Comments on: palmOne Responds to the Pocket PC Rumor

UPDATED Yesterday, a large number of PDA enthusiast websites as well as some mainstream online media reported on a highly speculative report claiming palmOne executives "admitted" they are working to make a device with Microsoft's Pocket PC platform. PalmInfocenter gets the real word with a official response from palmOne.
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Still no denying

heavyduty @ 11/3/2004 12:38:00 PM #
That p1 announcement still doesn't deny the rumour.

No wonder it keeps cropping up.... and people *still* believe they'll launch a device with WME, no matter what p1 says.

Eartth to palmOne!

mikecane @ 11/3/2004 1:07:59 PM #
"It's a well-known fact that palmOne has attracted a large and loyal customer base"

-- which you are doing your damnedest to drive away! How's that market share holding up? How are those T5 sales?

Where is COBALT?

Where is a unit to satisfy *US*?

RE: Eartth to palmOne!
LiveFaith @ 11/3/2004 3:06:54 PM #
The PSRC contract runs our December 06! That must prove they will not release an OS6 device. They should be up to Cobalt 6.8 by then, but no devices will actually use it yet. Garnet will be up to 5.999762 and should have some enhanced 3D Palm trees for the calendar backdrops etc. :-o

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com
Cobalt Release Candidate 6.3: Spring, 2005? Mon dieu!
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/4/2004 10:10:25 PM #
The PSRC contract runs our December 06! That must prove they will not release an OS6 device. They should be up to Cobalt 6.8 by then, but no devices will actually use it yet. Garnet will be up to 5.999762 and should have some enhanced 3D Palm trees for the calendar backdrops etc. :-o


This would actually be funny if it wasn't so close to reality.

The truth is, we don't really need Cobalt. When Cobalt Release Candidate 6.3 is announced in Spring, 2004, will any decent hardware be shipping with it? Not likely - just a second tier smartphone or two. And will it offer any any significant advantages over PalmOS 5.2/(patched + quilted)5.4? Not likely. The BeOS contribution appears to have been pure BS based on what I've seen. We are not impressed, Palm.

Pssssst: The Emperor has no clothes. Pass it on.




******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Eartth to palmOne!
vesther @ 11/6/2004 9:50:25 PM #
[i]The PSRC contract runs our December 06! That must prove they will not release an OS6 device. They should be up to Cobalt 6.8 by then, but no devices will actually use it yet. Garnet will be up to 5.999762 and should have some enhanced 3D Palm trees for the calendar backdrops etc. :-o[/i]

This has to be totally suspect. Just plain suspect. Why won't palmOne concede to release a Cobalt-Powered Device? This is just ridiculous!!!

I pledge to the Palm-Powered community that I will seek to make a better handheld through research one day!!!

even worse now.

neuron @ 11/3/2004 1:33:51 PM #
Worse than no comments.

RE: even worse now.
hkklife @ 11/3/2004 1:48:52 PM #
I agree. They should have kept their mouths shut and just let it fade away quietly OR else had a semi-timely product announcement (OS6.x upgrade will be out in Jan for T5 at $30, Blazer will be made available for free download to all Tungsten owners etc etc) indicating some measure of support for the OS.

This just stirs the pot even more. Ugh.



RE: even worse now.
Wolfgard @ 11/3/2004 1:55:49 PM #
If they don't deny it, it should be somewhat true i guess. 'Default reasoning'...hehe...

pen & paper -> m515 -> Zire72 -> TH55
RE: even worse now.
PalmOne Guru @ 11/3/2004 2:03:44 PM #
Look at the trend all there new accesories and software is POS and PPC compatible. More than likle they will start offering there new units with choice of OS T6 with PPC 2004 or OS6.x...ect
RE: even worse now.
Patrick @ 11/3/2004 2:35:33 PM #
Why are people looking for P1 to deny it? Why would they paint themselves into that corner unnecessarily. The point is they have a commitment to PalmOS. That's a good thing, IMO, and ought to assuage any fears of people in not buying PalmOS devices thinking they may be orphaned.

But I have to say that if I were them, I would not "deny" the possibility of other operating systems either. That would be plain dumb.

RE: even worse now.
justauser @ 11/3/2004 5:23:10 PM #
I think this is simply PalmOne’s attempt to distinguish itself as a separate company. I imagine they would have all sorts of other legal issues if they stated outright that they were not open to other operating systems – collusion comes to mind. The statement “PalmOS today has the best combination of power, ease of use, user interface” seems like political correctness.

Denial by default
Calroth @ 11/3/2004 5:42:12 PM #
"If they don't deny it, it should be somewhat true i guess."

This is exactly the situation that palmOne is trying to avoid.

If they denied rumours every time that they were false, then any time a rumour comes up and they don't deny it, people will assume that it is true.

If they confirmed rumours every time that they were true, then people would just keep throwing out random rumours in the hope that one of them is true, so it can be confirmed. (Cobalt upgrade for the T5 for $30, anyone?)

If they just ignored rumours, then people can't make any assumption of whether it is true or not. That's why they don't comment on rumours or talk about unannounced products. They're muddying the waters.

What about the Ipaq with PalmOS

Mausoleum @ 11/3/2004 2:14:00 PM #
I think it would make much more sense to have Compaq create a PalmOS based iPaq. Clearly there's demand for a cheap, pocketable WiFi + BT PDA running PalmOS. By releasing an overpriced Tungsten E2, there's a large window of opportunity for traditionally PocketPC vendors to offer PalmOS devices. I mean - they use the same hardware nowadays, how hard could it be? I am sure an Axim or iPaq running PalmOS for the same price as the equivalen PocketPC would sell like hot buns!

RE: What about the Ipaq with PalmOS
LiveFaith @ 11/3/2004 2:51:45 PM #
Have you not heard about the coming Axim X50p with Cobalt? :-D
http://churchoflivingfaith.com/images/dellx50p.jpg

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com
RE: What about the Ipaq with PalmOS
rsc1000 @ 11/3/2004 5:11:27 PM #
LOL - i'd buy that!

RE: What about the Ipaq with PalmOS
justauser @ 11/3/2004 5:37:21 PM #
With all the PPC manufacturers abandoning ship, why would Palm throw itself into the PPC arena? Here in Palm world they enjoy and remain the dominant OS. Over in PPC world they would reduce the credibility of Palm OS and give themselves a tiny percent of the PPC market (oh yeah T5 with PPC is really going to turn heads - not). Why would anyone want to take a grab at a tiny piece of a small pie and risk so much?

Likewise, iPAQ has a smaller market share than Palm. Producing a Palm device would reduce the credibility of their range and give them a Sony sized market share in Palm world. In would come Dell to sweep away all that remains of their disillusioned customers.

Either move would spell the death of the respective company. Noone’s that stupid.

Rest easy, everyone; it’s not going to happen.

RE: What about the Ipaq with PalmOS
feranick @ 11/3/2004 5:49:35 PM #
Nice calendar entries. I love the last one, TT5 at BigLots for 49USD! That would be a way to "attract a large and loyal customer base"...

Nick

Pocket PC and palmOne

e-money @ 11/3/2004 2:34:58 PM #
What seems to be forgotten in this particular situation is that people that buy PPC vs Palm are not necessarily buying them because of the OS (in the case of PPC) but because of the perceived notion of MS Windows compatibility.

MS Pocket PC 2003 (etc..) has the built in concept that it works "better" with MS desktops. If Palm/palm/pa1m (whatever) really wish to increase/maintain market share they should really be making a lot more noise about their compatibility with the applications on the dominant desktop OS.
All those Palm apps that work better with MS format files better start making a lot of noise otherwise we will see the continued (and inevitable) Microsoftization(tm) of the handheld arena. Instead we see ads about being mobile. I love being mobile, however; if I can't sync up at the end of the day easily then where is the benefit?

Aside: I still wouldn't buy a PPC device if it ran Cobalt/Garnet/Boozle (whatever) as I don't like the rectangular design that all PPC's must conform to. I also believe that the T5 is trying to cop that design and thus lose it's unique identifiable niche. So, if you want to stir the rumour yet more perhaps this is an exit strategy.

My .02$

RE: Pocket PC and palmOne
LiveFaith @ 11/3/2004 2:55:36 PM #
I still wouldn't buy a PPC device if it ran Cobalt/Garnet/Boozle (whatever) as I don't like the rectangular design that all PPC's must conform to.

What other design exists? A round screen? Square screen? An elegant Hp19xx, 41xx series or X50 with Palm OS would be killer compared to the T5E2. The older HPs are very attractive from a form standpoint. If you're talking about horrid the new HP "Darth Vader Pez dispenser" designs just released, then I understand what you mean.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

PalmOne entertaining PPC for one reason...

pkuhns @ 11/3/2004 2:49:27 PM #
to break into the enterprise. How many folks on this board have seen their MIS director toss all the old Palm III's in a box after they "upgraded" to iPaq's and the like?

Palm just doesn't seem "corporate" enough these days, which is funny because they used to be too corporate! PalmOne became a consumer brand courtesy of the zire series but lost their way on the high-end after the T|3 (a great device).

I think PalmOne knows PDAs are declining in consumer markets because smartphones/cell phones are taking over. And PPCs have quietly taken over the corporate space because of brainwashed MIS directors who love Microsoft's "off-sites" and "summits." So why not look into leveraging excellent hardware engineering and the "I have enough problems with compatibility" PPC for MIS stooges...

Nokia 3650 bluetooth magnate

Palm blows smoke

kevinbgood @ 11/3/2004 4:26:12 PM #
I hate to say it, Palm is dodging the issue in the article. Here is why I say this and for me, a strong Palm advocate, it hurts to face the future reality.

