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    Comments on: Rumor: HTC to Build Palm Windows Mobile Treo
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1. Will it lead to the eventual end of any NEW PalmOS devices by any real licensee - including Palm? no; i dont think so. i have been waiting for this to happen. the hardware that windows mobile and palm os support have converged over the past few years - one could argue that even symbian is using the same hardware (ARM, color screen). the difference between the platforms are screen resolution, and the input mechanisms - at a hardware level. software; is just software. 2. Will it lead to the eventual death of Palm (the hardware company) in the long run? why would it lead to the eventual death of Palm? if anything; Palm, as a company are now supporting two software platforms - which, offer different functionality and as such definately appeal to seperate markets. if anything; Palm doing a Palm OS and Windows Mobile device just expanded their market share - which, is a good thing. we have seen that the battle over the past few years has seen the market share equalize between the two software platforms. the thing is; i bet this phone only has a 240x240 display; like the PPC-6700 devices that HTC are manufacturing (check engadget et al for these specs). the two devices dont vary much in regards to specifications. a Palm OS device still has the 320x320+ edge :P RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
Perhaps Palm are positioning themselves as a manufacturer that can offer handhelds irrespective of your OS preference. If this is the case and they can manage to survive in the fierce WinMob market place - it might be a neat trick. BUT - I think Palm need to focus on what you get in a 2005/2006 Palm PDA. I feel it should have excellent video codec support BUILT-IN for one. People just want to plop their video files on an SD card and play them, without all the painful transcoding that most Palm players currently need (assuming video footage is already at a sensible PDA-friendly resolution). Also, isn't it about time that Palm encouraged/licensed a proper Flash player and PDF viewer (the official Adobe viewer is unforgivably crud, especially when used on higher-end Palms like the T3 - no 320x480 support). Time moves on and so do people's needs, a flashy handheld with Personal Info Management apps that have barely changed in a decade don't cut it in late 2005. Palm need to re-evaluate what makes a gadget seem 'cool' to a wide spectrum of users and tap into that enthusiasm. A Linux or WinMob OS handheld wont save Palm by itself - what is needed is the vision to bring more to the party, delivering a device that sets trends and excites its target audience like an iPod or a Blackberry. I only planned to write 2 sentences - I must just have a lot of pent up frustration beginning to spew out about my favourite handheld platform and the uninspired way in which it has been steered the last few years. Interested in everyone elses thoughts - this is a promising thread. KultiVator If the **** sticks... throw it! A Mad But Focused Mind Let Loose On The Speedy Roads Of Greenest Rural Britain RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
my repost once again answers "why?" - palm is in a catch 22. if they stick with just FrankenGarnet, they stay on a soon to be deserted island while the rest of the free world moves forward on the Windows Mobile Cruise Ship. They will be out there all alone on the island. Not to mention FrankenGarnet's instability/bugginess and limited frozen feature set. if palm uses Windows Mobile, then they become just another low-margin commodity maker of WM smartphones. can they really compete in that market given the size, resources, and economies of scale of the competition? in my opinion - if palm chooses WM, they will lose their raison d'être. palmos was what made palm products unique - what set them apart. i hear all this talk of 4% market share is good enough for apple - it will be good enough for palm. The market for PCs is a different animal than smartphones - so this is apples vs. oranges. 4% of the PC market or automobile market might be OK, but 4% of a niche market is not. especially if that's the only/few products that palm sells! stop using this analogy, apologists. right now, palm has virtually 100% of the palmos smartphone market. how will palm function when they get X% of the WM market? And does Palm really have the resources to offer *both* PalmOS and WinMob indefinitely? Is this really possible given development/marketing/distribution/support/partner-relations costs vs. finite resources? Treo-looked PPC phone
I guess that phone won't be made by Palm. There is not brand name on the phone. That means some manufacturer will make Treo-like phone. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
