Category: Puzzled Over

Strange, odd, or otherwise WTF.

Categories
Debated Puzzled Over

Adventures In Product Renaming

Back in March, Adobe was making lots of noise about a new piece of technology they were pushing then called Apollo. To avoid drowning you in buzzwords: Apollo lets you create desktop apps using web programming. Kind of neat.

But Apollo was always just a code name, and we were threatened told that the project would be renamed sometime later.

Today, Adobe [announced](http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/06/11/apollo/index.php) the official name: [AIR](http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/).

This is problematic for handful of reasons.

One: “AIR” is a [fairly generic word](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_%28disambiguation%29). It’s the stuff we breathe. It’s a quality or manner. It can be a musical composition. It’s also a [terribly popular French electronic music act](http://www.intairnet.org/). Best of luck to Adobe as they try to [make page 1 on Google](http://www.google.com/search?q=air).

Two: Despite the acronym expanding to “Adobe Integrated Runtime”, it is being referred to repeated on the web page as “Adobe® AIR™”. That’s right: *Adobe Adobe Integrated Runtime*. Rolls off the tongue as easily as *automated teller machine machine*.

Three: I would argue calling it a *runtime*. Perhaps a *runtime enviroment*, like Java. But this is a geek quibble.

Finally: You would think “Adobe AIR” was a unique name. [It’s not.](http://www.adobeair.com/)

A golf clap for the renaming team. Brav-o.

Categories
Debated Puzzled Over

An Environmentally Friendly Keynote

WWDC 2007’s Keynote just ended. What many people may not know was that the keynote was part of Apple’s goal to [become a greener company](http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/).

An example? Here’s the list of the “10 new Leopard features” from last year’s keynote:

* 64 bit
* Time Machine
* “Complete Package” (Photo booth / Front Row / Boot Camp)
* Spaces
* Spotlight
* Core Animation
* Universal Access
* Mail.app
* Dashboard
* iChat

This year, there was another list of 10 new features.

* New Desktop
* New Finder
* Quick Look
* 64 bit
* Core Animation
* Boot Camp
* Spaces
* Dashboard
* iChat
* Time Machine

Depending on your view (“Boot Camp” was a part of the “Complete Package” feature; Quick Look is/was a part of Time Machine), you’ll see that 60-80% of this year’s Leopard demo was recycled.

Who would’ve thought Apple would go green so quickly?

Categories
Debated Puzzled Over

It’s Pronounced “Folly-o”, Right?

Palm today announced the [Foleo](http://www.palm.com/us/products/mobilecompanion/foleo/), possibly the most awkwardly positioned tech product I’ve ever seen. Billed as the “world’s first mobile companion” – which translates to “costs as much as a smartphone but useless without one” – the Foleo is a 10″ sub-laptop that “helps you do more on the go”.

To find this product useful, you seemingly need to meet all of the following criteria:

* Have a smartphone, but be the sort of person who thinks the screen is too small to be really useful.
* Feel like you aren’t carrying enough devices in a day, so much so that a 10″ mini laptop will make you feel like a more complete person.
* Believe that Palm has enough direction to make a device like this work.
* Have $600 to burn – although there’s a $100 mail-in rebate as an “introductory offer”.

They’re advertising the Foleo on three primary aspects: email, attachments, and web. Again, we’re talking $600 for a device that just does those three things.

The marketing text is completely baffling as well. It’s hard to pick just one section that irks me, but:

> It connects wirelessly with your device to let you read and write longer emails and view attachments with ease. Think of it as the big screen and keyboard your smartphone has always wanted.

$600 for the ability to read and write longer emails. $600 to look at attachments. $600 for a big screen and keyboard. $600 for a crippled sub-notebook with 5 hours of battery life.

Palm is in a desperate fight to stay alive at this point. Palm OS has languished horribly, so much so that when I got my Treo at work last year, the only significant different from the Palm V I had back in 2000 was that the Treo had a color display. Worse, the company doesn’t seem to have anyone focused on application design – the Sidekick thrashes it up and down the street for usability. If a company can’t innovate within their own product line in over 6 years, I can’t find any enthusiasm as they try and invent a new class of devices.

If nothing else, Palm has made the iPhone look like a steal.

Jonathan Greene [has more on why this is a bad idea](http://www.atmasphere.net/wp/archives/2007/05/30/palm-foleo-will-be-a-serious-miss).

UPDATE: [NY1’s Tech Beat piece](http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=101&aid=70214) this morning (Thursday) is on the Foleo; a reporter from CNET really nails it:

“When you do a companion device you start to point out deficiencies in your current device and I think that’s a problem for Palm,” says David Carnoy of CNET.com.