Palm is the forerunner in handheld computing hands down. Pocket Pc is in second place. Palm has lead the sales for years running and kept the public anticipating the next new design. Now they are stumbling with the failure to produce OS 6 in the T5 unit. The public is ranting and Palm is stuttering. The industry is pointing to smartphones as the new fad. Palm quarterly reports look weak. Support service is faultering. Leadership within the corp is changing and changing. The public is having second thoughts.

These are the signs of a company making mistakes and which has become vulnerable. In comes Microsoft.

Microsoft sets back and lets Palm run like a wild dog in design, development and getting the consumers excited about handheld computing. They watch all the creative juices flow from Palm to the home hobbyist Palm software developer. They see many third party software titles appear, not to mention hardware to enhance the machines. They watch all the problems surface and get conquered. In short, Microsoft watches Palm build the PDA world, debug it first, spend tons on R&D and promote the product.

Now, here is the clincher that is so subtle.

One day while Palm is in a weakened state, Microsoft approaches and says they love the smartphone work Palm is doing. We would like to be a part of this innovative design. Palm says no. Microsoft cracks open the wallet and swings big bucks in front of them and says, "Here. It's yours. Do what ever you want with it and let us add our OS to your design". Palm, needing the capitol to push forward, sees dollar signs and snatches it away. Thus your news media story. Microsoft just bought play time at the expense of Palm. The Treo will be the test drive unit for this new endeavor and Microsoft is going to have a field day in advertising it.

What does this all mean?

Palm has just sold out to Microsoft. They may not realize it yet, but they did. Microsoft now has an in road and will quickly smash them into the ground. Palm will cease to function within the next three years. You can bet on that. Microsoft won't even flinch. I suspect that Microsoft already has people woring inside Palm and ready to make the transition when the time is right. Sounds like a conspiracy theory doesn't it? hehe.

Bottom line. In the corporate world, money is power. When you can buy off a company and wipe them out to put you into the number one slot, do it. That is how they feel. Remember, Microsoft doesn't like being in second place. Microsoft feels that the handheld has reached a plateau of development which is stable and it is time to get aggressive in the market. This is the first strike.

So what do we do now? To each his own. I suspect when the real story is let loose about what is going on, you will see all kinds of things happening. People angry over Palm selling them out. PPC users singing praises. And, upstart OS companies going after a whole new arena of potential. Most everyone will be confused or have mixed emotions about what to do. But really, isn't this the type of world we live in now?

I know some may see this post as rambling, but I have to tell you. My experience in the business world leads me to come to the conclusion posted above. It is the only logical conclusion. It is being passed off as a rumour in the news mills, but this time it has a tone that is different and Palm did not really deny it, they dodged it.

Kevin

Addicted to Palm

RE: Palm blows smoke
XBOT90 @ 11/3/2004 4:57:58 PM #
Don’t forget the MS Active Sync deal! That is P1 one only, not PalmSource.

PalmOne is turning into a Microsoft because they want to be bought, merged, or funded by Microsoft. Or they have schizophrenic multi level management issues.

On top of it, PalmOne doesn’t appear to be in favor of supporting small third party developers. I get the feeling P1 wants them to go away. Look at what P1 has already done to the handheld email industry. First P1 bought or got MultiMail in the separation and then just about dumped the product to get into bed with Good and Notify because those companies had some VC money. When that didn't seem to go well, P1 went back to MM (Versa Mail) with the active sync stuff. Now they got a new pony show of some copycat product from Seven for God knows why. In the mean time PalmOne is in denial of the existence of better products like Chatter, CMM, MailWave, & Snapper.

Call it as I see it.

RE: Palm blows smoke
olmo47 @ 11/3/2004 10:27:22 PM #
…. Or, this “ they have schizophrenic multi level management issues.” Are very smart, stock goes down (people are nervous, they sell), they (insiders) buy more stock…. stock goes up, the insiders make lost of bucks, and we keep buying their product, maybe, we are the “paranoid-schizophrenic”.

RE: Palm blows smoke
SeldomVisitor @ 11/4/2004 5:50:45 AM #
It is important to note that PalmOne did NOT say:

== We are not working on a MSoft-based anything.

All they said was:

== We didn't say we were working on a Msoft-based anything.

For all we know, one of the contractual terms they have with PSRC is not to mention active work on any alternative OS for some period of time...

RE: Palm blows smoke
kevinbgood @ 11/4/2004 7:16:58 AM #
Mark my word today. You will see a Treo with Windows Ce onit by the end of next year at the latest. It will happen. OS 6 will be coming out, but not on a Palm or Treo device, it will be on something else.

Addicted to Palm
RE: Palm blows smoke
pkuhns @ 11/4/2004 10:39:37 AM #
kevinbgood is right. I didn't realize it till this morning. PalmOne's management sees the writing on the wall. Their core strength has been PDAs. PDAs are dying.

They had a meeting and posed this question: "how can we get as much money as possible out of this sinking ship? The hardware biz just sucks!" Since they're in it for themselves at the expense of employees/shareholders they had to capitalize as quickly as possible (re: SCO/Linux BS lawsuit). No blame here really since every corporate mngmnt thinks the same way.

Let's see... capture as much smartphone market share as possible before Microsoft/Nokia start a bidding/investment war. Get Microsoft STOCK or Nokia Euros. OR, build and design smartphones for Microsoft. It's cloudy for me, but judging from human nature/experience/capitalism the management could give a crap about PDAs (T|5 anyone) and will focus ENTIRELY on getting someone to scoop up the Treo design. There is no loyalty any more to anything so dont' get your hopes up Palmlovers...

-- a palmlover

Nokia 3650 bluetooth magnate

RE: Palm blows smoke
LiveFaith @ 11/4/2004 11:33:57 AM #
Kevin, Pkhuns,

I think I'll just keep deceiving myself about P1. Feels better that way.

"Yeah, that killer T6 is on the way with VGA, OS6, dual-wireless, .25 thin and smaller than a wristwatch for $249" wooohoo.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

RE: Palm blows smoke
kevinbgood @ 11/4/2004 3:19:02 PM #
Here is what I see in the Palm plan for the next six months, potentially.

Don't expect anythig from Palm for the rest of this year. The news story just shot a big hole in their sales potential.

By the spring, you will see a device running OS6. It won't be a Palm or Treo, but some other product. Don't forget, there are things running Palm OS. I doubt there will be any new Palm models released in the spring either. No more Tungstens, Zires or such.

In the first quarter of 2005, Palm will announce what they are holding back from admitting to right now. We have joined with Microsoft. This will cause mixed reactions from the public as to what to do, how to feel and "what about my stock?" The announcement will probably be made to look like an experimental joint project that is looking for advancing the PIM and communication spectrum. Expect politician speeh in this one. You know the drill. Tons of meaningless words.

By the summer of 2005, MicroPalm will release the first joint smartphone. Most likely Treo.

After all this, your guess is as good as mine.

This worst part of this deal is for guys like me who write code for Palm devices. Now what? There goes some of our revenue if we don't change to the other guy. It reminds me of a book I read by Spencer Johnson entitled, "Who Moved My Cheese". It is about how we deal with changes in our work and life. If you haven't read it, do. With this perspective in mind, I will begin to adjust my situation to accomodate the new one. Why sit back and cry about it when you can capitalize on it.



Addicted to Palm

RE: Palm blows smoke
rcartwright @ 11/4/2004 7:03:58 PM #
kevinbgood,

From a legal standpoint I don't see how Microsoft can buy out PalmOne. Admittedly since the spinoff of PalmSource its more possible as it would not involve reduced competition as far as OSes go. PalmOne is hands down the single largest licensee of the Palm OS. So while it would not be an overt antitrust violation, the Eurocrats would probably be all over Microsoft like a cheap suit. I am not so sure about the DOJ and the FTC here in the US. Not so much because of politics (Down Mike! Down!) but because they are much less likley to pursue something like this because the arguement would be harder to make under US law.

Anyway, why get in bed with PalmOne when they are trying to set fire to it on their own with their current business plan?

RE: Palm blows smoke
kevinbgood @ 11/4/2004 9:38:36 PM #
Not P1, PalmSource is the target. It would be at the heart of the OS that this takeover/merger would happen. Kind of like NASA. When something goes wrong or right, Lockheed or Grumman got the glory along with NASA. P1 gets the glory from the behind the scene PalmSource.

If I were going to wiggle my way into a company, I would start at the heart and work out to the extremities. Show yourself to be an interested, team playing kind of person while in the background you are pulling out the nails fo the boards behind you. You create your own stability when the whole thing flies apart and you save the day. They look at you as the savior of the business, when in fact you were the one who took it down. You get the raise, the new position and the big house. The former players get the boot because they failed to keep things going.

Where there is smoke, there is fire.

Addicted to Palm

Why would Microsoft bother? Palm's already killing itself.
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/4/2004 10:00:22 PM #
Billy G. has been patiently waiting for five years to see if PPC could beat PalmOS. It couldn't beat Palm on its own merits, but Palm has been trying to self-destruct for the past four years. Gates could simply sit back and watch Palm go under next year. Unless he's become impatient and wants Palm dead NOW, the rumors make no sense. Gates floating a desperate Palm some cash (like how Sony did to PalmSource) in order to obtain control would be a transparent move that no Palm executive would approve - assuming those execs actually cared more about guiding the company back to health than they did about lining their greedy pockets with a quick profit. Gotta love stock options and the Go-Go-90s.



******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Palm blows smoke
kevinbgood @ 11/5/2004 6:54:44 AM #
It's simple. Bill saw he culdn't beat them, so he had to wait until the Palm head swelled and lost control. Then, while they are falling apart, he steps up to the plate and begins the rescue operation. He doesn't lose a thing. They have all the time, technology, ideas and marker setup. All he has to do is add his OS.

The top guys at Palm know what is going on. Don't fool yourself. This is going to happen.

Addicted to Palm

RE: Palm blows smoke
LiveFaith @ 11/5/2004 10:43:33 AM #
Gentlemen,

For $ome reason I doubt Gates even thinks about Palm more than once on a monthly basis. Bigger fish to fry, although I'm sure Palm is somewhere down in the MSFT "Squash List".