Looks like the treo 670 is true. BTW, the 240*240 is not a problem at all. I have used HW6515 for a few hours with serveral my favorite programs installed, all perfect. Those diehard POS users won't buy treo 670 at all even the resolution is VGA. 320*320 is impossible for wm5. 480*480 is OK, but this resolution will bring much more imcompatibilty problem than 240*240, also consuming more power. So. 240*240 is still the best choice for PPC treo so far. Of cource, 240*320 will be perfect if they implement. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
As many users have already pointed out, in the short term this is good for Palm and expands their reach into two different markets. In the long term, Palm doesn't have the resources to properly support two platforms (They can barely finish their products on time with just the Palm OS. This won't get better with multiple OS's) Also, Palm can't compete in the WinMob arena because they can't compete with DELL et al. The Win market is all about commoditization, low-profit, high volume. DELL can purchase components at prices that Palm does not have access. Nothing can overcome this. DELL has long term relationships with both hardware and software (MS) that allows them special treatment that Palm cannot get. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
Time moves on and so do people's needs, a flashy handheld with Personal Info Management apps that have barely changed in a decade don't cut it in late 2005. Palm need to re-evaluate what makes a gadget seem 'cool' to a wide spectrum of users and tap into that enthusiasm. i think; Palm already has woken up and seen what they need to do. the fact is, most Palm users wont touch a Windows Mobile based device - and, it works the same way around. Palm providing a Windows Mobile device doesn't hurt the Palm users - if anything, external support will most likely be done on the software side by PalmSource and Microsoft; remember Palm is a hardware provider. Those diehard POS users won't buy treo 670 at all even the resolution is VGA. exactly. hear all this talk of 4% market share is good enough for apple you need to ask yourself why apple are now lookin at x86 for their processor market. there are a lot of PC based people who will switch to mac osx - providing it is a usable interface. if the mac osx interface was implemented on any of the linux distributions - we would see a lot more people not using Windows. the problem is, providing the support that users need to make this change - apple can do this; an open source project cannot. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
Too early to make such a judgement. Often early samples don't include branding. But this clearly looks like the next Treo to me.
If the sh*t sticks... throw it! How can I be a road-warrior when my PDA's weaponry is rusting? RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
Just found SYWARE officially annouced they will support WM5 treo in the near future. * * * * * Get Ready for Palm’s “Treo” to Use Windows Mobile with SYWARE’s Mobile Database and Application Development Software…All the Advantages of Windows Mobile and Microsoft, Without the Need to Learn or Use Visual Basic SYWARE announced that it will provide a specific help desk for Palm OS users who will need to consider transitioning field PDA applications with the expected eventual transition to Windows Mobile. The help desk will go into action as soon as Palm OS officially releases a “Treo” version with Windows Mobile. Many current users of Palm OS will need to start preparing to move their existing or future applications to this new platform to continue to enhance their business mobility. SYWARE’s Visual CE Mobile Database and Application Development product and its integrated products for wireless synchronization and remote printing will allow this to take place without needing to hire new programmers to learn and use Visual Basic. SYWARE requires no programming to develop robust PDA applications on Windows Mobile PDAs. SYWARE’s President Sy Danberg stated “We are preparing to establish support for Palm OS users who may be thinking about a future transition to Windows Mobile. In preparation for this, we are developing a special pricing and support package to assist Palm OS users who may be in need of developing or transferring handheld applications to support their business needs. Many of our customers utilizing our products have implemented field applications 50 times faster than using Visual Basic where as still retaining the integration with other .NET products and the significant advantage of the Microsoft Platform.” This news follows a previous announcement that an international panel of industry experts, sponsored by Microsoft Germany and Pocket PC Magazine Germany, presented SYWARE with a “Best Database Software Award 2004.” SYWARE allows users in a wide variety of market sectors to mobilize business information between the enterprise and the field to rapidly convert PC or paper-based processes into fully mobile applications that can be deployed on any Microsoft Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Windows CE device. Business or user-specific data can be downloaded, collected, displayed, modified and automatically synchronized. SYWARE enables users to create feature-rich, easy-to-use database applications without programming. To learn more about SYWARE, visit www.syware.com RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
