Apple Retail in Portland

Heard a rumor from a friend at Washington County that development should start soon on some new Lifestyle mall space — nice shopping/walking area with top tier restaurants and fountains and things — and the first company to sign the lease?

Apple Retail.

That’s right, it appears an Apple Retail store is coming to Portland. Not only that, it’s coming to the west side! Apparently the space is somewhere in the I-5/217 triangle (for those who know Portland at all), which is a scoot from home and work.

This is great news, given my last conversation with the nice folks at Apple Corporate Marketing was something like "we’re waiting for a nice retailer who has great space to die."

Palm, Legend in China

I’m so happy with my new Tungsten. The new Palm OS is fantastic, recapturing the simplicity of the original Palm device and enhancing it with a beautiful hi-resolution screen and voice recorder. I’m all about the gadgets.

I’ve been following Legend in China for some time, since I met Carol Barrett at a luncheon about six weeks ago. She and I got to talking about Intel in China as a new market and her initial reaction was one of deference. Apparently, Legend is using Intel’s chips now, but they’re about to tape out a chip of their own. As the largest manufacturer and supplier of computer hardware to the largest homogeneous market on the planet, this is something for Intel to fear.

And what a wonderfully logical next step for Legend, to take a great mobile OS and reverse engineer devices to run it.

Beijing-based Legend Group was one of two new licensees that announced plans Tuesday to release Palm devices using the new operating system software. In addition, it said it would release as early as February a Palm-powered device running an existing version of the Palm OS that Legend has modified to support simplified Chinese. That product was shown as a prototype Tuesday. Legend will update that device with additional PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and wireless devices when PalmSource releases its Chinese-language operating systems, Chu said.