The IT Nerd

If you are in the market for a Palm Pre, you may want to read this posting from PalmCentral first:

Joey Hess has taken a closer look at the code inside webOS that reports information back to Palm and found some details on what the Pre is sending back to headquarters. Specifically, it appears that the Pre uploads (at least) the following information to Palm on a daily basis:

* Location

* Which apps you’ve used and for how long

* App crash logs

* Installed apps

It’s obviously the “location” part here that’s troubling. As Hess points out, Palm’s Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy are sufficiently broad to give them permission to collect this information. In fact, our own Derek Kessler wrote up a post some time ago (which we were holding because, well, we’re not lawyers) which explained that when you agree to Palm’s terms, you grant them the right to collect this information.

I’m trying not to jump to conclusions here, but this sounds really bad.

What’s worse is that if you want to disable this ability you can’t unless you’re a nerd like me. That’s just craptastic. Did Palm not think that someone would figure this out? After all, it’s not as if nerds and geeks don’t go poking around shiny new toys to see how they tick. I wonder what kind of backlash there will be about this and how much negative impact it will have on the Palm brand. In my case, knowing that this smart phone does this has made it less desirable in my mind. I honestly don’t know why Palm thought it could get away with something like this without some blowback. Given the fact that it is behind the BlackBerry and the iPhone in the smartphone market and they have to overcome those two to get any decent market share, they really didn’t need something like this to appear. Oh by the way, while their terms and conditions allow them to collect this info, they don’t explicitly mention the above.  So it doesn’t make me feel any better.

One thing has crossed my mind though. How many other smartphones or phones in general do this. A quick Google search turns up the fact that the iPhone for one seems to have similar capabilities which has soured me on this phone as well. Does the BlackBerry do the same thing? How about Android smartphones?

Anybody know?

Before I go, here’s a piece of advice for Bell. Seeing as they are bringing the Palm Pre into Canada later this month may want to consult the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as I’m guessing that this sort of behavior isn’t legal in the true north strong and free Canada. It would look really bad for Bell to get sucked into this.

I’ve just come across a thread over at precentral.net that seems to indicate that the early adopters of the Pre are not impressed with the build quality of the device. Here’s some more notable quotes:

I am EXTREMELY disappointed with the build quality of the hardware and even mroe disappointed that Palm has not acknowledged it or starting fixing the issues. My first pre had a bunch of hotspots at the bottom of the screen, my second pre was sent to me by Palm and it turned out to be refurbished with the slider tracks all over the place, and finally I went into a sprint store to get a new one, but found a dead pixel when I got home.

And:

Well, the problems are real. I’m on my 5th Pre, all had problems that were unacceptable. My current one has a stuck pixel, but I’m okay with that.

And finally this:

My current phone (#5) has at least 2 bad pixels and I’ll live with that. But Pre #2 had at least 11 stuck pixels and and Pre #3 had at least 9 stuck pixels. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to say that that is too many.

That by itself wouldn’t make me post something like this. But when people start posting pictures on the Interwebs, you have to start taking it a bit more seriously.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that when you launch a brand new product, bad stuff will happen and complaints will surface. Just look at the launch of the iPhone as an example of how things can go pear shaped. When that happens, a decent product will often get killed because of all the negative press. So if I were Palm, I’d get in front of this issue quickly. It doesn’t matter if it’s ten people who have this issue or a thousand. The negative press stands to kill any hope the Pre has of rescuing Palm.

The Palm Pre launched on Saturday and here’s a couple of observations from trolling the Interwebs. First is the fact that ZDNet claims that Palm may have sold as many as 50,000 of the devices this past weekend. Not exactly a trivial number, but far less than the iPhone launch a couple of years ago. Then there’s this shot of the lineup for the Palm Pre vs. the lineup for the iPhone. While not scientific, it is telling about how popular the Pre is (or isn’t when compared to the iPhone). Still, these are early days and we’ll see over the long term how this plays out.

Oh, if Apple announces a new iPhone sometime after 1PM EST at the WWDC as expected by many including yours truly, you can probably write of the Pre and Palm along with it.