RFE: Some issues with the Pre/WebOS coming from the perspective of a former Windows Mobile user, Part I

Question

I just switched over to a Palm Pre from a Windows Mobile device a week or two ago.  Now, don’t get me wrong here—I really do like the Palm.  For the most part, all of those things that were buggy, slow and inconsistent with Windows Mobile just simply work on the Palm, and that’s a very good thing.  However, when a product is so good, it makes the problems stand out all that much more, and with a lot of the problems I’m finding, the decision making on the part of Palm that led to the problem is just baffling to me.  I am hoping that I am just missing something on at least some of these issues, but so far, I have a laundry list of the things/features/omissions that I just really can't understand.  Because I have 8 issues, I'm going to break these down into three separate posts, with a few days in between each.  So, here goes PART I:
1)  You can't select/manage multiple e-mails or text messages?  This is a pretty big problem, as I very consistently need to mark dozens and dozens of messages as read and then delete them, and swiping them off the screen one at a time just doesn't cut it.  Not only is it slow and painfully cumbersome, but it leaves them all marked as unread back in Outlook.  This really needs to be fixed, and I cannot imagine that even one single Palm user would disagree with me on this.  Actually, I think my bigger concern is how the product got developed without this ability in the first place, especially when prior Palm offerings apparently had it.
2)  WebOS forces you to sort ALL contacts the same way?  I have many contacts set up in Outlook to be sorted by last name, and many others set up to be sorted by company name.  I've done this because that is how I need them sorted--sometimes the individual is my focus, but I have their company listed, and sometimes the company is the focus, but I have an individual contact listed.  Outlook, and every other contact management app I've seen, recognizes this, and allows me to sort each individual contact in the manner that best fits that contact.  Unfortunately, WebOS apparently ignores the Outlook "File As" field, and makes me sort everybody the exact same way.  As above, I cannot imagine anybody disagreeing with me that this is an important fix, and also as above, I can’t figure out why this wasn’t simply done this way from the get go.
3)  No scroll bars?  Okay, so scrolling by flicking with your finger obviously works better than scrolling with a scroll bar along the side of the screen, but let’s not forget the fact that the scroll bar performs another EXTREMELY important function aside from actually scrolling:  the scroll bar provides the user with instant feedback as to how long the list is and how far down the list the user has scrolled.  These are two extremely, extremely useful pieces of information, and they are completely missing on the Pre.  I tried to look through some applications on my Pre the other day (more on the problems with the app store below), and I had a list of probably 100 or 200 applications that fit my search criteria, and I scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled, and never had any idea of any sort how far down the list I had gotten nor how far I had left to go—and that was extraordinarily frustrating.  Oh, and if I wasn’t able to finish going through the list in one sitting, guess what, I have absolutely no possible way to run the search again and quickly get back to the point where I left off, because I have absolutely no idea how far along I had gotten.  I have to say, this glaring omission makes using the Pre on anything but very short lists and websites, well, unusable.  Scroll bars are everywhere—they’re there in every single program or application I have ever seen when the data presented goes off the available screen area, and there is a very, very good reason for their overwhelming prevalence—a reason that has nothing to do with the actual act of scrolling.  I think this one is probably my biggest complaint with the Pre.
I will post the next few in a separate post, but these are my "top 3".  To be honest, most of these just really leave me scratching my head wondering “what were they thinking?”  The Pre is a great product, but obvious little shortcomings really stand out on a good product (can anybody say “where’s the cut and paste, Apple?”, which, by the way, is a mistake that MS is about to bafflingly repeat with WM 7).  I should note that it would be difficult for anybody to say that I suffer from "One True Way" syndrome when all of the things I suggest, if implemented, wouldn't detract from the experience of those users who don't want these features, but they would benefit those of us who do want them tremendously.  My "way" doesn't require a compromise of any sort for anybody--it merely requires adding features, and the people who don't want/need those features can simply ignore them with no ill consequence of any sort.  Sorry for the long post, but I’m hopeful somebody at Palm is listening.  And yes, I know that posting multiple problems in one post is not ideal, but these all have a common, intertwining theme, and I'm at least breaking them up somewhat.

Answer 1

I really like my Pre, but I understand what you mean about somewhat baffling omissions in features. I think the Palm has a winning platform already, they just need to focus on hunting down and destroying bugs for a few months. Honestly, most of the things the Pre is missing should be provided by third parties except they're hesitant to invest because the pre and pixi haven't sold like gangbusters compared to Android and the iPhone. But really, if the price keeps dropping on palm hardware and they keep launching on new platforms (due soon on att), I think we'll be looking at a different view in a few more months. I'd wager that Palm has sold a bit less than a million devices, add Att and you'll end up around 1.2-1.5. If they keep fixing issues and making current customers happy, then launch a nice phone the end of this year, they'll be in good shape. You don't need to sell 15 million units to have a viable platform, just enough of a mass to ensure people want to take a risk developing. Notice this story http://www.technewsworld.com/story/69684.html?wlc=1270413481 .