>Time moves on and so do people's needs, a flashy handheld with Personal Info Management apps that have barely changed in a decade don't cut it in late 2005. Palm need to re-evaluate what makes a gadget seem 'cool' to a wide spectrum of users and tap into that enthusiasm. I think you make a great point. But some apologists say, "Garnet outta be good enough for anybody - at least until 2009." RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
240*240? Bah. 320*480 is the MINIMUM I will accept on ANY sort of movibe PDA-style device (smartphones included) nowadays priced over $200. Otherwise, web browsing is an impossibly hopeless proposition. It's hard enough on 320*480--and exacerbated by the utter lack of a decent Palm OS WWW browser--and 320*320 is aggravatingly constrained. 240*240 would simply be nigh unusable. Though, I will confess that I've never actually used a WinMob "Square Screen" device. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
Otherwise, web browsing is an impossibly hopeless proposition this is why we need opera on palmos :) http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/smallscreen/ they have some cool ideas about how to re-present a website on a small display - but, yes, in general; unless the sites are designed for handheld use; you probably want at least 640x480 or.. i would prefer 1024x768 minimum :P thats why i use my laptop/desktop for surfing. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
According to Brighthand and/or Jeff Kirvin, Opera will never appear on Palm-powered devices because it's not possible/they don't want it to/no one in the user base cares to see it (pick any number of the above excuses). AGAIN, the utterly baffling complacency of the developer community in regards to POS is a baaaad omen for the future of the platform, kiddies. It all began in '02/'03 when you had a bunch (but not TONS) of legacy apps that had seen frequent tweaking under OS 3/4.x not be updated at all for OS5...or barely be updated to be OS5-compliant but no enhancements such as BT capabilities, 320*320 etc. As OS 5.2 got inherently more feature-packed (320*480 support, for one) fewer and fewer apps were updated to take advantage of the latest'n greatest. Now you're seeing tons of apps that were updated in '02 or '03 that don't work properly with the new units' DIA/hard button layouts/"Treo-style" button navigation etc etc etc. Are they riding out the Garnet wave and waiting for Cobalt with bated breath? Nope. They've either given up entirely (content to milk their existing wares for as long as humanly possible), switchd over to WinMob or cell phone development or just gone out of business entirely. Face it folks, at best the Palm OS is going to be relegated to a niche in the marketplace. At worst it'll be assimilated and disappear entirely within two to three years. Think not much can happen in three years? Look where we were three years ago in the POS & WinMob camps and how things have flip-flopped since then). RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
Opera will never appear on Palm-powered devices because it's not possible/they don't want it to/no one in the user base cares to see it well, if they dont think its possible - they should contact me. i would be willing to port opera to palm os. it definately is possible; hell, they just released a j2me version! (opera mini) Things haven't been "equalized" for a long time.
Many Palm users are still under the impression that things are "Equal", that the numbers are simply the split between two equally capable platforms, and that its all a question of taste. In reality the split is about 63% vs 37%. POS is already a minority OS, and Palm selling a WM device will make it only worse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Browser_Wars.png This graph illustrates the browser wars, which MS eventually won. POS is about 1999 level, clearly in decline, but not moribund yet. Funny that it was about the same time that Netscape looked toward the Open Source Community to save it. Shades of Palm Linux there, isn't it. Then web pages started showing up saying "Designed for IE", and it was Game Over Hudson: Well that's great, that's just f*ing great man. Now what the f* are we supposed to do? We're in some real pretty sh*t now man... That's it man, game over man, game over! What the f* are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do? Time to build a fire..... Surur CIOs don't get fired for using MS products, says Palm CFO
A senior Palm executive says his company could benefit from building a mobile computing device that runs on the Windows operating system made by once-bitter rival Microsoft. In an interview, Palm Chief Financial Officer Andrew Brown said that building a Treo that runs on the mobile version of Windows might help the company woo corporate customers who have been reticent to buy its Palm OS-based gadgets.