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

RE: Palm blows smoke
justauser @ 11/6/2004 3:37:57 AM #
November last year the rumour was that during a Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, when an attendee asked what the future of Pocket PC was, a Microsoft employee answered "None." Also that month, Microsoft's chief technology officer revealed that he doesn't use Pocket PC as his main device.

Either MS has had a dramatic change of heart or MS is not interested in their own PPC OS let alone Palm OS.

As for the Palm using PPC - I can think of better ways for a company to commit suicide. It doesn't make sense for them to do this. They'd never sell. Don't forget that Toshiba and Panasonic have left the PPC market too.

I think it's all silly rumours.

RE: Palm blows smoke up your a**
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/6/2004 3:07:43 PM #
For $ome reason I doubt Gates even thinks about Palm more than once on a monthly basis. Bigger fish to fry...

I disagree. If managed properly, Palm could have (and still might) become a significant cause of lost profits for Microsoft. The Windows/Intel hegemony that has been entrenched over the past 15 years owes its existence partly to the fact that businesses like Standards and Compatibility. Palm set the standard for PDAs, much as "Wintel" has done for desktops and laptops. But Palm's so-called leadership failed to think outside the (narrow PDA) box and look at other ways to expand the PalmOS market. Last year, Sony's UX50 showed everyone that PalmOS PDAs had the potential to become mini laptop replacements. We also started to see a few adventurous souls using those slick little Treo 600 as laptop replacements in certain situations. Push those designs a little further (e.g. stretch the UX50 into the size of a Sharp Zaurus or ever larger http://www.dynamism.com/zaurus/ include a GSM radio, VPN app for remote access to your desktop, Word/Excel compatible apps, etc) and for a lot of people, suddenly they wouldn't need a laptop anymore. Palm could have got a lot of sales by marketing themselves to businesses as a way to cut the cost of laptops. And every Wintel laptop sale lost is less money for Billy G's Swiss bank accounts. More importantly, the presence of a cheap, simple, reliable alternative to Wintel would get IT people to start becoming more receptive to other solutions. Palm could have become a threat if only they had marketed themselves properly to businesses. Gates didn't become the wealthiest person in the world by ignoring threats. The fact that IT people choose PPC over PalmOS because of perceived better compatibility with Windows shows both how miserably Palm has failed in marketing itself to businesses and how effective Microsoft is at controlling its market. With a litle effort, Palm could STILL be able to leverage its OS and the Treo lineup to get more than a foot in the door of the corporate world (where the REAL profit potential is).




******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Palm blows smoke
mikecane @ 11/6/2004 5:01:38 PM #
Yeah, well now instead of PalmOS moving *up* into "notebook category," people like me await the OQO dropping in price into "PDA category" (OK, so with Sony PDA-l;ike pricing...).

Thanks for the ride, palmOne.

>>biting my tongue otherwise. see that blood?<<

Why not?

sandbuck @ 11/3/2004 6:28:37 PM #
Hell, after happened last night, as long as we're screwing everything up, why NOT defile everything, including Palm devices?

Tungsten T7
PPC Diebold Edition 1.1W

Bah....


I guess I don't see what the big deal is...

timepilot84 @ 11/3/2004 11:43:55 PM #
I like PalmOS, but if P1's hardware can run another OS, then more power to them. I'd like to see a Linux P1, or a PalmOS Ipaq for that matter.

We've all seen what's happened when competition heats up the PDA market. We can buy PalmOS devices with 320x480 screens and sound now.

The reason that P1 split from Palmsource was specifically to separate the hardware from the software. The speculation that P1 could be coming out with devices that run a different OS should be no surprise to anyone.


RE: I guess I don't see what the big deal is...
hkklife @ 11/4/2004 10:17:30 AM #
P1's inability to get a handle on the only OS they've ever dealt with is painfully evident in th T5 debacle. If the transition to 5.2.8 to 5.4 is so problematic, then just imagine going to Cobalt...then magnify that by a factor of 10 for linux or PPC. They simply don't have the engineers & resources to undertake such a task. That's similar to what has gone on with Motorola. They cut too many engineers & QC staff and their recent products, while compelling, have suffered as a result (V710 etc) and all seem rather half-baked upon launch. It'd just end up being a pricing war with Dell & HP. At least in Palm-dom P1 has the overwhelming majority of the remnants of the market. It's up to them whether they continue to let it wilt or try and carve out a solid foothold and maintain it.

No, the thing that P1 needs to do is get serious about their corporate offerings and the Tungsten line. Let the Zires exist only as $200 and below consumer models resembling Pez dispensers. They need to focus all of their efforts on releasing several strong models in a row and get their build quality issues resolved. The Treo 650 may likely even drive some people who are drooling over a 650 but cannot afford it or convince their employer to pay for it to purchase a Tungsten model for their own personal use. In fact, I could almost see the Treo sending nearly as many referral or trickle-down PDA sales P1's way than existing Palm owners migrating to a Treo. Most of the current Palm owners either have BT cell or have no need for a smartphone.

Palm is the Netscape of 2004. Billy G. wins again. *SIGH*
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/4/2004 9:44:53 PM #
P1's inability to get a handle on the only OS they've ever dealt with is painfully evident in th T5 debacle. If the transition to 5.2.8 to 5.4 is so problematic, then just imagine going to Cobalt...then magnify that by a factor of 10 for linux or PPC. They simply don't have the engineers & resources to undertake such a task. That's similar to what has gone on with Motorola. They cut too many engineers & QC staff and their recent products, while compelling, have suffered as a result (V710 etc) and all seem rather half-baked upon launch. It'd just end up being a pricing war with Dell & HP. At least in Palm-dom P1 has the overwhelming majority of the remnants of the market. It's up to them whether they continue to let it wilt or try and carve out a solid foothold and maintain it.

No, the thing that P1 needs to do is get serious about their corporate offerings and the Tungsten line. Let the Zires exist only as $200 and below consumer models resembling Pez dispensers. They need to focus all of their efforts on releasing several strong models in a row and get their build quality issues resolved.


Very well said. It's a shame Palm's executives are too busy plundering the company to bother making these simple changes that could easily save the company from further losses.

Palm's recent actions suggest the company has a white knight up its sleeve ("Wild" Bill?), so it really doesn't care what happens to profitability (or even the development of OS and hardware designs). This past month will probably be remembered as the turning point for Palm. They are now in total self-destruct mode. PPC will probably control over 50% of the market before the end of the year and it now seems inevitable that Palm will pull a Netscape within two years.

I almost can't believe this is happening. It's like watching an accident happen in slow motion...




******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: I guess I don't see what the big deal is...
mikecane @ 11/5/2004 7:58:46 AM #
>>>It's like watching an accident happen in slow motion...

And they are determined to step on the gas too!

I should have known: As soon as it became evident that neither the p1 nor the PS people understood *why* there should be a Slash icon in the Status Bar to call up the Command Bar, I should have realized what a pack of brain-dead muggerfuggers we're dealing with. But nooooo... I had to actually give these nitwits the benefit of the doubt.

No more.

I hope that when they bail with their golden parachutes, they are strangled to death on the cords.

Linux!

mikecane @ 11/4/2004 7:53:36 AM #
Why not?

Textmaker is being ported to it... and Sharp is fleeing from the States. And where are those Royal Linuxed PDAs? (smirk)

CNet: palmOne -- WinMob *and* Linux!

mikecane @ 11/4/2004 7:56:46 AM #
No sooner do I post my Linux comment that I check news.com and see it is so!

quoting --

Handheld-computer maker PalmOne is considering moves that would take it beyond the operating system that helped make the company a household name.

The Milpitas, Calif.-based firm has evaluated both Microsoft-based operating systems as well as at least one version of Linux as a potential alternative operating system to the Palm OS for its handheld devices, CNET News.com has learned.

-- this is all very strange. To do another OS, they'd really have to ramp up their coding staff. Can they even afford that? And as much as Linux would bring many advantages, getting it to be as friendly as even *Windows* (maniacal laughter) would be a major task. Go see the contortions people have to go through to load some programs onto the Linuxed Zaurii! Hell, I *still* haven't found out if it's even possible to add new *fonts* to that beast!

Geez, palmOne, get your HARDWARE straight *first* before you go off having affairs with Lothario OSes!


RE: CNet: palmOne -- WinMob *and* Linux!
Foo Fighter @ 11/4/2004 11:11:18 AM #
>>

No, and that is why they would most likely be select an off-the-shelf flavor of Linux for handhelds, such as QT mobile Linux by TrollTech (the same OS which powered the Zaurus). Frankly, I think QT Linux is awful. It never impressed me as it seemed even more hobbled together than Windows Mobile. Not to mention there is virtually no application support for Linux on Mobile devices other than generic free open-sore (yes, I intended to spell it that way) software.

If P1 is shopping around for "other" software platforms, there is little doubt in my mind they'll choose Microsoft, which is further proof PalmOS is headed for the Smithsonian.

-------------------------------
Editor, http://Pocketfactory.com
Contributing Editor, http://digitalmediathoughts.com

RE: CNet: palmOne -- WinMob *and* Linux!
Foo Fighter @ 11/4/2004 11:18:21 AM #
Ugh! Sorry, I forgot to add the text I was quoting from your post:

>> "To do another OS, they'd really have to ramp up their coding staff. Can they even afford that?"

-------------------------------
Editor, http://Pocketfactory.com
Contributing Editor, http://digitalmediathoughts.com

RE: CNet: palmOne -- WinMob *and* Linux!
hkklife @ 11/4/2004 1:14:14 PM #
Foo, IF Palm OS ends up being gone from all new units on store shelves within 2-3 years (maybe even less?) any chance you think PalmSource (or whatever entity ends up owning their remnants & IP for pennies on the dollar) will relelase the source for it?

