No, we didn’t get a Palm Pre to check out before its launch today — something which is a bit fishy and contributed to a big heap of drama earlier today. But it does seem like a ton of people both on the web and in real-life are very excited about the device. And they should be, having just read others’ reviews and talking to friends who have used it, it seems like it will easily be at least the number two coolest phone out there.
So for those of us who didn’t get one today, here’s the video that plays upon starting up your new Pre. It’s pretty damn awesome — much better than the iPhone’s startup screen — which I’ve been seeing a lot of lately. This one actually reminds me a bit of the cool Apple TV startup video.
[via PopWuping]
Ok, fine I’m gonna say it.
MG, you have a shit fone. Here’s why.
The only thing left to justify your phone’s existence is the app store. And the app devs are going to flock to Pre / WebOS because there will be both more carriers (and more fones) using it.
That and…
Conversion of an iPhone App to a Palm App is going to become way easy, so why not press the convert button and sell to a bigger audience?
The margins on Palm App sales will be higher than 70%. Bet on it.
Its just killing me watch you squirm when your religious views are challenged. Find peace. Own your envy fanboy.
Much of that makes very little sense, but okay.
Actually MG, it probably doesn’t make sense to you.
I’m referring to your earlier comments on the Laporte post – you struggled to understand how your purchase can affect your reporting.
The science of influence says actually that once you blow your wad on a product, tribe, religion – you become much much more determined to justify the outlay and deeply psychologically become invested – if it is a smart purchase, you are smart. That’s why loss of even a few dollars on a bad purchase has such a damning effect.
What you buy is who you are. Period. And you are a Mac fanboy. So if you end up with the loser product, your tech rep takes a ding.
Does that make sense?
Side note example: how about doing a post telling everyone how to easily change their default browser search over to Bing. Informative. Not easy. Lots of folks would like to funnel their generic daily traffic to another search player. Bing works pretty good. You yourself use google, so instead make the case that everyone shouldn’t. I’d call that working against your instinct, and thats what you should do as a journalist – at least one not under the influence of your own habits.
Yeah, I never bash products that I own. Especially not Apple products.
http://www.tech...-please-fix-it/
http://www.tech...-objectionable/
http://www.tech...like-an-iphone/
http://ventureb...unes-cant-cash/
http://www.tech...-of-the-iphone/
http://ventureb...thing-launches/
Dozen other examples…
That comment I was responding to on the Laporte post was dumb ( http://www.tech...comment-2787082 ) — but your’s here is dumber. Nice work.
hahahahha i’ve commented on maybe 2-3 of those posts saying that they’ll be used very soon to defend future fanboy accusations.
yes, those posts are critical of apple. no, that doesn’t make your coverage in the other 99% of posts any less biased.
“it seems like it will easily be at least the number two coolest phone out there” – please, fuck off.
MG, as far as I am concerned, you are the man. You are an awesome addition to TechCrunch.
But what the hell was up with TechCrunch writer John Biggs, and his article “Palm Pre promises to explode into a supernova of suck”? LOL
http://www.crun...ernova-of-suck/
Sounds like he might need to put that supernova of suck into his hat and eat it.
I’m with MG. Your original post made very little sense.
Developers will go wherever the money is. If the Pre gains more market share than the iPhone and their app store is just as successful, then developers will go there. It really has nothing to do with the actual number of carriers unless that translates to customers.
Not sure exactly how iPhone apps will be “way easy” to “convert” it to a Pre app. I’m guessing you’re not a developer.
Lastly, I’m not exactly sure why being a Palm Pre fanboy is any better than being an Apple one.
“It really has nothing to do with the actual number of carriers unless that translates to customers.”
Are you serious? You don’t think having more carriers = more customers? OF COURSE IT DOES! Now who is biased?
..I’ve never been more confused by anything in my life more than this post. What the hell?
Her Morgan… Ask you doctor about Tourette’s Syndrome. There are people who can help you.
Just gotta say it…. OH SNAP
I second Holden. Here is a tip world, if you knock an author on his blog, and you are incorrect: you will look like an ass. So, please, idiots go back to Digg please.
Hey MG why can’t it become the number one coolest phone? honestly this seems more useful than the Iphone and it doesn’t have the 40,000 apps of the App Store. Take your head of your ass and realize that this phone just might overtake the Iphone long term. But of course I realize you are an iDiot fanboy who writes pretty good i admit, but lost all credibility with the Apple Juice you are hooked on.
Geez dude. Im an iPhone dev and im not touching pre with a 10 ft stick.