Palm's money man says there are benefits to offering a Windows Mobile-based Treo, but is stopping short of confirming the maker will do so. Despite that shared heritage with PalmSource, Brown described Palm as neutral to the operating system its devices use--and the types of e-mail servers to which they connect. "The fact is we are Switzerland, whether it be over the e-mail server or the OS," Brown told CNET News.com last week after a presentation to financial analysts at an RBC Capital Markets conference in San Francisco. Brown's comments come just as enthusiast sites are buzzing with photos and videos purporting to be a next-generation Treo running Windows Mobile on a Verizon-branded device. The company has been studying other operating systems, including Windows Mobile, for some time. Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research, said that if the photos of a Windows Treo product making the rounds are authentic, the product should be reasonably close to shipping to carriers and could be in consumers' hands by the end of this year. http://news.com.com/Making+the+case...29076&subj=news Is Colligan still going to stop this madness? Surur RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
You know, I understand why people are anxious about the Palm platform, but all this drama is around the release of a Treo with Windows Mobile seems to be way overblown. A Windows version of the Treo will be good for Palm Inc, first of all. But if it sells well it will do so in the comparatively small US smartphone market, not in the much much bigger global market where Palm OS needs to succeed. In Asia Linux phones are taking over and in Europe nothing seems to be able to stop the advance of Symbian--certainly not Windows Mobile. Look at the numbers: Microsoft is losing not gaining ground to Symbian and Linux in the smartphone market. And after you consider the global market remember that PalmSource is now playing to a device market that is an order of magnitude larger than the smartphone market it plays in now. If their feature phone strategy succeeds, Palm OS may very well be the smaller part of their business. Hard as it may be for Americans to accept, the mobile platform battle must be fought and won in Asia, not America. And hard as it may be for PIC-dwellers to accept it's probably not going to be won just in the smartphone/PDA arena either. PalmSource was right to tie its fortunes to Linux and also was smart to go after the feature phone market where MS cannot follow. If they execute reasonably well they will have given Palm OS a strong position in Asia and that will give them the position they need to compete elsewhere. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
"Face it folks, at best the Palm OS is going to be relegated to a niche in the marketplace. At worst it'll be assimilated and disappear entirely within two to three years. Think not much can happen in three years? Look where we were three years ago in the POS & WinMob camps and how things have flip-flopped since then)." Yep, three years ago the golden age of Palm was just coming to an end. For Palm's many customers who want a top notch personal organiser, Palm's last quality product was the M500. It was never updated. Instead of keeping the distinctive small form factor that was so successful, Palms became bigger and more power hungry with each new model and the differetiator between them and Windows devices - size and battery life, steadily dissappeared as unnecessary new features were added. Now what you are getting when you buy a new Palm is effectively a Windows Mobile emulator. It is no surprise to me that they have decided to end the charade and actually make the real thing in an upcoming product. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
Whats the difference between the supposed "feature phones" and MS smartphones? MS PDA phones are actually very popular in the East, and their smartphones can be made cheap enough to be free on contract. Palmsource may survive (but I don't think so) but they wont be making anything much related to Palm OS. In a feature phone with no access to user-installed apps the Protein API does not really matter, does it? And if Palm only sells WM devices in two years, doe it really matter if Colligan is still in charge, and Jeff Hawkins is still around? Currently, the only real OS with a mobile future is WM. This of course excludes Linux or Symbian, but thats a battle for another day. Surur RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
So now I'm in a conundrum. My mobile phone contract expires in November and I was planning on consolidating two devices into one and buying a Treo 650 (despite the tight 32MB RAM (~24 Usable)). At $400+, now I'm not sure if this is a wise investment given all this uncertainty. I want something that can take me into the future. I played briefly with the Samsung SCH-i730 with WM and it felt klunky. This sucks. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