I could see a strong market for $100 Chinese-made handhelds running OpenPalm OS or whatever. Honestly, though, before that happens, I could see Acer or someone like that swooping in and buying up P1 and/or PS just for deployment in markets in the Eastern Europe, Asis, & the Middle East.

RE: CNet: palmOne -- WinMob *and* Linux!
NewtonDKC @ 11/4/2004 2:56:43 PM #
I have to say this is all depressing. Even though my primary PDA nowdays is an iPAQ, I still love Palm and want them to succeed (and for OS 6.1 to finally ship on worthy hardware!!!!). Afterall, the only thing that keeps spurring both camps to create better OS's (though in Palm's case, it's glacial speed) is the threat of one another. If one of them goes away, we all suffer with even SLOWER development and change.

I really hope Palm hasn't given up, but despite what they say (well, actually they don't even say that, we just hope!) that certainly seems to be the general "feel" of things, that intangible "something" that people sense on some level.

Maybe I've just been reading too many doom and gloom posts for too long! :-)

RE: CNet: palmOne -- WinMob *and* Linux!
kevinbgood @ 11/4/2004 3:14:04 PM #
Mike,

Money is no problem for them anymore if they did what I think they did. Microsoft handed them a load of bucks and told them to have fun. What would you do? Have fun, right? So, money isn't the factor. It is a matter of damage control within the corporate structure now. That is, "let me cover my butt now so when this deal becomes the Microsoft child, I'll be protected. Forget the public".

Palm big wheels are scrambling to get their feet on the Microsoft ladder. They will leave the other nonessential people with a false sense of security for their work and job, then WHAMO, layoffs and mergers.

Addicted to Palm

RE: CNet: palmOne -- WinMob *and* Linux!
mikecane @ 11/4/2004 7:33:52 PM #
If MS handed them a load of $$$, it'd *have* to be reported in their public financials. Hey, Gekko! You wanna go on a hunt? Find that MS payola, pal!

If p1 really does license *any* version of WinMob, Bradley should not only resign, he should have to leave the HQ building with no clothes on -- at a pre-announced date, so we can all go there and pelt him with eggs. Bad eggs.

RE: CNet: palmOne -- WinMob *and* Linux!
kevinbgood @ 11/4/2004 9:37:33 PM #
There are ways around getting money into ones hands. But in this case, it may have been a grant or something that is less likely to show up quickly. Just a thought.

Addicted to Palm
RE: CNet: palmOne -- WinMob *and* Linux!
SeldomVisitor @ 11/5/2004 6:04:30 AM #
There is little need for PLMO to "ramp up the coding staff" for another OS - as their Annual Report plainly states, they outsource EVERYTHING having to do with the physical device INCLUDING programming (that's from design to distribution and everything in between).

Read the Annual Report - it says a lot this time.


RE: CNet: palmOne -- WinMob *and* Linux!
mikecane @ 11/5/2004 8:01:56 AM #
>smacking self upside head< Outsourcing! I keep forgetting about the tribes of India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Russia, Czech Republic, Romania, et al, etc.

Could that explain why the T5 says in its help file it has a vibrating alert when it doesn't? The people overseeing the code COULDN'T READ ENGLISH and therefore couldn't catch that obvious error?

On the Treo OS Hoopla

jkirvin @ 11/4/2004 6:26:44 PM #
I honestly don't know what the big deal is. Rumor has it that PalmOne is considering making a Treo that runs Windows Mobile, although no one seems to know if it's the Smartphone or Pocket PC variant. PalmSource (the company that makes PalmOS itself) stock took a hit when the news hit Wall Street.

What's the big deal? PalmOne announced that they'd be open to using operating systems other than PalmOS back when it was first announced that PalmOne and PalmSource would become separate companies. If I were a stockholder in PalmOne, I'd be ticked if they weren't investigating using other operating systems. Putting all your eggs in one basket is generally not a great idea. Now PalmOne states they're also looking into Linux-based PDAs as well. Good for them.

But here's what I really don't get. Just because they're looking into using Windows Mobile or Linux in the Treo line, where does that imply that they won't be using PalmOS? I understood from the start that they weren't thinking about replacing PalmOS and becoming an exclusively Windows Mobile vendor. I imagine they'll offer a line of Treos, some running PalmOS (possibly some with Garnet and some with Cobalt), and some running Windows Mobile, and maybe even a Linux-based model. What's wrong with consumer choice? I say if PalmOne covers their bases by offering multiple smartphone OSes, they increase their chance of dominating the smartphone market.

RE: On the Treo OS Hoopla
mcapehart @ 11/4/2004 9:07:01 PM #
RE: On the Treo OS Hoopla
SeldomVisitor @ 11/5/2004 6:13:28 AM #
The big deal could simply be some sort of contractual thing with PalmSource that restricts the words PalmOne can use about alternate OSes for some period of time.

Tapwave: S.O.S!

mikecane @ 11/5/2004 8:05:03 AM #
This your chance to grab some fat market share!

It's obvious you have the best damned POS PDA right now. 128MB of contiguous RAM, graphics and sound processors, dual SD slots, metal body, fat battery.

Take that stuff and reconfigure it into a *data-centric* unit --more RAM, please; stylus *inside* a silo; voice recorder; cram in WiFi too! -- and you'll have people flocking to you from their T3s and other p1 units!

BURY palmOne!

RE: Tapwave: S.O.S!
mikecane @ 11/5/2004 8:09:19 AM #
I just remembered that you guys used to be with palmOne. Then you left. It's obvious where p1's brains went.

And while I'm at it, *really* show p1 and PS how damned stupid they are: If you *do* do a data-centric unit, put that Slash icon in the Status Bar! Millions (well, the true power users) will cheer you!

RE: Tapwave: S.O.S!
hkklife @ 11/5/2004 10:37:28 AM #
What Mike said!!

Also:

1. License the old UC and pick up SCORES of Tungsten & m5xx owners! If cradles & sleds won't work, at least ensure that sync cables & chargers will! Barring that, license the Athena connector. Now that'd be sweet--playing a Zodiac game via tv-out on the big screen!

2. Again I reiterate Mike's comments: improve your stylus and have it fit inside the case. I can easily live without the 2nd SD slot to accomodate this.

3. Get some sort of 1-2 punch with a decent E-mail client & Web browser. License Novarra's WebPro or some offshoot thereof since P1's obviously going with Blazer for the future. Icing on the cake would be built-in wi-fi or at least drivers for the lame P1 SDIO card but that's not essential.

4. Give an option to turn off the annoying Tapwave launcher and go with the standard Palm OS launcher.

5. Please, please PLEASE offer user-selectable Graffiti 1. I'll gladly pay extra for a plug-in etc but make sure that recognition is FAST and accurate (T|T style at least!)

6. Don't bother wasting time or $ on the "all flash" RAM configuration like the T5 & Treo 650. 128mb of plain ol' volatile RAM is just fine with me. That's what 1gb SDs are for!

I'm tempted just to buy a Zodiac for myself this Christmas just to show my support to Tapwave!

Ideally, they could stick with the 1 & 2 model nomenclature as they currently have the Zodiacs (I wouldn't be surprised to see the 32mb Zodiac discontinued soon, btw).

Have the base model with 64 or 128mb ram & just BT. The high-end model would have 2x the memory of the base model & dual wireless.

RE: Tapwave: S.O.S!
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/5/2004 11:22:52 PM #
It's obvious you have the best damned POS PDA right now. 128MB of contiguous RAM, graphics and sound processors, dual SD slots, metal body, fat battery.

Take that stuff and reconfigure it into a *data-centric* unit --more RAM, please; stylus *inside* a silo; voice recorder; cram in WiFi too! -- and you'll have people flocking to you from their T3s and other p1 units!


As much as it hurts me to say this, Mike is 100% correct. A metal bodied, high quality, high content Tapwave shaped like the Tungsten E would be a power user's last hope for PDA nirvana right now. The only problem is Tapwave has positioned themselves as a gaming device. Are they willing to re-invent themselves? They'd better do it soon - their business model and the whole PalmOS-as-gaming-platform idea appears doomed to fail. These guys remind me a lot of HandEra.

It looks like a lot of the former bright minds from Palm are involved with Tapwave. Palm replaced this Brain Drain with those vagrants from BeOS. Poor trade, Palm. ;-O





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Tapwave: S.O.S!
mikecane @ 11/6/2004 5:04:12 PM #
Doing the Zodiac Watch:

http://tapland.com/news_arc/?id=572

-- thing is, I am now ADDICTED to 32K Memos. What could I use on a Zod to replace that?! (No, not DOCS or DTG. I still want MEMOS. One fat DB with Categories -- just not 4K limits!)

RE: Tapwave: S.O.S!
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/6/2004 8:03:43 PM #
peditPro

And I thought WordSmith had a MemoPad replacement that allowed 32 KB memos. Is the version shipping with the Zodiac crippled?



******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Tapwave: S.O.S!
mikecane @ 11/10/2004 8:25:46 AM #
Thing is, I want what I do now: Have Palm Desktop open with my web browser and just copy&paste text directly into the Memos. I don't think pedit hooks into the PD, does it?

And the less said about WordSmith, the better.

RE: Tapwave: S.O.S!
svrontis @ 11/10/2004 9:50:42 AM #
Try CryptoPad (freeware). It's a MemoPad clone which breaks the 4k barrier, offers good encryption (if you want it) and some other small tweaks. NB, memos > 4k are stored in a separate .pdb file, although you can get a desktop app to access that if you want (also freeware). Some of the reviews of v4.08 (on PalmGear) are not so good, but v3.64 works just fine (if you can survive without colour or high density support).

RE: Tapwave: S.O.S!
svrontis @ 11/10/2004 10:01:27 AM #
Sorry, I should have mentioned that I haven't tried CryptoPad on a Zodiac (only on my m500, T2 and TE). YMMV.

