Rubinstein chats it up on The Engadget Show

So over the weekend, Engadget put on the very first The Engadget Show, and all things considered, it went quite well. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein was the show’s first guest, sitting down for a one-on-one chat with Joshua Topolsky for a good thirty minutes. They discussed Rubinstein’s time at Apple, his prior relationship with Steve Jobs at NeXT, and how Rubinstein guided both the development of the iMac and iPod as part of his helping turn around Apple.

The discussion then turned to Rubinstein’s move to Palm and the similarities - and differences - with what he’s doing in Sunnyvale to what he did in Cupertino. Unlike the Apple turnaround, which was in a low-growth market (computers) against the monolithic Microsoft, Palm views the handheld market as ripe for expansion with the potential for four or five players to share leadership (clearly, Palm wishes to be one of them). When Rubinstein came to Palm, he did what he did at Apple: evaluate all the current products and narrow the company’s focus. In this case, he killed several projects in development (including the Foleo), leaving Palm to focus on the Centro, Treo Pro, and webOS.

There’s much much more in the interview, including plenty of laughs, a Pixi demo (nothing new here, though), how Palm kept the Pre secret, why Palm made the Pixi the way it did (including the insinuation that the removal of WiFi was Sprint’s idea/request), what’s up with the whole Palm vs. Apple brouhaha, and more than a few wonderful out-of-context quotes from Rubinstein: “It’s nice to be the pretty girl at the dance.” (in reference to Verizon and AT&T publicly expressing interest in a webOS phone).

So head on over and give The Engadget Show premiere a download, and soak in the glory that is half an hour of Palm talk.