Until the Pre becomes a “NEED, WANT, MUST HAVE” to more than just a few folks on sprint, i may think about it. But your stupid comment is more entertaining than anything to be taken seriously.
you are an Iphone Dev and most likely an iDiot! Besides you did said it, you are an Iphone Developer not a Developer(wide range of products).
i’ll have to agree… if you’re an “iPhone dev” i can see why you wouldn’t want to touch ANYTHING with a “10 ft stick” let alone a Pre.
Dude, that’s just awesomely idiotic.
Pre fanboy FTW
I was wondering how Palm would teach first-time users to use the novel aspects of its interface. This is amazing. I can’t even imagine Apple doing a better job. It doesn’t even call itself a teaching video, it just passively shows you how to do things.
I bet most people won’t even realize they have been taught something. Beautiful.
Exactly right. It’s quite brilliant.
so how many times does this startup video play?
Because as cool as it is – I can see it being super annoying if it keeps coming up everytime you turn the phone on.
Maybe he meant to say, “upon *activating* your new Pre”
Only comes up once, when you first load it. It may have done it after the update, but it is not during a normal power on.
The video is available in the videos section of your phone, so you can watch it anytime though.
Good stuff, thanks Aaron.
Nice Video. The keyboard on this thing looks totally unusable. What a crappy piece of plastic.
I agree… what a piece of shit… why didnt they orient it the other way.. like the g1…
I went to the Sprint store today and talked to one of the sales reps. I asked him what he thought about the keyboard. He said he had no problems with it and pulled his personal phone out of his pocket and showed me that his personal phone had the same size keys. So it appears there are other phones on the market with the same size keypad so I am not sure why everyone makes a fuss about it.
He then went on to explain that there are people who have no problem with the keyboard at all and then there are other people who always press 3 keys each time and cannot use it.
I found that in typing a few sentences on the Pre that I did not make a single mistake so it seems like it depends on the user (as with any device).
The reason is that many Apple fanboys need to find a fault on this phone. They are afraid of a little competition.
Sounds like you never used the phone so shut the fuck up.
Why couldn’t my android phone have a cool video. Bummer
Because you bought a phone, that Google designed?
Seriously though, the Android looks awesome, and it certainly seems very linuxish in its approach to the mobiletop
Does the average contract length affect the release of each phone because for the average person each phone is a 3 year relationship. If you have an iphone, you have it for 3 years. Same with the Blackberry.
For AT&T contracts it is generally 2 years, not 3.
Startup video isn’t really huge news. I’m interested to see what the news is once the Pre has been out in the wild a week, a month, 6 months.
How will it handle being physically dropped? How will it handle calls while driving up and down the 101 or the 280 (iphone does a crap job at this)? Battery usage? OS stability?
You have problems on 101? I have calls drop on 280 sometimes but never on 101, although I’ve heard people complain about it. I’m still using my 1st gen iPhone and wondering if it’s just a problem with the 3G.
What the hell is wrong with Verizon? They are the #1 carrier and yet they can’t offer either of the top 2 phones on the market, and won’t for at least another year or longer.
They can’t offer the iPhone because they passed on the deal and AT&T did not, and the networks aren’t compatible. And as far as the top 2 phones on the market, they have a ton of blackberry’s and they push those quite hard. Blackberry and iPhone have been flip flopping for the #2 spot behind Nokia for a bit now.
And there are rumors that Verizon will be getting the Pre by the end of this year.
is that a new order song, or just some new order-ish filler music?
WTH, I don’t like it…I never liked Palm anyways!
The beginning kind of looks like the Microsoft Grass background screen…
You also missed an awesome phone. The Pre is amazing. The contacts are great. The UI is great. The interaction is great. It browser displays sites and blogs clearly and is easy to read, and it works well with AJAX sites, like GatherGrid and others we’ve tested, so you dont need to wait for special Apps to use them! They keyboard is fast, and perfect for typing long notes and emails.
One thing that sucks is the memo pad. They did away with categories (they have colors instead) and listing them alphabetically. I hope they patch this to add categories and listings as Treo and Centro users are migrating over hundreds of memos (which are no searchable, but it’s still nice to have the alphabetical and categorized lists).
Just when I thought this phone couldn’t possibly get any more kick ass….they add a sweet startup video. Good one, Palm.
…I want this bad boy so bad.
what video? I’m drunk, it’s 3am and I’m drunk. but what video? I see no video. C’mon…
Ok I’m drunk.