RE: Tapwave: S.O.S!
mikecane @ 11/10/2004 10:50:37 AM #
I currently use a TE. Thanks for the tip.

RE: Tapwave: S.O.S!
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/10/2004 9:19:44 PM #
Thing is, I want what I do now: Have Palm Desktop open with my web browser and just copy&paste text directly into the Memos. I don't think pedit hooks into the PD, does it?

And the less said about WordSmith, the better.

I think pedit uses the same database, but don't quote me. After I started using CryptoPad around 5 years ago I basically stopped playing around with replacement Memo Pad apps.

What's your beef with WordSmith?




Palm app of the year: http://tinyurl.com/6lhzs



******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Tapwave: S.O.S!
svrontis @ 11/10/2004 10:22:06 PM #
You know, it's been a while since we have had a software review.

Ryan, any chance you could sweet-talk your pals over at p1 to offer a prize for a software review competition?

This app should be reviewed in depth.
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/10/2004 11:17:20 PM #
http://tinyurl.com/6lhzs



******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

Work with What You Have

Baryn @ 11/5/2004 2:14:23 PM #
PalmSource has already gut BeOS and made Cobalt 6.1 a fascinating OS. There is nothing to prove it inferior to an OS based on Linux or a WindowsCE derivative because it hasn't even been put out on market. There is zero success rate, but there is an equal failure rate. It seems like pa1mOne would be placing its neck on the guillotine by not sticking with what users know, and PalmSource is doing the same by not fully embracing change.

Who will be the first...

pkuhns @ 11/5/2004 2:27:11 PM #
to start a PalmOne museum.


"against that far wall is the first PalmPilot, which came out 9 years ago. Now this little device had a lot of potential in its day. Microsoft realized that and the rest is history of course. Now over here is Palm's first attempt at a smartphone, the Tungsten W..."

Nokia 3650 bluetooth magnate

RE: Who will be the first...
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/5/2004 11:35:01 PM #
Palm actually has/had a Palm museum. I can't find the link anymore - they may have taken it down when they redesigned their site.



******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Who will be the first...
mikecane @ 11/6/2004 5:06:44 PM #
They don't want anyone who buys their PPCs to know they actually used to do PalmOS.

WTF IS GOING ON WITH PALM???????????????
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/6/2004 6:32:39 PM #
They don't want anyone who buys their PPCs to know they actually used to do PalmOS.


Now that Palm appears to be down for the count, let the kicking in the crotch begin! Step right up, folks. $2/kick and no spitting, please!


;-D


WTF is happening to Palm? Seriously, this is just pathetic. It's enough to make me take out my UX50 and watch that BDSM MPEG I got this week for the 37th time... Palm has driven me to pr0n - damn you, Palm!




******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

Palm Hall of Fame
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/6/2004 8:42:00 PM #
Palm took down their previous "museum" link. I think it used to be called the "Hall of Fame", but once models like the m505 and m130 were included, I think they felt too embarassed to keep calling it that. Here's the current museum/morgue:

http://www.palmone.com/us/community/myhandheld/other/



******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?

Rome @ 11/5/2004 2:32:21 PM #
All the recent rumors of P1 using Microsoft Windows Mobile are all quite interesting and entertaining. I believe there is a power struggle going on between these two companies. For whatever they are worth, below are my takes:

- The original Palm never wanted to spin off the OS business. Eric Benhamous pushed for this separation, and a lot of Palm old-timers are unhappy with this move. Why should we spin off a company that we created?
- Be Inc. was bought to work on Cobalt. This probably took Palm OS in a different direction from many of the original Palm OS programmers had intended.
- P1 is probably not crazy about the new directions that Palmsource is heading, hence, the lack of Cobalt devices from P1 so far.
- P1 is talking about Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Linux to gain leverage on palmsource. I would do the same thing if I were P1. This is bargaining 101.
- P1 is probably not too happy with Palmsource’s current licensing strategy. Palmsource recently announced 12 new smartphones in development and signed up some Asian ODMs. P1 may think Palmsource is diluting the Palm OS’s uniqueness and not being selective enough.

All these posturing between palmOne and palmsoure is okay, I believe, as long as they don’t let emotion get out of hand and destroy the long history of collaborations between PalmOne and Palmsource. The bottom line is that both companies need each other to thrive in this competitive business, and below are my reasons:

- P1 is the top dog in the Palm OS world. It is only one of the two development partners with Palmsource; the other being Sony. It is highly unlikely that P1 will maintain this kind of stature with any other mobile OS.
- Developing products on multiple OSs is very resource consuming, especially if you want to do the degree of integrations/customization that P1 wants to do. Motorola and Samsung are the only two companies that are developing multiple OS smartphones right now. P1 simply does not have the resources that Motorola and Samsung have at this time.
- Palmsource realizes that P1 is their biggest customer. Without P1 today, there will be no Palmsource or Palm OS. Not to mention that P1 is still driving a lot of innovations in the Palm OS world.
- Microsoft may appear to be a kinder and gentler company today, but make not mistake about it, it is still a Bill and Steve company. Microsoft’s job is to commoditize hardware and make the OS the main differentiating factor. One needs to look no further than the numbers of companies that Microsoft have screwed in the past to realize this.
- P1, in my opinion, is still the most innovative and creative mobile device maker out there today. And Palm OS is still the best OS for mobile devices on the market today.


Quoting Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?”

Any thoughts and counter points are welcome on this post.


RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
NewtonDKC @ 11/5/2004 10:57:25 PM #
I personally feel that the best mobile device operating system is an extremely subjective thing - for me, I need multitasking to be able to use my PDA in the capacity I want to (i.e. remote via Terminal Services into a server at work while also being able to sync to get my email, do a web search for error code info, etc). I just couldn't do that on a Palm, and that's why my current main device is the PAQ 4705. But as I've said numerous times before, if I got my mom a PDA, she'd be getting a Palm (easier to use in many ways for those who don't need the power & complexity that WM has, and that Palm OS 6.1 will bring (hopefully while maintaining the ease of use) IF anyone ever releases it!).
By the way - and this pretty much makes me sick at my stomach too - but did anyone catch the Palm1 announcement that they will not commit to using Cobalt on any devices next year? Brighthand has an article about it, and though the headline is slightly misleading about what is actually being said, it still adds weight to what many have theorized - that Cobalt is a piece of complicated, bloated work of junkware that no one wants to use. The suggestion that a Palm1 device running WIndows Mobile might be released *before* a Palm1 device running Cobalt was especially disturbing.
In this case, the split is turning the two companies into adversaries (or should I say "partners" who want to reap the best deal from one another no matter what the cost to image or user impressions...but either way, it's just not something else I needed to hear regarding Palm right now. I avoid reading the world news most of the time because it just depresses me or makes me nauseous; and now the Gadget News that I once loved is having the same effect! :-(
Regardless of what OS or platform people like or hate, we ALL NEED BOTH of them. Otherwise, we lose choice, and we lose innovation, competition, and ultimately we lose devices that grow and change quickly to meet our needs and wants.

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
mikecane @ 11/6/2004 5:07:58 PM #
>>>that Cobalt is a piece of complicated, bloated work of junkware that no one wants to use.

No, *p1* doesn't want to use it. OS inertia. When those Cobalt phones (oy, gimme a Cobalt PDA already!) come out next year and sell sell sell, watch Colligan change his tune.

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/6/2004 6:46:29 PM #
No, *p1* doesn't want to use it. OS inertia. When those Cobalt phones (oy, gimme a Cobalt PDA already!) come out next year and sell sell sell, watch Colligan change his tune.

How can you use an OS that's about as stable as a deck of cards? Just look what's happened to the T"5" - and *that* was built around an OS that had previously been stable for 2 years. How is the T5 selling and what percent have already been returned by angry customers? Would Palm release a device with a buggy implementation of Cobalt, almost no Cobalt-specific apps and then expect Sanjay, Vijay and Rajiv of Tech Support in Bombay, Calcutta and New Delhi to handle the outraged calls? Not bloody likely. Palm aren't that stupid. I hope. A mob of pi$$ed off Cobalt "victims" would storm Palm's HQ in Milpitas, burn it to the ground and then immediately file a multimillion dollar class action lawsuit against every company they can find in Silicon Valley containing the word "Palm". The growing pains associated with releasing a halfbaked new OS are something I'd be very surprised to see Palm prepared to take on any time soon.

Handspring's Treo 600 version of PalmOS 5 is about as good as anyone really needs an OS to be in a smartphone. Cobalt's features in a tiny-screened smartphone sounds like overkill. I'd be VERY interested to see who tests the Cobalt waters first and what problems ensue.



******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
hyperdaz @ 11/6/2004 8:01:31 PM #
I think this has been one of the most difficult problems for PALM... as a platform to deal with....

U want your OS to be relivent but you also want to hold onto your hardware market.... in the end you do neither.. because you cant deside what needs to be done... last ditched effort was the decision to split.... knowing the OS needs a higher user base...

now PalmOne is scared of compertition seriously afraid of it... (they dont seem to count MS PPCs as comperition as they are too busy looking inwards)...

I am afraid this has been brewing for a long time.. since sony and acer and others tried to enter into PALMs PDA world. (invited by Palm then refused access)...

I think these days its should be OEM hardware and the customer has the choice on what OS they want... mainly because I have had enough of Palm platform holding the customer to ransom..with so many products on the shopself with such old OS releases.....

just my 2 pence

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
hackbod @ 11/7/2004 2:27:45 AM #
"How can you use an OS that's about as stable as a deck of cards?"

Please, post just one shred of actual proof that Cobalt is unstable. Anything. Just yelling this kind of stuff over and over again does -not- make it a fact.

This should be easy for you, since you can go download the Cobalt simulator today and, if it is so unstable, you should be able to find lots of ways to make it crash.

