.KEYWORD visorview
.FLYINGHEAD THE PALMPOWER INTERVIEW
.TITLE PalmPower interviews Handspring
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY Everyone’s curious about the Visor products from Handspring. We recently conducted an exclusive interview with Handspring’s Product Manager, Greg Shirai. We think you’ll find Greg’s replies quite interesting.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 About this interview
Everyone’s curious about the Visor products from Handspring. We recently conducted an email interview with Handspring’s Product Manager, Greg Shirai. We think you’ll find Greg’s carefully worded replies quite interesting. One note: we also asked some penetrating questions about the Handspring/Palm relationship and about Palm’s future as an independent company. Their reply was, "We wanted to be as thorough as possible, but did not want to address any questions about Palm Computing and or any speculation on their plans."
We gave Palm a similar opportunity to answer reader questions. Palm VP Mark Bercow apparently took the time to our questions, but Palm declined to turn over the answers to us until they’d been approved by their legal department. Since we publish on a very set deadline (that Palm’s been aware of for weeks, and which we’ve extended to the very last possible moment), we can’t wait any longer for their legal department. If the questions are still relevant next month, we’ll run their Q&A.
.END_SIDEBAR
.Q PalmPower
We understand Handspring licensed the Palm OS. But the new Visor models seem to use almost exactly the same device shape as the Palm III series, almost as if Handspring is using the same Palm III case molds. What’s the story behind this?
.A GS
The Visor kept the same core tenets of Jeff Hawkins’ original vision in mind: simplicity, ease of use, low cost and focused functionality. In the case of the Visor, keeping a low cost was especially a priority, in addition to getting to market quickly, which is one of the reasons we stuck with a more basic form factor. We are not a one-product company — we’re looking at ways to keep driving towards even better form factors than those that are out there today that can still leverage the power of the Springboard platform. These things take more time, and there was no need to wait that long to get our product line — and especially the Springboard platform — into the market. Even so, there are some features that distinguish Visor from the Palm III including a smaller design — Visor is narrower than the Palm III. We have also made some modifications to the sides and improvements on the buttons.
.Q PalmPower
Do you expect Palm to adopt the Handspring Springboard architecture in future models? If not, do you expect Palm to do something similar?
.CALLOUT We don’t have any current plans to license Springboard to Palm.
.A GS
The Springboard platform belongs exclusively to Handspring. Though Handspring would consider licensing the Springboard platform to other handheld makers in the future, we are currently concentrating our efforts on shipping our products, building international channels and most importantly building up the Springboard developer community. We don’t have any current plans to license Springboard to Palm.
.Q PalmPower
Handspring seems to have improved on the Date Book and calculator, and added a world clock. Are these in ROM? Are these applications from third parties we’d already be familiar with? If so, from whom? What else can you tell us about these applications?
.A GS
We listened to a lot of handheld customers to see what the most desired improvements were with the existing core set of Palm platform applications. The three things that frequently came up were a better calculator, a world clock, and better calendar management.
Rather than reinvent the wheel with these applications, we talked to some leading developers in these areas and made licensing arrangements that allowed us to specialize some existing — and best-selling applications to reside on our products. The modifications to the Date Book include integrating To Do items so that they appear in the calendar views and the addition of new viewing options.
The advanced calculator features math, trigonometry, business, statistical and conversion functions, in addition to supporting higher precision with the built-in math library. The world clock lets you keep track of the day & time for five cities around the world, and displays a graphical day/night map.
There are other areas where Handspring has improved the product too, but that are not necessarily visible. For instance, the device is about 60% faster than other Palm OS-based products due to some software improvements we’ve made to the OS.
.Q PalmPower
It’s interesting that you’re making it possible for software to be distributed on "cartridges". Do you provide some copy protection in that architecture? If so, please describe.
.A GS
Handspring does not provide any particular protection for the cartridges. The developers are protected by their own copyright and trademark agreements and are free to include their own protection on the module.
.Q PalmPower
Is the wireless Palm VII architecture available as part of the Palm OS license to Handspring?
.A GS
Handspring’s license entitles us to the same software that is available to all Palm Computing platform licensees. We, however, cannot go into the details of our agreement with 3Com. Whether or not the Palm VII architecture is included in the license, the Springboard platform was designed to support multiple wireless standards. As different wireless modules get developed, the customer has the flexibility to choose what’s right for them — rather than being locked into an integrated hardware design or a particular wireless architecture.
.Q PalmPower
Do you think you’ll have a harder time attracting smaller developers because of the costs involved in manufacturing Springboard modules?
.CALLOUT We’ve done some creative things to make development both affordable and compelling in a business sense.
.A GS
We understand that with hardware, there is a higher level of financial commitment involved, but we’ve done some creative things to make development both affordable and compelling in a business sense.
First, we have made it extremely easy for software developers to publish content on application-only Springboard modules through our close relationship with Smart Modular. A developer who wants to publish their content simply needs to deliver the content to Smart, and Smart will produce the products for them. In this case, we’ve essentially offloaded the cost of tooling and manufacturing and kept the cost to the developer very low.
Another thing we’re doing is making four different versions of our modem casing plastics available to developers so they can easily fit their hardware into the Springboard slot without bearing extra tooling costs. We also provide them with an approved vendors list for sourcing commonly-used components like the Springboard connector and standard casings. For example, the Springboard connector is a standard PCMCIA connector, albeit keyed differently for the Springboard platform — that’s already produced in mass quantities and is easily affordable even to small developers. In addition to all of this, we impose no licensing fees and do not charge royalties for the development of Springboard modules.
.CALLOUT We impose no licensing fees and do not charge royalties for the development of Springboard modules.
.Q PalmPower
Can Handspring make any changes to the Palm OS at all? If so, will you? What do you expect to do?
.A GS
We feel we’ve already made some big improvements to the Palm OS — we’ve added support for the Springboard slot, enhanced several software applications, revved up the OS speed, and adapted it for USB. The Palm OS is a very powerful and flexible platform, and going forward, Handspring will continue to help evolve the platform and to push the OS limits.
.Q PalmPower
What are your biggest challenges going forward? Do you expect to be doing retail distribution any time soon?
.A GS
We feel that the future of personal computing is handheld computing. Handspring is very interested in broadening the adoption of handheld devices in the consumer market. We hope to achieve this by reaching aggressive price points, developing new form factors, and proliferating the Springboard platform–particularly in the development of consumer-oriented modules such as audio players, pagers, digital cameras, etc.
With regard to retail distribution, shipments through the end of 1999 will be direct to customers via our e-commerce site at http://www.handspring.com. After the first of the year, we intend to select a few distribution partners to give us a physical presence in retail stores.
.Q PalmPower
We always like to end interviews with an interesting anecdote. What’s the most interesting you’ve seen for Springboard modules?
.A GS
Someone has contacted us about making a fish finder module.
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.ee6d822
