• Two phones (Pre Plus and Pixi Plus) coming to Verizon.
• Pre and Pixi also to be available on AT&T very soon
• Verizon phones are capable of being used as MiFi-style WiFi stations. So you can tether a number of computers to your Pre or Pixi at the coffee shop.
• A new version of the WebOS operating system, with significant upgrades, which will be available to all existing WebOS phones as well as these new phones
• Third-party development open to everyone, as opposed to the small test group it was released to previously. Anyone with a web browser can sign up and write apps
• New SDK for development, which allows the use of some C+ code. (Previously all WebOS apps were HTML/Javascript only)
• Flash 10 availability on WebOS

Let’s take some of those one by one.

Verizon and AT&T: Palm now has phones running WebOS on 3 of the 4 major carriers in the US. Apple can’t say that. Google can’t, either. They’d like you to think that you can buy an “unlocked” Nexus One and use it anywhere, but the fact is that the only carrier you can use a Nexus One on is T-Mobile, the smallest carrier in the US.  The Droid is on Verizon. No Android phone runs on AT&T or Sprint, yet. So you have more choices with WebOS, which will allow you to choose a carrier that is more likely to have better coverage where you need it most. And, if you buy a WebOS phone today, you will still have to buy another one to switch carriers later on, but all your apps will be able to be ported over, and the UI on that phone will be consistent with what you’re used to, at least. That’s about as good as it gets in the screwed up US telco system. MiFi: Palm will soon have phones that you can tether on Verizon. Neither the iPhone nor the new Nexus One can be tethered in the US yet. And MiFi-type tethering is even better, because more than one laptop can use the connection at a time. So I could whip out my Pre Plus, and both me and a few of my friends can surf the web on our own laptops. Very cool. Updates to the WebOS being available to all WebOS phones: This is something Palm was smart to copy from Apple. Keep the number of models limited, and keep the feature sets between those models at least somewhat consistent. The Pixi and Pre both have hardware keyboards. They both have touch screens (with multi-touch, by the way, something that Google has yet to implement in the OS). They have similar specs in most regards. So you can be reasonably certain when you buy a WebOS app that it will work on your Palm WebOS phone, whichever phone that is. A developer for WebOS can also be reasonably certain that his or her app will work on the entire installed base of WebOS phones. Google’s Android OS is on many different phones now, and even some tablet devices. Each Android phone maker creates its own version of the user interface, and includes whatever features it likes. So some Android phones have keyboards. Some do not. Some have accelerometers. Some do not. Some can upgrade to the latest version of the OS. Many can not. Etc. There’s no easy way for a developer to test his or her apps on every Android device, and there’s no guarantee that the Android device I buy tomorrow will run all the apps I bought for my current Android phone today. It’s all one big crap shoot. The C+ code for developers and opening up the development to all: Palm made it a point to show off some A-list games running on the new WebOS update today. Very smart move. The fact that Android cannot run software anywhere near this sophisticated, thanks to its ridiculous 190MB storage limit, never seems to come up in articles about Android. If you don’t think games are important, watch an iPod Touch ad sometime. Why do you think that Apple, a company that has scorned games since its inception, suddenly features games in all its ads? And it’s not really just about games; it’s about the level of sophistication that games demonstrate on your device. WebOS just graduated from “baby software” status. And it removed the biggest weapon iPhone lovers like myself use to put down WebOS. Palm is likely to have at least a few developers consider dabbling in WebOS that wouldn’t have before. Well done. Flash: I couldn’t care less about Flash on a mobile device, personally. Actually, that’s not true. I care very much that Flash isn’t on my mobile device. I wish we could eradicate it from the desktop as well. It’s a memory hog. It inspires laziness in designers. It’s non-standard. It has the potential to give Adobe the same kind of control over the Internet once enjoyed by Microsoft with Internet Explorer. It’s the ultimate lazy man’s way of doing video on the web. Put simply, it’s a poison that needs to be eradicated from society. Which is why Apple and Google are trying to crush it. But Palm, who has little else it can use to differentiate itself from Apple’s offerings, is very wise to embrace Flash on WebOS. I predict that the implementation will be thoroughly disappointing. (Most Flash web sites will not work on a touch screen with your fingers, despite what everyone else seems to think. Designers, who are already too lazy to make alternate mobile versions of sites without Flash won’t suddenly try to design Flash sites that leave out all the extra features of Flash that won’t work in the mobile version, either. So what you’ll get is a phone that can “run Flash” but will actually function on one out of every ten or so Flash sites. The inconsistency will drive people totally nuts.) But that doesn’t matter. It’s a bullet point on a press release. It’s a sales tool that will probably prove at least minimally successful, until the public learns the hard way that Flash is better off dead. So where does that leave Palm? Six months ago, the whole world was convinced Palm would be closing its doors by now. But it turns out that the WebOS might just have some staying power. I keep hearing fans of the iPhone talk about how “Android is good, because at least someone has to give Apple some competition and keep them on their toes.” I have yet to see any Android phone that is a threat to Apple, and I see the entire Android strategy as a bad copy of everything that failed for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile over the last decade. But Palm is doing some things that Apple should be watching. At the very least, I’d be sure to sign up the iPhone with a few other US carriers in the next six months, if I were Apple. And I’d get that tethering MiFi thing happening, too. Maybe Palm doesn’t stand a chance against Apple, either. But if I were mounting a strategy to at least grab up enough market share to keep myself in business in what has become a very tough battle for customers, I’d probably do what Palm is doing right now. Rubinstein seems to be copying Apple’s strategy where it makes sense, while also setting up some differentiators wherever possible. Certainly, if the iPhone were no longer an option for me, for whatever reason, I’d consider WebOS long before I’d consider Android. And if I were Google, I’d take a few notes from Palm and stop trying to follow in Microsoft’s poorly-implemented footsteps. The biggest mistake Palm made today was the fact that it made these announcements today, at CES, in the midst of ten thousand other announcements. Here’s one area where Google was better at copying Apple. Perhaps, though, Palm doesn’t have enough pull anymore to call a special event before the big trade show and expect people to show up and pay attention. Hopefully by the next time they have something to announce, more people will be ready to lend an ear.

