Although I have a great deal of respect for Nagel and have found him to be one of the most likable and approachable of this industry's executives, he and I never saw eye-to-eye on the direction that PalmSource needed to take. Dating back to 2001, Nagel and I have gone round and round on his commitment to the PalmOS (discussed here). I've long maintained that PalmOS' number one enemy is Microsoft's PocketPC, and that Palm -- to compete with Microsoft -- had little choice but to join forces with the Java community and leverage its 3 million developers (as opposed to the 300,000+ developers that Palm and subsequently PalmSource have had difficulty growing). Back then, a small company called Savaje had already demonstrated how everything that Palm offered on the PalmOS was doable in more of a pure Java environment (without any sacrafice in performance) and I even asked why Palm might not consider an acquisition of Savaje.
Since then, both PalmOne (in its hardware) and PalmSource (in the software) have been flirting with Java. But they never adopted it as religion in a way that would put all Palm apps on a strategic path to be migrated. Over the years, execs have come up with many excuses. Performance, Sun is difficult, etc. RIM has gone the pure Java route with its BlackBerries and need I say what direction that company has gone in the last five years? I'm sorry to see Nagel go. But I still believe that more of a pure Java approach is the only direction that either company can take if they hope to survive Microsoft's PocketPC juggernaut (not to mention other Java-oriented players such as RIM and Symbian).
Join Discussion