Frank Lin's Public Library

So just how did Motorola get so far behind in software? Apparently, Motorola has had a history of being impatient with underperforming units and abandoning them quickly instead of trying to put in a serious effort at solving the problems. In 2003, Motorola started an effort to create the replacement for its P2K platform, codenamed JUIX (pronounced as juice), an effort that was abandoned in 2005. Then, another effort started with EzX platform which was abandoned in favor of LJ (Linux-Java). Recent rumor has Motorola abandoning that effort again in favor of Symbian UIQ or Windows CE.

Mid-level management also had a major role to play and a closer look at why the JUIX project was abandoned can be quite revealing. Part of the problem with the JUIX project was that it was going to be the revolutionary platform that replaced the P2K platform, it was good and bad. The bad part was that it was viewed by the P2K division as a rival and there was a lot of political pressure on the management to can the project when it started missing some milestones. With the P2K division being the maker of the RAZR, there was a lot of clout and management took the easy way out and abandoned the project to appease the P2K constituents.

Unfortunately, abandoning the project really doesn't make the need to update the software platform go away. And hence there was the effort on Ezx platform, followed by the LJ platform, and so on. However, in all these process, they failed to take the hard stance needed to push the platform out by giving it enough time and resource to mature into a stable platform. Each release was rushed out with many flaws with promise to be fixed in the next. However, the next release was always a re-architecture of the entire design which introduced additional flaws.

Again the ultimate blame has to be laid on the top management. It's only nature for platform managers to want to see their platform to continue to thrive, and it's really up to the top management to not succumb to the lobbying and to have a long term vision and see things through. However, it seems Motorola management never has the patience and if something doesn't work, it is simply tossed aside. Appropriately, today, the entire mobile devices division is considered to be underperforming, and as there is no quick fix, it is being put up for sale.

In hindsight, management should have bit the bullet and granted the platform development more time and resource, especially as earnings was still good and it was easy to justify additional resource and development.

360 X 480 pixel resolution and able to display 65,536 colours

The Storm utilizes the MSM7600 from Qualcomm^[10] a dual core CPU with ARM11 400 MHz and ARM9 274 MHz.

he Storm implements a virtual keyboard on its touchscreen

The device features 1GB of onboard memory and an expandable memory slot support for a microSD card of up to an additional 16GB. Verizon Wireless includes a preinstalled 8GB microSD card onboard.

The use of "12:00 a.m." for midnight and "12:00 p.m." for noon, however, is contrary to the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual^[11] which recommends the opposite: "12 p.m." for midnight and "12 a.m." (formerly "12 m.") for noon

The Canadian Press Stylebook (11th Edition, 1999, page 288) says, "write noon or midnight, not 12 noon or 12 midnight."

The use of "12:00 midnight" or "midnight" is still problematic because it does not distinguish between the midnight at the start of a particular day and the midnight at its end. To avoid confusion and error, some U.S. style guides recommend either clarifying "midnight" with other context clues, or not referring to midnight at all. For an example of the latter method, "midnight" is replaced with "11:59 p.m." for the end of a day or "12:01 a.m." for the start of the next day. That has become common in the United States in legal contracts and for airplane, bus, or train schedules, though some schedules use other conventions.