Matt Crowley: Product manager, tech lover, toy maker

Me, You and Palm: Profiles of Palm People
	Role: I make killer toys. At least that is what my son thinks I do for a living. I think he's right. At Palm since: I arrived at Palm when it was cool to pull your phone out of your pocket by the external antenna.
I have an MBA and a degree in Cultural Anthropology. (I also know video compression technologies using inverse telecine and concatenating elementary videos from D1 sources into muxed streams.) I love technology, but I love technology more when people actually use it to make their lives better.   You should not have to “get used to” your keyboard. If you go to press “a” on your keyboard, wouldn’t it be nice to know that you’re actually going to get an “a” on your screen?   Palm isn’t work, it’s a family. And that family goes beyond the walls of the buildings in which we work. It extends all the way to the people that use and depend on our products. Their passions drive us to deliver something better every day.

  

Creating an amazing product is always a tough exercise in the delicate art of managing tradeoffs. Can we make the screen bigger -- but keep the phone smaller? More cool functions, please -- but longer battery life, thank you. There are inevitably healthy tensions among the different teams in product development championing for different tradeoffs. And that’s a good thing -- it pushes us to reinvent the boundaries of what's possible.

Here’s a small example involving Pre's 3.5mm headset jack (vs. a non-standard 2.5mm jack used in other phones). We wanted the customer (okay...me included) to be able to plug their standard noise-cancelling Bose headset into their Pre on a plane and rock out. No funky adapter needed; it should just work. But there was no room for a 3.5mm jack in the design. So it was my job to work with the engineering and design teams to find a meeting of the minds and make it happen. We kept asking: What if we curved it here? What if we had a unique part made to fit? What if...? Finally we came to a solution and balanced the efficiency of the speakerphone air space, and we made a unique 3.5mm headset part to match the curve of the Pre design. The result: You get great speakerphone performance AND a standard headset jack for my...I mean, your...noisy flights.

Join Matt on a Facebook discussion board all this week and ask him about large prime numbers or who he's calling Spaz this week.

Comments

[Eric]

The 3.5mm headset jack may not be much and a very simple feature it just goes to show how much work is being put into all the fine details on this phone. Also those 2.5mm jacks piss me off since you now have yet another adapter you have to bring with you everywhere. I can't wait to ditch my iPod and Zire 72 (2GB SD wasn't enough for my music and videos) for this!

Now all that's left on the hardware side of the Palm pre is expandable memory. I would love to see an SD slot or even a microsd slot. Looking at some pictures, I wonder if you could fit a small microsd slot under the cover where you keep the battery. That would be a nice place to store it since you don't need to switch SD cards around often. If you absolutely can't fit either of those, you should design some sort of cheap, expandable memory that plugs into the micro-usb slot and blends into the device making it slightly bigger, but still a nice curved shape.

[Fletch]

Matt I like what I am hearing about the new Pre more and more , unfortunately it may not be enough to get me to buy it. My problem is with the carrier the company has chosen to go solo with. Please tell us that at some point you plan on allowing other carriers to sell this great product.

[Stefan Constantinescu]

love features like this, next time please do a video.

thank you for becoming a very personal company!

[Ed]

I've been impressed by the things you've been able to leave out by using Bluetooth as an assumed part of the experience - i.e. iPhone/iPods need their "universal" connector (which changes frequently), the old U.S. Robotics Pilots, Palm Pilots, Palm, Handspring, Clie, Treo's sync cradle connectors which of course changed over time. By offering a wireless charging solution, there is no need to connect the Pre to anything to charge - so why would you need to connect to anything to sync. Therefore wireless stereo connections at your desk (using the wireless charger, the power consumption is not a big issue), your car, etc. I'm assuming that the same will apply to the old "beaming" functionality, i.e. Bluetooth push, and Bluetooth keyboards when at your desk or in class taking notes, etc.

This is the kind of innovative thinking which has always differentiated Palm from other companies just making pocket computers and music players. Long live the hand carved block of wood that fits in a shirt pocket!

[Henson]

I think it's hilarious that everyone's concentrating on the MicroSD slot when online storage options are so abundant and the iPhone doesn't have one either. Speaking of, glad to see the removable battery.