ardiri: you need to ask yourself why apple are now lookin at x86 for their processor market. there are a lot of PC based people who will switch to mac osx - providing it is a usable interface. I've seen similar statements made by others, but I still don't get it. Why is the switch to x86 going to specifically cause people to switch? My interest in the Mac is bases on OS, bundled apps, and elegance of hardware design. (I am toying with an old iBook at the moment.) Why should I care if the "guts" are built on the x86 line? if the mac osx interface was implemented on any of the linux distributions - we would see a lot more people not using Windows. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
There's a huge pile of WM devices coming to market soon. You should probably ignore any Wm2003SE devices, as they have phone functionality basically just tacked on to the WM OS, whereas WM5 was basically an integration of the WM smartphone OS and pocketpc's. For the executive e-mail junkie, there's the HP 6715. Keyboard, WM 5, WIFI G, bluetooth, GPS, Edge, small, light, thinnish. 240x240 screen :( So, a much wider selection on the WM side than just the Treo on the Palm side. All push capable with an exchange server. All can use Skype. All have proper file systems. Comes with the bluetooth HID driver built-in, so should work with any bluetooth keyboard (and ? mouse) The Dark Side is going to get seriously compelling. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?VampireLestat @ 8/11/2005 7:48:38 PM #
Surur, You are wrong. Palm OS over Linux has a big futur. You even admit it yourself at the end of your post when you list Linux and Symbian as another battle for another day. Mark my words, if Palm and Palm Source stick to the plan and execute well on Palm Linux, you are going to see an avalanch of developer support; and THAT means great programs, and THAT means a stronger Palm economy. Also, being Linux, that will also mean more open source projects for Palm and more freeware. That alone will be a great reason for consumers to buy Palm OS over Linux devices. And if they want programs with that little extra edge, they can buy any of the 20 000+ ones available. It's about to get very exciting in the Palm world again. I am however upset that the Treo 670 with WM will rain on the parade. Anyways, let's wait and see, maybe the 670 will never materialize. *knock on wood* RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
My only problem with your assessment is the 2 year gap in between. Like Gekko, people will be needing to upgrade before then, and there will not be anything compelling on the POS side. By the time the uber-Palm OS comes out it may very well be irrelevant, not have any mindshare and have all the dedicated developers moved on to other areas. Like I said, how many people use Netscape browser these days? Answer 0.75% Is AOL making any money on their billion dollar investment? And even the open source Firefox will take many years to get close to displacing IE. Its a question of time, and POS has basically run out of it. Surur RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
"For Palm's many customers who want a top notch personal organiser, Palm's last quality product was the M500." Not too sure about that one. The M500 was basicaly a Palm V with extra ram and an SD slot if you look at it from a functional viewpoint. The M515 was the same size (few hairs thicker), had 64MB RAM, and could match the battery life if you used it like the M500 (without the backlight). But, you also had the option to use a decent backlight if needed. The M500 backlight was useless in low light conditions. I know, I owned one. But this thread is not about former glories. I think Palm is looking at trying to capitalize on customers that appreciate the Treo hardware, but don't buy one because they prefer Windows Mobile. No, that's not illegal ;) True, they may undermine POS slightly, but look at the scenarios: No WM Treo: POS user buys Treo, unsatisfied WM user may or may not buy Treo, satisfied WM user does not buy Treo. POS and WM Treo: POS user buys Treo, unsatisfied WM buys Treo of choice, satisfied WM user buys Treo. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?VampireLestat @ 8/11/2005 8:38:54 PM #
I, all my friends and everyone where I work already uses FireFox. I am sure that trend is present worldwide. The Netscape analogy is not a fair one. IE killed Netscape because MS made it part of the OS. Palm is not a single application, it is a whole OS. When you really think about it, all it takes is a single hot device to change all of our analyses. The Tungsten X will have WiFi and will keep the T5's great design. If they add a few better things like a mic, a vibrating alarm, a pointier tipped stylus, and OLED screen etc, you will see people buy them en masse. I know I will. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
Yet the upcoming Tungsten is not slated to have any of these things (accept maybe WIFI). Most people feel Palm killed itself through slow development. They do not appear to be responding very aggressively to the threat, unless capitulating by adding WM5 IS an aggressive move. Surur RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?VampireLestat @ 8/11/2005 9:05:31 PM #
