99% of the time I agree with PJ and his soapbox shenanigans. I am also one of the first to defend him when someone thinks he's gone too far, but I take serious issue with one aspect of his recent tirade:
"2) The Clie' line of PDAs was a failure. Sony stretched the Palm OS, but only for the fanatical few. They were too complicated, too expensive, and were never focused on mass appeal. They deserved to die."
It is unfortunate that Clies are no longer among us. (Actually, they are, but are no longer manufactured.) Sony did indeed stretch and push the possibilities of the Palm platform and that's the kind of innovation that is lacking in today's Palms. Sony was first to market with hi-res screens, cameras, and wifi in a Palm. They were like the Apple of PDAS, but with a successful timeline. If Clies were so bad, why did Sony's departure from PDA manufacturing make CNN? And why do Clies on eBay still fetch far higher prices than their respective Palm counterparts?
Furthermore, Clies were not too complicated...they hit their intended market right on the head. The Japanese culture shuns having to read a thick manual to learn to operate their device in lieu of figuring it out on their own as they go. The Clie community is what brought me into forums. ClieSource (which is now a part of 1src) was a community of explorers helping everyone out; from the expert to the newbie, all the same welcome and support that we should have been getting from Palm to begin with.
If Sony were still manufacturing Clies, I am willing to bet that they would also have been the first to release a device with Cobalt, that Palm would have never had to consider releasing a WM Palm device, and that WM would still be in the dust, desperately trying to catch up!
With that being said, I yield the remainder of my time (and the soapbox) to gentleman from New Jersey.