One obvious way to protect your intellectual property (the look of the WebOS) is to threaten anyone who clones it. And this might make sense if TealPoint went off and made a WebOS clone for the iPhone. But they didn’t. They made a little WebOS skin for Treos and other Palm OS devices. The devices you’ve sold.
You could have accomplished the same thing without being so nasty. Instead of threatening TealPoint, you could have licensed them (at no charge, because they’re on your side) the right to use the look of the WebOS. Then you’d be protected legally and TealPoint wouldn’t have been screwed by your legal team.
In the business world, we call this a win-win. Palm needs some win-wins.
Building software is a lot of work and a big investment for a small company. These guys worked long and hard to build a great little product for your devices. Forcing them to toss all their work — in a tough economy and after sticking with you when Palm sure as heck hasn’t distinguished itself over the last few years — is just nasty.
You used to have thousands of loyal developers. Many of them have already jumped ship to the iPhone. Since there’s no direct migration path between Palm OS apps and the Pre, the rest of your developers will have to decide whether it’s worth supporting an unproven environment or, well, the iPhone.
Apple, as we all know, is a pain to work with. You could have differentiated Palm by being a joy to work with. Instead, this action against TealPoint shows you have no loyalty to even your most loyal developers.
Personally, I can’t wait to see ShortCircuit, Sudoku Addict, TealAgent, TealAlias, TealAuto, TealBackup, TealDesktop, TealDiet, TealDoc, TealEcho, TealGlance, TealInfo, TealLaunch, TealLock, TealMagnify, TealMaster, TealMeal, TealMemBrain, TealMover, TealMovie, TealNotes, , TealPaint, TealPhone, TealPrint, TealSafe, TealScan, TealScript, TealTracker, TealTools, and VersionMaster all working on the iPhone.
By the way, there’s still time to save this. Call up TealPoint. Let them keep selling TealOS. And feature it on your Web site.
That’d be the smart thing to do. It’d help create loyalty. And it would show that you actually get it. Otherwise, you’re just another Apple wannabe. And that’s just sad.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
Visit http://www.TealPoint.com.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