Yep, you may be correct on the Tungsten X. The rumour pic of the TX shows that they didn't put in a LED and stuff, and its only 312mhz (that is going to be a killer for many T5 owners patiently waiting to upgrade --- sigh). The button color difference sucks. But this is just a prototype, let's hope they will ship a more complete product. Palm is SO close to the perfect PDA. They need to throw in some fancy T3 style things on the T5. I truely hope someone over at Palm can see this and act quickly to improve the TX. Colligan said he was looking forward to reinvigorating the handheld line; well, the TX is part of the answer. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
When you really think about it, all it takes is a single hot device to change all of our analyses. The Tungsten X will have WiFi and will keep the T5's great design. If they add a few better things like a mic, a vibrating alarm, a pointier tipped stylus, and OLED screen etc, you will see people buy them en masse. I know I will. I would buy one too. And I'd be so excited that I might even become an "early adopter" for the first time in my life. However, I fear even if the T7 arrives, Surur is right; it will lack the full feature set you mentioned. If that happens, then I really would wait for the unit to be heavily discounted before buying. There wouldn't be enough advantage over my current unit to pay top dollar for it. I'm still waiting for the mythical "color HandEra." GET OPERA BROWSER FOR PALM OS NOW!!!gfunkmagic @ 8/12/2005 4:14:46 AM #
>>>>>According to Brighthand and/or Jeff Kirvin, Opera will never appear on Palm-powered devices because it's not possible.. Jees, where the hell have you people been!!! Opera recently released a java version of their mobile browser and alot of users have already gotten the Opera Mini midlet to work on the Treo!! http://mytreo.net/forum/index.php/topic,18865.0.html http://mytreo.net/downloads/details-838.html?Opera_Mini It actually works pretty well on my Treo 650, although a native palmos version would be preferable... :) RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?AdamaDBrown @ 8/12/2005 4:36:01 AM #
Aaron Ardiri wrote: well, if they dont think its possible - they should contact me. i would be willing to port opera to palm os. it definately is possible; hell, they just released a j2me version! (opera mini) Opera's always been more interested in the phone market than handhelds. They've ported to WM Smartphone, Symbian, and now J2ME, but never PocketPC or Palm. Keep up the pressure! We're not happy until we can have Opera on every mobile device we own! LEAVE NO SURVIVORS! Altema wrote: Eh... I think you mean 16 MB. ;) David Beers wrote: What do you call the free Windows Smartphone models with 64 MB memory, application expandability, music/video, etcetera? In any event, what does it matter of something with the name PalmSource survives selling Linux based phone software in China? The Palm OS as we know it will have ceased to exist. The only way that it retains any meaning is in handhelds and high-end smartphones like the Treo, and those are only possible in the more wealthy countries of North America and Europe. (Obvious exceptions of Japan, Taiwan, and S Korea, but their markets are so dense it's almost impossible to gain access.) RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
The opera j2me browser is proxy based. All the formatting is done at opera servers. And that's why it fits into j2me phones which notoriously have problems with large, actually not small, applications. -------------------------- Waiting for a TT successor RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
gfunk, my comments was posted (AFAIK) PRIOR to you or foo making the "announcement" of the Opera j2me browser running under POS. I don't consider that "real" support of POS. Besides, Opera making a formal announcement about supporting POS (or even PPC) would do wonders as far as placing a marketing spin on *someone* having faith in not only the Palm platform at this stage of the game but to PDA-based Smartphones in general! I almost pulled my hair out today trying to access some imoprtant info and having Blazer 4 stalling and being so mind-numbingly slow on my T5. RE: WinMob Treo = Eventual Death of PalmOS and Palm, Inc.?
Are you only saying that because you know Opera has announced native support for WM PDA's?
Screen shots of Opera for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs Surur 
 Terrible terrible idea
This is an *insane* decision. They want to compete against the cut-rate graybox PC manufacturers? I mean what Microsoft competitor who surrendered has *ever* done well afterwoods? This also has the great side effect of completely demotivating (if not kill off) the PalmOS ISV market. If anyone from Palm is reading, you had better comfirm or deny this soon! I guess another benefit of outsourcing all manufacturing to China is that all of your preproduction units and long term plans get leaked on the Internet months ahead of time. RE: Terrible terrible ideaVampireLestat @ 8/11/2005 9:57:35 PM #
T W: I agree with you. It is an insane decision. By the way, it is for all intents and purpose confirmed by Palm. Breaking news Published: August 11, 2005, 12:42 PM PDT A senior Palm executive says his company could benefit from building a mobile computing device that runs on the Windows operating system made by once-bitter rival Microsoft. In an interview, Palm Chief Financial Officer Andrew Brown said that building a Treo that runs on the mobile version of Windows might help the company woo corporate customers who have been reticent to buy its Palm OS-based gadgets. RE: Terrible terrible ideaVampireLestat @ 8/11/2005 9:59:38 PM #
