Apple Execs - Hot Commodities

Given the good press the Palm Pre is getting so far in the media, one part of the story that is mentioned but hardly highlighted is the people behind Palm's latest and best chance of turning things around.

Now, we don't know if Palm Pre or the new widget-based OS will be the new OS X of the mobile market. There will be a lot of waiting, analyzing, blogging, and speculating along this line and we'll see a lot of comparisons to Apple and Apple's turnaround because a lot of the folks at Palm now trying to revive the company were former Apple executives or engineers. Certainly there are top names we've all heard in the media. Lesser known are the number of former Apple engineers.

However, should Palm succeed in turning it around, imagine how hot former Cupertino executives will be, especially those who had the fortune of being personally schooled (or ripped a new one) in the Jobsian view of the world.

And there is no denying that Palm Pre's UI and other implementations will get a lot more scrutiny and comparisons with Apple's mobile platform than with RIM or Windows Mobile. Mud will be thrown from the blogs on the Apple camp and Palm devotees will respond in kind. But at the end of the day, these former Apple executives will still need to convince us that Palm Pre is a product to be reckon with and that it's worth our while to consider it a good alternative to the iPhone. More importantly, that Palm is back.