The convoluted trains of logic you go through in order to reach the conclusions you clearly -want- to make are amazing. Check this one out:

1. The T5 is incredibly unstable (from some reports of seeing it crashed instead of direct by experience and testing... but we'll give you that one).

2. The instability is because Palm OS 5.4 is a piece of junk (conveniently ignoring that palmOne does extensive modification to the OS for their devices).

3. Palm OS 5.4 is a piece of junk because of engineering incompetence at PalmSource (not because the 5.x architecture has reached the end of its life and showing that when adding new features like NAND flash here, or because 5.x is no longer the focus of effort at PalmSource, or maybe it was rushed out the door to satisfy the needs of palmOne, or any of a multitude of other reasons).

4. The engineering incompetence at PalmSource means that Cobalt is a piece of junk (ignoring that the people working on Garnet may be completely different than the ones who work on Cobalt; for example, while I have worked extensively on Cobalt, I have not modified a single line in the Garnet code base).

You obviously have a major axe to grind against the engineers from Be. I don't know if you had a friend at HandEra or at PalmSource who was unhappy with the Be acquisition but, whatever the reason for it, your bias from it is causing you to make extreme conclusions that are not supported by facts. And from your posts here you clearly don't have much knowledge about the overall situation at PalmSource (beyond possibly bits and pieces from a few disgruntled employees), let alone the technical ability to be able to make useful judgements about the decisions that were made.

Before you rely too much on what some (probably ex) PalmSource insider tells you, think about this: the situation at PalmSource has many, many similarities to the situation that Apple was in when developing and then transitioning to OS X.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
mikecane @ 11/7/2004 1:14:59 PM #
It's the increased stability that Be's engineers worked on that makes me long for Cobalt! I'm with hackbod. I don't believe the Cobalt slanders. I want a device in hand to try for myself (just the T5!).

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
NewtonDKC @ 11/7/2004 2:02:37 PM #
Dianne, for those of us who aren't giving into the rumors of massive problems (but are certainly getting worried!), can you at least give us a reason why no vendor has yet to release any Cobalt devices? It's early Novmember, so we're just shy of a year (well, let's say 10 months to be more accurate) since Cobalt was released. Typically vendors rush to be the first oen out with a device running a new OS. Why haven't we seen this? We have heard that Palm1 felt it had all the capability it needed in the "T5" - and again, that begs the question - was this *really* the T5 all along or the E2 rumored long ago - and if so, do you personally feel the T5 is an adequate representation of a high end product?

We want real answers so we don't have to believe the rumors, but without any solid info addressing some very real fears and odd happenings (no Cobalt almost a year after its release, a new "High End" product which is in all ways a mid range product - we, the die hard fans of Palm - are worried and understandably so. If you have any inside info you can share, please do so!!!
NewtonDKC

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
hackbod @ 11/7/2004 2:44:13 PM #
Hi NewtonDKC,

Unfortunately I can't really say much about the reasons for the delay -- I am in engineering, not marketing, and don't know what is and is not okay to say publicly (nor is it my place discuss this). One thing that is probably okay to say is that it should be clear that Sony's departure from the PDA space had some impact. They had obviously been the licensee that pushed the platform the most, being the one that first implemented high-density graphics in the platform, the first adopter of the 5.x line, etc. During the development of Cobalt, Sony was pushing very hard for a lot of the features that we were building in to Cobalt. One of the big ones I remember is a request early on for us to license some advanced graphics technology (for AA drawing, TrueType fonts, etc) when we were already implementing those features ourselves in Cobalt.

(And no, Sony's departure had nothing to do with their thoughts on Cobalt. If that was what was going on, they would have switched over to PocketPC instead of getting out of the market completely.)

Remember that it also took a while for licensees to get moved over to to 5.x. In some ways I think you could consider, for licensees with a lot of investment in customizations to the platform (and palmOne isn't the only one in this boat), the transition to Cobalt to be even more difficult. Also like the 5.x line, I personally think that once a couple Cobalt device ship, it will put a lot of pressure on other licensees to be more aggressive about moving over. I think the new UI will actually make this even more significant -- if you place a Cobalt device next to a Garnet device, it is going to be -really- obvious that they are different and the UI on the Cobalt one is going to look far, FAR better.

Speaking of the UI, one other thing that I think slowed down adoption a bit was that the first version of Cobalt looked exactly the same as the previous OS. So while there were a tremendous number of new features under the hood, it was not immediately obvious that there was much difference. (For an analogy, think of Mac OS X, with its entirely new system architecture, being introduced looking exactly the same as the 9.x line.) We had originally planned on doing the new UI for the first release, but decide to drop that feature in order to meet the schedule -- that was unfortunate, but I think the right thing to do. It was really important to get that first version out on schedule, and we ultimately ended up with a far better UI because we had much more time to work on it. (The UI refresh was considered a non-essential feature for 6.0, so it would get the short end of the stick whenever scheduling UI design or other resources for it).

I can assure you that we have licensees that are actively working with Cobalt. In fact for a while there I was having a hard time scheduling my people between working on 6.1 to provide customizations, bug fixes, and feature requests for licensees, versus working on the big next version of Cobalt.

As for the the T5 and such, there is nothing I can say. Despite TVoR's claims, we really are separate companies, and any comments I might make about their internal decisions would be nearly as much speculation as anyone else's here.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/7/2004 4:14:21 PM #
It's the increased stability that Be's engineers worked on that makes me long for Cobalt! I'm with hackbod. I don't believe the Cobalt slanders. I want a device in hand to try for myself (just the T5!).

Nice to see you've become Mistress' lapdog, Mike. You wuss! I'll deal with you later.




******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
Rome @ 11/7/2004 10:17:01 PM #
"(And no, Sony's departure had nothing to do with their thoughts on Cobalt. If that was what was going on, they would have switched over to PocketPC instead of getting out of the market completely.)

Dianne, I guess I can infer from this statement that P1 is not too crazy about Cobalt, since there are leaks all over the Internet that P1 is looking into other OSs like Symbian, Linux, and PPC.



RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/7/2004 10:26:54 PM #
1. The T5 is incredibly unstable (from some reports of seeing it crashed instead of direct by experience and testing... but we'll give you that one).

I have personally used the T"5". It's an unstable, poorly-constructed piece of junk. It's also the most cynical piece of c r a p I've seen come out of Palm since those odious Claudia Schiffer Palm V several years ago. Have you used the T"5" yourself? If you have, is my assessment incorrect? What's that? I can't hear you, DK.

2. The instability is because Palm OS 5.4 is a piece of junk (conveniently ignoring that palmOne does extensive modification to the OS for their devices).

Sure. Blame "Pa1mOne" for hacking your pristine code so badly that the BUILT-IN APPS CRASH. Yeah. Right. Does PalmSource have any communication whatsoever with its licencees? Do you not actually do any testing with licencee devices?

3. Palm OS 5.4 is a piece of junk because of engineering incompetence at PalmSource (not because the 5.x architecture has reached the end of its life and showing that when adding new features like NAND flash here, or because 5.x is no longer the focus of effort at PalmSource, or maybe it was rushed out the door to satisfy the needs of palmOne, or any of a multitude of other reasons).

Releasing an OS that you know can't handle what is being asked of it counts as engineering incompetence in my book. I don't care whether the problem is issues booting from the NAND flash, PalmOS 5 now becoming near-abandonware left to a few sloppy junior engineers, or intense pressure to rush the product out the door to meet a deadline. If it doesn't work and is still released, that's inexcusable. That's the kind of arrogance I expect from Microsoft - not Palm. I'm shocked you would even think this is acceptable, DK.

4. The engineering incompetence at PalmSource means that Cobalt is a piece of junk (ignoring that the people working on Garnet may be completely different than the ones who work on Cobalt; for example, while I have worked extensively on Cobalt, I have not modified a single line in the Garnet code base).

Of course not. The sacred Be engineers only produce perfect code. Not like the unwashed (non-Be) code monkeys that spewed out PalmOS 5. Sheeesh.

You obviously have a major axe to grind against the engineers from Be. I don't know if you had a friend at HandEra or at PalmSource who was unhappy with the Be acquisition but, whatever the reason for it, your bias from it is causing you to make extreme conclusions that are not supported by facts. And from your posts here you clearly don't have much knowledge about the overall situation at PalmSource (beyond possibly bits and pieces from a few disgruntled employees), let alone the technical ability to be able to make useful judgements about the decisions that were made.

I have no beef with Be, per se. It was a gutsy (some would say foolhardy) company that had a lot of talented, creative people working for it. I have no connections to HandEra and none of the people I know that work/worked at Palm dislike the Be Boppers. For whatever reasons, Palm has taken its OS in this current direction. I feel it was a mistake that will ultimately hasten Palm's demise. As one of the major PalmOS 6 architects, I can understand why you feel differently. The bottom line is, we'll know soon enough which one of us is right. I'll leave it at that.

Before you rely too much on what some (probably ex) PalmSource insider tells you, think about this: the situation at PalmSource has many, many similarities to the situation that Apple was in when developing and then transitioning to OS X.

I know. And the Apple connection is part of the irony. Palm should have bit the bullet and come up with a Clean Page OS several years ago. If you're familiar with what happened to Apple during the timeline of their transition to Mac OS X, you'd know that they wouldn't have survived unless Microsoft had kept them alive. Do you think history will repeat?


http://www.macworld.com/2000/09/bc/buzzwindingroad/

"Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it."
- Sid Vicious




******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
hackbod @ 11/7/2004 11:51:40 PM #
"Dianne, I guess I can infer from this statement that P1 is not too crazy about Cobalt"

No, please don't. I was talking about Sony (and only vaguely). Please don't try to read more into what I write. I am not trying to send secret messages for you to figure out. As I have already said, anything I would say about palmOne's position would be nearly as much speculation as anyone else posting here.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
hackbod @ 11/7/2004 11:55:39 PM #
"Have you used the T5 yourself? If you have, is my assessment incorrect? What's that? I can't hear you, DK"

No, I haven't. (Remember? palmOne, PalmSource, two separate companies? Oh never mind.) I frankly don't know much at all about it, so I am not going to say any more. My only intention was to point out that your ultimate conclusion (that Cobalt is an unstable piece of junk) seemed to be based on a large stream of assumptions, many of which I know few actual facts about, too.