All I can say is that this phone reminds me of when Palm introduced graffiti. Once you learn how to use it, it can be quite kickass.
But off the bat, its not super intuitive. I remember getting my hands on the iPod touch and immediately everything seems very natural.
I also found the Pre not as fluid as the iPhone… when you tap on an app to start on an iPhone, “something happens”… the screen switches/color changes/animation etc which lets you know that its doing something.
On a Pre (esp if u have more than one app running), sometimes, it just hangs for 3 seconds and then walla the app starts… which can be a bit unnerving since you don’t have that visual feedback.
All in all, I still think Pre doesn’t measure up to the iPhone and trust me I’m no Mac fanboy… in fact I don’t even own a freaking Apple product… but just my 2 cents.
Leo is a prick. In the US, and particularly in the valley, loyalism is totally overrated. Asking questions is always allowed, and that’s what Mike did.
+10 for Mike’s courage to say the truth. -9 for his drawback and apologies.
>No, we didn’t get a Palm Pre to check out before its launch today — something which is a bit fishy
A love your titanic self regard. You are essentially questioning the credibility of every person who reviewed the phone and liked it – which is 90% of the reviews – just because you didn’t get one. I don’t recall you asking if Pogue and Mossberg were keeping their review unit iPhones. Is this because you guys got one perhaps? Did you guys get one because mike posted that he knew he would love whatever apple came up with and couldn’t wait to get rid of his shitty winmo? Does it insult your credibility to be asked?
I’m not sure what’s so fishy about TechCrunch not getting a Pre review unit. I’m guessing the Palm PR people read the site, realized it was a complete joke, and reserved the limited number of review units to actual journalists.
Actually all the review units went to sites and outlets that Palm and Sprint advertise with. It was very controlled situation
Do you wake up each morning and saying I am going to tell everyone I am an idiot.
1. If TC was a joke then why are you reading it and making comments?
2. The amount of viewers TC gets makes them legit.. Audience is what matters online.. TC has a huge audience…
The reason they likely didn’t want to give TC a copy was because of control… smart PR people would want to keep a postive word of mouth campaign alive… TC might be too powerful to risk..
I’m gonna go ahead and say both your points are grossly shortsighted.
apple better step up their game (which, rumor has it they are not) if they want to best the pre.
as of right now pre is definitely on top
The Pre may be a nice phone, but app support is where its at, and this phone won’t have any (or very little) for awhile, if ever.
Just plain not true, apps are going to proliferate extremely quickly because of the very low barrier to entry. Now, the chief problem will be that there will be fewer standout gaming type apps, since the webOS exists somewhere between Apple’s initial attempt to force web applications and its later opening of the SDK.
NOT TO MENTION: It emulates old Palm apps! I bet there’s more of those than there are iPhone apps. Obviously many will be very 1997, but I for one look forward to grabbing a nice copy of Dope Wars again.
We’ll see how powerful their Mojo SDK is. I agree that because of the much lower learning curve, developers will be able to more easily write apps for the Pre.
On a side note, the Pre supports Flash, so if the SDK doesn’t allow for hardcore gaming development there might still be hope yet.
test
It is nice to see a video bursting with originality. Palm must be proud to list their artistic references: Disney, Tinkerbell, The Spice Girls… http://www.yout...h?v=WhkLKsr_NsE
And George Lucas, of course (Ewoks, anyone?)
For once in my life, I don’t feellike the cheesiest adult around
I’m going to come right out at the start and admit I’ve got an iPhone. I’ve tried the other smart phones (yet to try a Pre though) and they ALL fall short of the iPhone without fail.
Having said that, if another phone does come along that offers something unique (like the iPhone did before everyone else jumped on the touch screen / landscape / music & video player / email / web browser platform) then I’d move over to that. No question.
But, and it’s a big but – I don’t see this happening. The Pre looks great and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on one to try out for an extended period but it doesn’t offer anything the new.
Oh, it did have a snazzy start-up video though. That makes up for a lot…
It’ll be interesting to see how this phone shapes up and whether it will make it onto other carriers after its’ Sprint exclusive period is over. Sadly, I think this runs the chance of going the way of so many other pretenders for the Smartphone crown and slinking quietly into unsupported obscurity.
Good luck Pre… you’re about to be dominated by a $99 iPhone.
The $99 iphone is a better value than a $199 Pre ONLY if you make the common “economist’s mistake” of failing to take everything into consideration. Obviously your yearly cost is lower with Sprint. I personally don’t want Sprint so I will wait for the ATT version (probably the Eos).