[Roy Chapman]

Will the Palm Pre be available SIM Free for use on any any network in the UK?

[Jericho]

I've had a Tilt for over a year now and one of the features I liked, when I purchased was the expandable storage via MicroSD. In hindsight, I've had 4GB, 6GB and now an 8GB card installed, and the storage has been more than enough. 8GB on the Pre is more than enough, given that I use more media over the air, i.e. streaming video, audio, Slingbox. The only question left is whether I can make the leap from AT&T to Sprint.

[Christian]

I really love the entire concept of the Pre, from the design of the phone to the new WebOS being designed to work so fluidly with the hardware I really think Palm has outdone itself in terms of "reinvention" of their name. I am severely disappointed to see the absence of a micro sd card slot though, just doesn't seem complete to me without the ability to expand the memory for us that really want to have everything possible on one device. Not to mention for existing micro sd card owners it's a real bummer not to have the convenience on the day you upgrade to the Pre to just take your card out of your old phone and pop it in the Pre. Just surprised me that Palm made such a decision, even the most basic of phones have them now days. In the smartphone market today we're really looking for all in one devices you know, we want to leave the laptop at home and have as close to the computer experience as possible. I really hope to see revisions to the Pre in the near future, I could see Palm squeezing a micro sd card slot behind the battery. It'd be nice to put at least a 16gb or hopefully 32b micro sd card in an updated Pre one day. A front facing camera for video calls and video share would be nice too, be really cool if you could switch between the front and back cameras while on a video call too. A couple of revisions to the OS would be nice in the future too (flash support, full html browser that allows all plug-ins for the true internet experience, video recording capabilities, not only spell check while typing but a built in Thesaurus too, etc.) but I'm sure Palm is working on updates for it right now. But not a bad first try, I commend Palm on what they've accomplished with the Pre so far. With a little polish I think they'll get it perfect someday, keep up the good work Palm.

[Alex H. at Edelman for Palm]

Hey Fletch -- thanks for the kind words. Sprint is our exclusive launch partner for now, but that doesn't mean there's no hope for others wanting the Pre on their carrier of choice. Just like we do with all our phones, we carefully explore partnerships with all our carrier partners. Please be patient and thanks for reading.

[Alex H. at Edelman for Palm]

Ed -- thanks so much for the compliment and long live the block of wood.

[Alex H. at Edelman for Palm]

Roy -- A world-ready UMTS version of the product will be made available in
other regions worldwide. More information will be provided closer to
availability. Appreciate your comment.

[Cary]

As Palm has stated that the Pre is just the beginning of WebOS - if this is the case, I can't even begin to imagine the possibilities when Sprint rolls out their WIMAX implementation. I think great things are ahead for the Sprint/Palm partnership!

[Rick Stetser]

I'm getting the impression that the old Palm applications which I've invested significant amount of money (and enjoy daily) aren't compatible with the Pre or am I wrong?

[Palm, Inc.]

The Pre runs on a new and different operating system (webOS). Palm has not yet announced any specific plans for solutions that would support the ability to run applications created for older operating systems on the new devices.

Jon Z at Palm

[roman]

Can you please comment on Palm's stance in light of Apple's recent patent approval on multitouch?

I'm just scared that the Pre would be killed by a lawsuit even before its launch!

I do hope you guys survive and make it through!

[Jon Z at Palm]

Roman -- here's an article that expands on why Palm remains confident about its intellectual property: http://tinyurl.com/anr6z4

[roman]

great article, thanks! I'm definitely getting a Pre when it comes out - hope it doesn't sell out!

[Jim R]

I have used Palm phones since your very 1st. I like what I'm seeing in the initial info on the Pre, and have already ordered two for testing.
I use the function key 20 times a day with my Voice Activated function for Texting, Emailing, looking up movie times etc --- All hands free. I don't see a function key on the Pre. I believe you'll be making a big mistake if you don't include it.
I also would encourage you to make available either more standard memory (16,32 or 64G) or the opportunity to expand memory with microSD or other cards.
The above described features if included would make the Pre complete, and allow all of us that would buy a Pre to make it the only device we carry.