The rest of your comments are basically just stating things that I didn't originally say and then tearing those statements down. Real useful, that.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
Rome @ 11/8/2004 12:15:45 AM #
"I have personally used the T"5". It's an unstable, poorly-constructed piece of junk. It's also the most cynical piece of c r a p I've seen come out of Palm since those odious Claudia Schiffer Palm V several years ago. Have you used the T"5" yourself? If you have, is my assessment incorrect? What's that? I can't hear you, DK."

Tvor, I am certainly not doubting your negative experience with T5. However, calling it "an unstable, poorly-constructed piece of junk" may be a stretch and probably an incorrect assessment. Lance over at 1src.com did a rather comprehensive review on T5, and he arrived at a different conclusion. Below is the link.

http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70582



RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
Rome @ 11/8/2004 12:22:07 AM #
"No, please don't. I was talking about Sony (and only vaguely). Please don't try to read more into what I write. I am not trying to send secret messages for you to figure out. As I have already said, anything I would say about palmOne's position would be nearly as much speculation as anyone else posting here."

And I won't. Thanks for the clarification. Howover, I must say that the lack of Cobalt devices, unfortunatley, is adding fuel to the rumor fire.....



RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/8/2004 1:53:30 AM #
Tvor, I am certainly not doubting your negative experience with T5. However, calling it "an unstable, poorly-constructed piece of junk" may be a stretch and probably an incorrect assessment. Lance over at 1src.com did a rather comprehensive review on T5, and he arrived at a different conclusion. Below is the link.

No, it's neither "a stretch" nor "an incorrect assessment". It's an honest assessment based on eight years of experience using PalmOS PDAs, with exposure to pretty much every model ever released in the USA during that time. But this is the Internet, so feel free to take that with a grain of salt. (For all you know, I'm a 12 year old pathological liar that has never even seen a PDA. ;-))

If you know anything about Palms, try it out for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Otherwise, seek the opinions of some people you trust. If you believe your friend, "Lance" then don't come crying to me when your T"5" crashes and burns with all your precious data.

I could ignore the "ambitious" pricing for what is essentially a Tungsten E with an extra $25 worth of parts. I could even ignore the Rube Goldberg style 10 MB RAM buffer/tripartite NAND Flash system if the device was well executed. (He11, I think Sony's UX50 is easily the best PDA design ever produced and it has an almost equally-moronic partitioning of memory.) What I can't ignore is shabby construction quality and a rush job on the OS. Cobalt 6.1 has support for the wacky M-Systems Mobile DiskOnChip NAND Flash the T"5" has that will also be seen in the Treo 650. The problem is that support of these chips was hurriedly added to PalmOS 5 (probably because PalmOS 6 STILL wasn't ready in time). There was already one ROM patch issued within days of the T"5" being released. I expect another patch will be needed before the end of the year.

And regarding construction quality, make sure you see what a year old Tungsten E looks like before you plunk down $400 on a T"5" - your precious "top of the line" PDA will be in equally sorry shape. Yes indeedlydoodly, Neighbor.



The Tungsten "5" is a true "FrankenPalm™" that should never have been allowed to escape from the lab. You heard it here, folks.




******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

PalmOne President biotch slaps PalmSource
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/8/2004 3:50:49 AM #
palmOne's president said yesterday that his company won't commit to releasing models with Palm OS Cobalt next year.

Ed Colligan was speaking to analysts in London when he said this, and a reporter from NewsWireless was there.

Mr. Colligan wasn't saying that there definitely won't be any palmOne handhelds or smartphones running Cobalt coming next year; instead, the company refuses to commit to doing so by any particular date.

"Nobody knows when we'll start the shift to Cobalt, OS 6, or on which devices," Mr. Colligan said. "For now, we're saying that we've built the functionality we need into the Treo and the Tungsten T5 and there's no need to confuse developers by switching. I'm not even prepared to commit us to a change next year, or the year after, at this stage."





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Power Struggle between P1 and Palmsource?
mikecane @ 11/9/2004 7:27:07 PM #
>>>Nice to see you've become Mistress' lapdog, Mike. You wuss! I'll deal with you later.

Yeah, well, go see my PalmOS Suicide Watch post before you get any ambitions...

PalmOS Suicide Watch

mikecane @ 11/9/2004 7:20:58 PM #
Check out this long thread. But it's the leading article that's the frightening part.

The implication being, we got OS5 and better learn to like it.

http://tinyurl.com/3qqpa

(That said, for all the mods p1 has done to Garnet to suit themselves, *WTF* didn't they enlarge the Clipboard on the T5?!!!? I don't need to call these people stupid; they just keep on blithely displaying it in public!)

RE: PalmOS Suicide Watch
mikecane @ 11/9/2004 7:28:08 PM #
Oh, hackbod -- what is the size of that Clipboard in Cobalt?

And is George the fellow who maxed out Cobalt to 256MB? I hope you're all working at a multi-GB limit... (for the OS, although at this point, I'd *love* such a Clipboard too!)

(Hey, Ed Colligan! Delight *this* customer with a sensible Clipboard size!! 32K Memos and a 1K Clipboard. Such brainpower...)

RE: PalmOS Suicide Watch
mikecane @ 11/9/2004 7:31:19 PM #
Cobalt? No thanks - I'll just stick with PalmOS 5...
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/9/2004 11:53:28 PM #
Mike, while I agree that PalmOS 6 is totally s c r e w e d right now, a few points:

- This is OLD news. The only difference between when PalmOS 6 supposedly shipped in December, 2003 and today is that over 10 months later we STILL have no PalmOS 6 devices. And right now people probably don't even care, with good reason: PalmOS 6 offers NO compelling reason to upgrade. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Sure there are a few nice new features like HotSync Exchange and Mistresses' freshened GUI, but these aren't exactly critical items. And with PalmOS 5 we can already use ARM chips, do Treo 600-style phone navigation, use thousands of applications, use NAND Flash, still use some of our old hacks, use familiar development environments and more easily manipulate the OS. Meanwhile, Microsoft has had another chance to regroup and retool (they'll have a new OS out in a few months) and PPC hardware still makes Palm's hardware look pretty lame by comparison.

- TealPoint is a very good software company, but I think they have a not-so-hidden agenda here. As seen with Windows, every time an OS manufacturer adds features to their OS, it effectively eliminates the sales of apps from 3rd party vendors that had offered identical functionality. The switch from PalmOS 4 to 5 impacted sales of TealMaster (a great hack manager). The switch to PalmOS 6 will likely hurt sales of TealLock + finally kill off TealMaster. Having to now recompile all those lines of code in the various TealPoint apps probably isn't a welcome challenge, either. So TealPoint comes out swinging in a not-too-altruistic effort to squash changes to the status quo. While I also happen to agree that Palm should have kept things as simple as possible and left us as many options as possible to hack + customise our devices, it's obvious (for a number of reasons) that this won't ever happen.

- Palm is moving towards being a smartphone company and now needs to serve a new master: the wireless carriers. Palm needs the carriers, but they don't need Palm. Include a certain feature geeks demand + that the carriers don't like and Palm risks losing tens of thousands of smartphone sales. Exclude the feature and Palm might lose a couple hundred sales to disgruntled propeller heads. The smart money is with keeping the carriers happy.

- Any phone with an accessible OS can be hacked. By their nature, smartphones are especially vulnerable.
Perfect example: Last year, I got a Sprint Treo 600. Great concept, poor construction quality. Sprint decided they didn't want users to have access to the detailed call summary data, even though this data was available to GSM phone customers. And guess what: the data was also present on the Sprint phones - it was just hidden by Handspring at Sprint's request. It turned out that someone at Treocentral figured out that by installing a tiny file ripped from a GSM phone you could actually display the data again. No doubt Sprint was less than impressed with this little hack.
Another example: Phones are locked to carriers so they can keep you tied into their service, allowing them to make back the amount they subsidized the phone (and then some). Want to unlock your AT&T Treo + use it on another network? Tough. A few of us on Treocentral decided to try and hack the OS to unlock the phones. A fortuitous crash revealed some interesting details of the Treo 600 OS and within a few days an unlock hack was created. Again, not the kind of thing a carrier wants to see. Carriers consider customers with control over all features of their phones A Bad Thing.
With control over the phone OS it may be easier to do fun stuff like cloning phone #s a few other things we won't mention here. All bad for carriers. Enter, The Dragon (Cobalt) and these backdoors can more easily be plugged up, assuming the programmers have done their job. The use of NAND Flash and the associated magical expanding/compressing OS should further restrict hacking. And I expect apps like Brayder's JackSprat and ROM Crafter will now be dead. Thanks Palm - so much for another nice way for users to customize their Palms.

- In terms of customization, I still think PalmOS 4 was the best. I was pi$$ed to see so many of my hacks break with PalmOS 5, though I eventually found similar replacements in some cases (e.g. App UsageHack, MiddleCaps Hack). I don't plan on going through that again. And I expect a lot of people don't feel like paying to "upgrade" all their apps either.

- As I've said all along, PalmOS 5 by itself does pretty much everything that most typical PDA users need an OS to do. Add a few utilities and PalmOS 5 can do pretty much everything that even most typical power users need to do. Likewise, Handspring did such a good job hacking PalmOS 5 into a slick smartphone OS, anything else seems like overkill right now. PalmSource really needed a killer multimedia, OLED-screened CLIE to arrive running Cobalt and make everyone sit up and say, "Wow! I NEED Cobalt!" Instead it may first arrive on a tiny-screened smartphone from some obscure Asian company that you'll never see.