If you didn’t know that Microsoft was finished as a consumer company before last night, watching Steve Ballmer’s Keynote at CES would convince you.

Not that this pitiful display of ineptitude was anything new. Microsoft has been “faking it” for years now at CES, responding to whatever Apple announced at Macworld a week earlier with a concept of some future product that never really ships. (Remember the Surface? Know anyone who’s bought one?) The big difference this year, of course, is that Macworld didn’t come in January, and Steve’s big tablet announcement is happening AFTER CES. This presented Microsoft with its first opportunity in years to demonstrate something on its own, something that didn’t look like a “me-too” device. Something that was truly innovative and forward-thinking.And what did Ballmer announce? A “slate PC” running Windows 7. Rather than copying a newly announced Apple product, they copied a rumored Apple product. And because they know as little about that rumored product as the rest of us, they couldn’t even make a good copy. All they could do was steal the rumored name “slate” and stick it on a product that already exists.

This is yet again more evidence that Microsoft’s answer to everything is a box that runs Windows. Not some breakthrough new UI that adds to the functionality of Windows and changes the world. It’s literally just another box that runs Windows. Only it’s more expensive and doesn’t have a keyboard. If you ever needed an argument for why Apple’s new tablet shouldn’t run the full OS X, Ballmer demonstrated it last night. Desktop UIs designed for mouse and keyboard input don’t work with your fingers. They just don’t. And by the way, hasn’t Microsoft been selling tablets for years now? The innovation of Apple’s new product won’t be that it’s a tablet. Microsoft has actually been failing in that enterprise since before the iPhone. The innovation will come from the fact that Apple’s tablet won’t simply be a computer without a keyboard. It will be an entirely new category of web-enabled devices. In other words, Microsoft’s failure with the tablet has been due to lack of vision, not technology. You can’t just spec something out and sell it on features; the product needs a reason to exist. It needs to serve a real purpose for real people. And the purpose of a keynote is to demonstrate that product and share the vision of that product’s purpose with the world.So Ballmer’s failure last night was threefold. First, it was only a rehash of a product that already exists and has never sold well. Second, it was the lamest attempt yet to copy Apple. And third, and most importantly, it was a HUGE wasted opportunity to utilize this chance to say something meaningful for once. To shock the world with something truly amazing.

Sandwiched between Google’s Nexus One announcements and Apple’s Special Event at the end of the month, you can’t help but notice that the tech world is moving ahead without Microsoft. Old MS is simply not a factor anymore.

