So while I write this post on my 17″MacBook Pro on the MBTA while tethered to my Motorola Q, I have wonder why on earth Palm would announce such a foolish device such as the the Foleo (Folio?)? Granted it hasn’t been officially announced yet and I’m only going by what Engadget is reporting, but from all indications this looks like something that someone should get fired for. Why do I want to lung around a third device to perform the same functions that I enjoy now? The only person who this device could appeal too is someone who doesn’t have a laptop yet. But when you consider the fact that they’ll also need a Treo plus a data plan from their mobile provider, it will most likely only appeal to people who could already afford a more capable laptop and a better phone.

Then we have Microsoft introducing something similar to Apple’s multi-touch technology called “Milan.” While cool, you won’t see this in any consumer products anytime soon. Right now, the hardware price points are around $10,000 to use Milan. Contrast that to the iPhone which is well under $1,000. Should Apple release a laptop device with a multi-touch screen, it would seriously trump this announcement.

It’s pretty sad that both companies tried to fire up their respective hype machines and have the results be so bland. Overall, neither of these announcements are impressive enough to put a dent in the iPhone frenzy.

With the iPhone launch just days away, it would appear that Microsoft and Palm might be about to reveal how they might counter Apple’s offering. Palm has announced that they will introduce “a new category of mobile device” which sounds like it could be their answer to the iPhone that Verizon was referring to. Then there’s Microsoft’s big announcement at 12:01am tomorrow. Engadget is claiming that this is some sort of gesture based interface that can scale to anything from a Zune to a home media center like the XBox.

Both announcements sound interesting, but one has to wonder if these announcements can take any of the excitement out of the iPhone? Sure, I am a bit of an Apple fan-boy, but I am not convinced that MS or Palm is capable of making a sexy hardware/software combo and generate the same type of excitement about it. To date, neither company has been successful about generating positive buzz about their products. No one cares about Vista much, and the Treo 750 has really amounted to nothing more than better Treo 700. However, I will be delightfully shocked if one of these announcements is actually cool.

By now, you’ve probably read plenty about Microsoft’s new Silverlight platform and how it’s going be a major player in the coming year. While I don’t doubt that Silverlight will be significant, I have a very tough time seeing how MS can overcome the installed base that Adobe has with Flash. And I’m not just talking about the installed base of the Flash player on multiple platforms, but also the installed base of content creation applications from Adobe and the mindshare Adobe has amongst creative professionals.

Microsoft’s real challenge with Silverlight will be in content creation tools arena. Currently, the only content creation tool that is capable of authoring Silverlight content is Microsoft’s own Expression Studio, or a pre-release of Visual Studio.NET. By Comparison, you can author and publish Flash content using several of Adobe’s products as well as many third party applications. Adobe is very well entrenched among the creative crowd. Having worked with many different creative firms over the years, you’d be very hard pressed to to find a interactive shop that did not use an Adobe or Macromedia product. Not to mention, most of these companies were nearly all Mac-based.

So far, I haven’t seen many takers for Expression Studio. The fact that this is a Windows-only product should be seen as a detriment to the Silverlight platform. A hardcore creative professional who uses a Mac is never going to give their Mac up willingly. Second, if they did have to give their Mac’s up and forced to use Expression Studio, Microsoft needs to be able to answer the following questions:

1. How do I open my Photoshop files in Expression Studio?
2. Do my Photoshop files get imported with all of their layers if I can bring them into Expression?
3. Which version of Expression authors video like After Effects?
4. Can I import Silverlight files into After Effects as vectors with alpha channels preserved and batch render WMV files with embedded cue points?

MS has a lot more work to do that just releasing a player for both Windows and Mac OS X. They also need content creation tools on the Mac if they want to be a player in the rich media space. It’s very difficult to recommend a rich-media platform that prohibits you from creating content on your platform of choice.

Additionally, Microsoft hasn’t shown creative professionals that Sliverlight is any better than Flash or Flex. So far, Silverlight looks like nothing more than a Flash “me-too” product that can do some 3-D and HD Video. From a developer perspective, it is much more compelling that that. But on the surface, it’s just a Flash rip-off. Here’s a short list of other reasons why the Mac camp won’t adopt Silverlight:

• Internet Explorer
• ActiveX
• Windows Media Player
• Visio

Given Microsoft’s track record of killing decent products for Mac OS, choosing an MS-controlled technology usually means that they’ll kill it somewhere down the road and leave Mac users out in the cold. I think Flash is here to stay.