So I walk up to the Pre-appointed sales person. There is no Pre out of the box, no demo, not even a gutted plastic Pre to hold and get other peoples germs from.

I talk to "dude" about the Pre and I will save the desirable language for my own blog, let's just call him an idiot. I had a number of questions prepared, nothing too technical, smart consumer questions. After asking the easiest one of the bunch I put all my questions on hold.

Price? $899 w/no contract (got pissed). Talked with him for a minute, surveyed the scene one last time, and left very angry. I spent the next 30 minutes with Heidi in the woman's section of Ross looking at girl stuff.

Later I made a few phone calls on the Pre, the Sprint stores and independent sellers all quoting wildly different no contract prices going all the way down to $499.

As much as I my secretly love seeing Apple get spanked for being bull-headed, they deserve a ton of credit. Their success stems from smart technological acquisitions, developing a cult following (never hurts), and running quality control with an iron fist.

What works for Apple will probably not work for Palm. Linux (as an OS) has a cult following, but the rising success has almost no parallel to Apple (*nix similarities not withstanding). Windows success (yes, they are still successful) comes from seeding the business community with clunky solutions that keep things going, even if Outlook takes 45 minutes from your day, everyday.

Palm, you had a built in crowd (older business folks) and a slew of (young) developers looking to drop their HTML, JS, etc skills on the Pre OS, you had the time line necessary for a proper release (you're very correct JW), the world could have been delivered to them on a golden platter.

Instead they waited outside the kitchen to trip the waiter carrying the golden platter. Way to fail Palm, way to fail.