I know what some of you are thinking. What about Project Natal? What about it? Can anyone even describe to me in three sentences what it is, or how it’s going to be useful to me in any way? Can you even tell me when any of the Natal Project’s innovations are going to make it into a real product? They say the XBox will bear the first fruit by the end of the year. If you believe that, I have a giant bathtub computer to sell you.

So at best, Natal is pre-natal. If Apple announced at the end of January that it wouldn’t ship a tablet until late 2010, and didn’t even have a tablet design to show off, the press would jump all over it. At least with the original iPhone, Jobs had a tangible product to demo, a clear vision of what the iPhone was for and what it did, and a solid target release timeframe, though it was six months away. Natal is more like “We hired a bunch of really smart people, and they’re working on some cool things that we’ll probably ship around Christmas. More details later.”

As it stands, the only press I’m seeing this morning about Microsoft is about the lame tablet. I’m convinced they can’t write about Natal because they don’t know what it is.So it’ll take a few years, but Microsoft is on its way to becoming the next IBM. Still a giant behemoth of a company, of course, but one that will only be of importance to businesses, IT people, tech nerds, etc. If the XBox survives thanks to some major breakthrough in Natal, I’ll be surprised. I’ll be surprised if the concept of a standalone game console makes it another decade, to tell you the truth.

It’s not about who sells the most computers today; it’s about momentum. And right now, all the momentum is working against Microsoft making any sort of mark on the consumer tech world ever again.

Classic quote from Ars Technica yesterday about the Google’s new phone initiative:

“If a particular Google-branded phone is not on a particular carrier, then that’s only because that phone doesn’t have the proper radio to support its network.” You have to want Google to change the world sooooo bad to stretch reality far enough to believe that setting up a web site to sell unlocked phones is going to make a difference in the US mobile phone space.Here’s a news flash for the unenlightened: You can buy a lot of phones unlocked in the U.S. Nexus One is far from the first. If you’re willing to pay $500+ dollars, you can get a lot of phones and set up cheaper service with no 2-year obligation. I used to do it with all my Treos years ago. Until I realized that my Treo was going to be locked into a particular telco’s service, anyway.

And people say us Mac users drink the Kool Aid too much. Jeez.

Again, there is no one phone that works on multiple carriers in the U.S. T-Mobile/AT&T comes close, but since they have incompatible 3G radios, you end up only being able to use voice and slow EDGE data on one or the other.

When 4G is established enough in two or three years, that might all change. But by then, EVERYONE will be selling unlocked phones at a premium.

My prediction: most people will still be cheap and go for the subsidy.

Pogue does some good reporting here. He even mentions the Android memory issue, which is even worse than I thought on Nexus One. Only 190 MB available to apps. I assumed most of the 512 MB of internal RAM was available, which would have been too little, too. But 190 MB is just a joke.

I keep coming back to that great Jobs quote: “Baby software.” It’s not just about games. It’s about the level of software possible. It’s about the lack of potential for truly amazing applications. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/technology/personaltech/06pogue.html?partne…

Yeah. Animated wallpapers. Killer feature.

512 MB of RAM, as opposed to iPhone’s 256. But everyone continues to fail to mention that that 512 MB is ALL YOU GET for loading all your apps. You can pop as many 32 GB SIM cards as you want on this bad boy; none of that space can be used for anything other than music and videos. In other words, this phone is no more advanced in its memory architecture than my Treo was three years ago. And no one is going to be building serious software for Android anytime soon.

But my favorite quote from the coverage so far is from IGN: “What makes Google’s strategy for the Nexus One unique is that they are offering it as an unlocked non-network-specific device or on several existing networks, unlike the iPhone which remains exclusive to AT&T. ”

Now pair that with this statement on Google’s own web site: “The currently available Nexus One device is unlocked and will recognize SIM cards from any mobile service provider using the GSM standard, but is incompatible with the frequency band used by the AT&T and Rogers networks for 3G data (see below). Additionally, the Nexus One is incompatible with CDMA networks such as Verizon and Sprint.” So the unlocked Nexus One will work on any network in the U.S., as long as it’s T-Mobile.To be fair, you can make calls on AT&T, you just can’t get data. So for $529, you can get a phone that makes calls. That’s revolutionary, indeed.