This is the way PalmOS ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

- Sid Vicious


Hoffman is the guy calling the shots on whether to include pie in the sky wannaBe features or to concentrate on nuts + bolts stuff. (He previously worked on BeIA (can you say eVilla?), the b@stard OS that Be had sired when they finally realized they had a snowball's chance in he11 of making it as a real desktop OS - soon after all the venture capital had been burned up.) True to their roots, Palm's Be Boppers chose pie in the sky, went mondo overboard on the graphics end of things, and now have created the sweetest PDA OS that no one ever used.

By the way, I can't wait until Mistress come home, finds out that you've been calling her baby a dog and kicks your sorry a$$.





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: PalmOS Suicide Watch
mikecane @ 11/10/2004 8:21:11 AM #
>>>By the way, I can't wait until Mistress come home, finds out that you've been calling her baby a dog and kicks your sorry a$$.

I've just been repeating what I've read elsewhere.

But I *do* want to know WTF the Cobalt CLIPBOARD size is!

And Colligan's got some 'splainin' to do about why even the T5 still has that miserable, stingy, good-for-nothing, lousy, stinking, damnable Clipboard size from the *original* bloody OS.

Played with a T5 again last night. Sorry. I detest that garish blue highlighting.

RE: PalmOS Suicide Watch
hackbod @ 11/10/2004 3:41:08 PM #
Hi Mike,

The clipboard size in Cobalt is basically unlimited, though there may be a 32k or 64k limit once you hit a 68k app (because of all of the 16 bit sizes in the 68k APIs).

A couple comments about the referenced article.

First, I don't see any reason why a developer can't create a 68k app that also makes use of some Protein features. The technique to do this is to have a separate Protein code segment that the 68k app can conditionally call in to if it is running on a Cobalt device. This is by and large no different than what is done now to run ARM code on 5.x devices, except you can now actually make system calls from that code and have a real environment in which it runs.

The complaint about there being a separate kind of application is not very relevant, since that is pretty much your only option if you want to let people write real ARM native applications with an actual shared library model and such. The big issue is that we didn't try to expose all of the new Protein APIs back in the 68k world. This was largely an intentional choice to reduce development time, and because there are other ways to access these APIs.

System patching is a complicated issue. In fact, at the surface Cobalt provides more patching than 5.x did -- since in Cobalt you can now write apps in its native architecture, those apps are able to patch much of the system. (The problem in 5.x is that the OS is running as ARM code while the applications are 68k, so patching is very difficult.) It is more complicated than that, however, because the APIs you see are no longer the direct guts of the OS exposed to you. So when you patch EvtGetEvent(), for example, you will no longer be able to see every single event happening in the system -- EvtGetEvent() is actually a part of the compatibility layer and anything that uses the real underlying APIs (which will be happening more and more as the system develops) will not go through that function. Not to mention that you will often have multiple threads calling these APIs, so it is much more tricky to write these patches.

The other "hack" issue they are talking about is a facility that was (mistakenly, in my opinion) added to 5.x and is not supported in Cobalt: a few new system notifications that get sent out, for example, every time EvtGetEvent() returns something. In fact developers have already seen noticable performance problems when using these on 5.x, and the situation is far worse in Cobalt (partly just by the nature of having a protected memory system). Given that these notifications were added in 5.x largely because you couldn't patch the system in those releases, and you can patch Cobalt, it's hard to justify spending much time trying to maintain them.

That all said, we got a lot of feedback from developers on these issues, and in 6.1 have added a whole new set of not-quite-official APIs to allow them to do some of the same kinds of things in ways that make more sense on Cobalt (and can actually be supported going forward). I hope to have a description of these in an upcoming developer newsletter.

Now, personally, it seems to me if you are writing something that is generally described as a "hack", then you should have some understanding that the thing you implemented may not work on future versions of the system. That is the nature of such things. We do still have some facilities in Cobalt for doing these things in Cobalt, in some ways better than in 5.x and in some ways worse, but longer-term I think the best solution is to see the most common kinds of things people want to do and providing real OS-level services to accomplish those things.

Finally, on security, Cobalt has a preference panel through which you can set the security level of the system. If it is turned off, then there is very little security -- library patches will even patch system-level calls, there are few restrictions on what an application can get access to, etc. Just because there is a rich security mechanism in place, doesn't mean you will be stuck only able to run a certain set of pre-approved apps on the device. That is clearly not what we want, and isn't how a normal PDA will operate.

At the same time, we -do- need to work with carriers. If a carrier has a requirement for a certain level of security, what should we do? Pout at them and just take our OS and go home? (Our only option with 5.x.) We definitely want the carriers to work with us as an open platform, since that is one of our big strengths, but at the end of the day it is the carrier who decides what goes on their network. And by and large I think the carriers are still figuring out what they want, anyway, so it is too early to predict exactly how things will look. While carrier needs are certainly an important part of our feature planning, I do not know of any instance where we wanted to do a feature but decided against it because carriers actively discouraged us from including it in the platform.

At any rate, Cobalt is just as fine a platform for normal PDAs as it is for smartphones, so you should ultimately have choices.

Finally, about the comment "SmartPhone manufacturers seem to have gotten most of the goodies." From a developer perspective, there are a -huge- number of improvements in Cobalt that are not at all specific to smart phones. A lot of these will become more visible to users as developers take advantage of them: TrueType fonts for much better document viewers, background threads and UI for communication and messaging applications, no more 64k limit on database sizes, a real IO architecture to allow multiple active network connections and generally more flexibility there, an official API for developers to write new pen input methods, significantly richer multi-media APIs, etc.

And there -are- also a lot of nice new features that are immediately visible to users, too. A few off the top of my head. The connection manager is a much better tool for dealing with network connections. There are many more fields in the address book and an improved layout of them. The system now includes true timezone support so things work much better when traveling between timezones. Status bar slips are a really nice way to quickly access parts of the system without disrupting your current activity: managing bluetooth, starting/stopping/managing network connections, adjusting volume, etc. Landscape available as a standard part of the platform. You can schedule events that span across midnight. Many more categories, and the ability to assign things to multiple categories.

That said, yes it is true that at this point the benefits of Cobalt are by and large focused on developers. It was just necessary to do that underlying architectural work before we could address the higher-level pieces that are visible to the user. But now that the underlying system is there, you can expect to see an increasing amount of work on the user experience. In fact you have already seen this happening: 6.0 was essentially the same UI as previous versions of the OS, in 6.1 was made some superficial (but highly visible) changes to that UI, and we will be doing even more of these changes in upcoming releases.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

RE: PalmOS Suicide Watch
NewtonDKC @ 11/10/2004 4:19:16 PM #
Okay, since we're all celebrating the doom and gloom, I guess I'll point out the latest Gartner Survey that says for the first time ever PPC shipments outdid Palm. Of course, this is the same company that won't include Treo's as Palm handheld, but includes the Blackberries (that do calls too).
They have the gall to say that even with the Treo, it wouldn't have helped Palm out. I disagree with that - everything helps. And I wonder if they are counting the iPAQ 6300 which is a Cellular enabled Pocket PC? And all the other Cellular Pocket PC's? Or the other Cellular Palm's too (yes, I know most of the account for fairly low numbers of sales except the Treo which is a considerable number we assume, but still, why is it WE know what a handheld and smartphone is, but thy don't?
Didn't someone say there was another company who counted handhelds correctly (i.e. the Treo IS a Palm. The iPAQ 6300 IS an iPAQ. Etc)? Which company is this and how do their results look?


RE: PalmOS Suicide Watch
mikecane @ 11/10/2004 6:10:57 PM #
I hope, hackbod, that I can have a *PDA* in my hands by June of next year running Cobalt. (I know this is out of your control; although, if you get extra samples over there...heh-heh.)

RE: PalmOS Suicide Watch
ginsberg @ 11/12/2004 1:05:03 AM #
Newton --
PDAs are data-centric devices and smartphones are voice-centric devices, according to Gartner. A BlackBerry is a PDA because it is primarily used for email & PIM, requires 2-handed operation, and is a bit clumsy as a phone. The Treo is a smartphone because it offers one-handed operation, uses more of a candybar form factor and voice is its primary application.

IDC segments the market quite differently. They consider any device with integrated wide area networking to be a phone or "converged device". Devices such as the Tungsten W, Palm i700, iPAQ 6315 and BlackBerries are not considered to be PDAs. So the way IDC sees it, the PDA market is declining rapidly because PDAs cannot be wireless.


Lacking CDMA Support in Cobalt 6.1???

Rome @ 11/12/2004 11:56:57 AM #
hacbod,

Just read this in a thread on Treocentral, quoting some P1 executive:

"Even worse, even 6.1 doesn't include basic CDMA support (let alone EV-DO etc.)out of the box so to there's not even a buggy version of a Sprint/Verizon PalmOne-based Cobalt handheld in the near future."

"While he was a bit evasive at first, after pepparing him with questions, a very clear (and extremely disappointing) picture emerged. Cobalt is not even close to being ready....even 6.1 that's supposed to have the telephony stacks. he clearly thinks that it's MONTHS away from being where it needs to be."

I know that you can't speak for P1, but can you tell us if 6.1 supports CDMA and/or EVDO out of box?? I was under the impression that it does.

Thanks!

Hawkins is the real problem

Hazniet @ 11/29/2004 6:21:24 PM #
What happened to Handspring? They stopped making handhelds that excited people and started developing smartphones...oh the next big thing...they sold out to Palm.

Palm hires Hawkins back and woila, smartphones are the next big thing. They stop making handhelds altogether and develop more treos...they will sell out to Microsoft.

Hawkins=me hate pda, me likey smartphone, me crash every company me work for, me sell out to da man.

________________________________________
If you feel like you're under control, you're just not going fast enough.

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