About this interview Everyone's curious about the Visor products from Handspring. We recently conducted an email interview with Handspring's Product Manager, Greg Shirai. We think you'll find Greg's carefully worded replies quite interesting. One note: we also asked some penetrating questions about the Handspring/Palm relationship and about Palm's future as an independent company. Their reply was, "We wanted to be as thorough as possible, but did not want to address any questions about Palm Computing and or any speculation on their plans." We gave Palm a similar opportunity to answer reader questions. Palm VP Mark Bercow apparently took the time to our questions, but Palm declined to turn over the answers to us until they'd been approved by their legal department. Since we publish on a very set deadline (that Palm's been aware of for weeks, and which we've extended to the very last possible moment), we can't wait any longer for their legal department. If the questions are still relevant next month, we'll run their Q&A.

PalmPower: We understand Handspring licensed the Palm OS. But the new Visor models seem to use almost exactly the same device shape as the Palm III series, almost as if Handspring is using the same Palm III case molds. What's the story behind this?

GS: The Visor kept the same core tenets of Jeff Hawkins' original vision in mind: simplicity, ease of use, low cost and focused functionality. In the case of the Visor, keeping a low cost was especially a priority, in addition to getting to market quickly, which is one of the reasons we stuck with a more basic form factor. We are not a one-product company -- we're looking at ways to keep driving towards even better form factors than those that are out there today that can still leverage the power of the Springboard platform. These things take more time, and there was no need to wait that long to get our product line -- and especially the Springboard platform -- into the market. Even so, there are some features that distinguish Visor from the Palm III including a smaller design -- Visor is narrower than the Palm III. We have also made some modifications to the sides and improvements on the buttons.

PalmPower: Do you expect Palm to adopt the Handspring Springboard architecture in future models? If not, do you expect Palm to do something similar?

"We don't have any current plans to license Springboard to Palm."

GS: The Springboard platform belongs exclusively to Handspring. Though Handspring would consider licensing the Springboard platform to other handheld makers in the future, we are currently concentrating our efforts on shipping our products, building international channels and most importantly building up the Springboard developer community. We don't have any current plans to license Springboard to Palm.