Palm for the iPhone?

If you are a frequent reader of my blogs, you know how much I’ve come to love my iPhone. But there’s still one critical upgrade I’d like to make; the calendar function is vastly inferior to the Palm’s OS. The iPhone calendar application limits the intervals at which I can set alarms or repeat events. And backing up my data isn’t nearly as straightforward as it is with Palm.

Have you noticed this too?

I’ve been using the Palm since the first version, that pioneering handheld known as the “Palm Pilot.” The simplicity with which I can enter contacts and manage calendar entries on the device then synch them to my computer is unrivaled. The primary value proposition of the Palm OS to me is:

Simplicity
Easy of use
Secure backup

Apple tries to rival this with “Mobile Me,” a subscription based application which falls short, in my opinion, for two reasons. First, I really just want the backup service in case I lose my iPhone. I don’t need to be able to access my information from any computer in the world, I just need to know that it is safe somewhere (preferably on my own laptop). So my need for easy synchronization is actually complicated by the scale of what Apple has created here.

Sometimes I still want to Keep It Simple, Stupid. From a user’s perspective this is an important design principle to remember.

The second shortfall with Mobile Me is the fact that there is an annual subscription charge of $100. I have never (and hopefully never will) pay $100 for a ‘handheld’ application.

If we can agree the Palm has a better model for synchronization, perhaps we can also agree that they are completely missing the boat. What am I talking about? Check out the iTunes application store and you will find no applications that were developed by Palm. Why not? They clearly own the synchronization space, and Apple is eating their lunch in the handheld hardware market (yes, I know Palm is planning a comeback; the Palm Pre is scheduled to arrive on Sprint on June 6) so why not do what they do best and build “Palm-like” applications for the iPhone?

Perhaps I have it wrong: I know that Apple can be finicky about which applications they allow in the iTunes store, so I could believe that they are blocking Palm from releasing iPhone apps. (If you want to know more about Apple’s policies, click here for an interesting read).

Still, in the ‘old’ world developers and executives from Palm would have been too stubborn to see how the world around them was changing. They would have resisted the opportunity to leverage their existing brand and customer loyalty in the new space that Apple has created, and stubbornly clung to their mantra of “ours is better.” Mine is a fairly qualified opinion, as I was with 3Com during the Palm spinoff.

But this is the ‘new’ world of innovation, collaboration and adaptation. And I believe that Palm really is missing out on a great opportunity to extend their brand into the software space.

What do you think? Is there a great application out there that I haven’t discovered yet (I do know about the google calendars), a truly easy way to solve the contact/calendar management problems? Or is there a hole/opportunity here?