A friend just told me that if this Treo 670 is launched with WM, the first thing consumers will think is that Palm is admitting that "their" OS is inferior. And he is right. Developers are not going to take this positively either. I am not happy at all with these turn of events. BIG mistake by Palm in my opinion. They've made blunders before but this will be the biggest. It has all the appearances of a panicked desperate decision. They will try to mask it it with nice mumbo jumbo language that "consumers now have more choice", "carriers were demanding this", "we are OS agnostic", bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla At the end of the day... you simply don't trust your product enough to assure your future prosperity. Rule #1 in economics... ENSURE CONFIDENCE IN THE ECONOMY. RE: Terrible terrible idea
Well, now we know how Palm(One) dropped the ball on the upgrades for the Treo 650 after getting the 600 from Handspring... They were too busy figuring out the PR stunts and machinations in order to put Winmob onto their newly acquired hardware... Oh well, now they can disappoint Windows addicts too with their weak hardware specs. Looks like Palm will dilute itself out of business, rather than make any bold moves to save itself. As the poster above said it - if they can't even get it together to release a debugged Treo 650, just imagine what a train wreck the WinMobile version will be. ..And if Winmobile 5 is like 4, 3, 2 and 1 (wince!)... then it's heading out of the station on 3 wheels already before Palm even touches it... RE: Terrible terrible idea
>A senior Palm executive says his company could benefit from >building a mobile computing device that runs on the Windows >operating system made by once-bitter rival Microsoft. Leave it to the suits to make (and justify) a mind-numbingly brain-dead decision. So with Palm surrendering, where do we go from here? I've had a PalmOS device since the original Pilot 500 (with 1 Meg upgrade of course) and I have 9 years of appointments, notes, contacts, etc. Anyone know of any good handheld Linux devices. I currently have a 650 (which I guess is now officially and EOL POS), and I was digging the convergence device. None of the Linux smartphones I've seen have looked that exciting. I've developed with Zaurus's before and while the Linux OS on them ran fine, the devices were disappointing. I guess I could go BlackBerry, but the BlackBerry PIM apps suck. Symbian has never thrilled me either. Back to a paper planner? RE: Terrible terrible idea
Anyone remember Commodore's short-lived line of DOS/ Windows boxes? Atari's "Pro" line of PC compatibles? Nope? Thought so. Where are Commodore & Atari now? That's what I thought so---and no, kiddies, the Atari you see on game boxes nowadays is just a brand that was auctioned off to the highest bidder for easy shelf recognition by Infogrames. RE: Terrible terrible idea
Where do we go from here? Here's my plan: Use my T5 until it craps out in a year or so. I also may buy a T|X or whatever it is later this year or early next year. If it's halfway decent and the rumor mill doesn't have any future POS-powered devices slated for release, I'll buy another one or two T|Xs or so and stash 'em away. I'll also keep burnded CDs of all of my registered apps and hard copies of my reg codes etc in case PalmGear/Handango et al tank. I figure I can coast along on a few stockpiled Palm devices for a couple of years. By the time those are totally shot, the mobile computing landscape should be considerably changed and the Moto Q/Razr Smartphone will have had a few generations under its belt and be ready for primetime. RE: Terrible terrible idea
While we are at it, I'd really love to know the real reason why PalmOne knifed the Cobalt baby (and thereby destroyed the Palm platform for good). I guess the Handspring guys never really like the PalmSource idea? Could Cobalt really have been *that bad*? Hell, it was competing against Wince of all things! If they had crammed 500 monkeys riding high on crack into a Tungsten T case it could have compared favorably to Wince. The end is near. Run for your lives!The_Voice_of_Reason @ 8/11/2005 11:15:46 PM #
A friend just told me that if this Treo 670 is launched with WM, the first thing consumers will think is that Palm is admitting that "their" OS is inferior. And he is right. Developers are not going to take this positively either.
Developers aleady have a low opinion of Palm/PalmSource and most saw the writing on the wall years ago and now also develop apps for Windows Mobile. Any developer that sticks with PalmOS exclusively at this point is either:
The Palm Economy = Communism™ Come on now people - PalmOS still works!The_Voice_of_Reason @ 8/11/2005 11:24:24 PM #
Leave it to the suits to make (and justify) a mind-numbingly brain-dead decision. So with Palm surrendering, where do we go from here? I've had a PalmOS device since the original Pilot 500 (with 1 Meg upgrade of course) and I have 9 years of appointments, notes, contacts, etc. Anyone know of any good handheld Linux devices. I currently have a 650 (which I guess is now officially and EOL POS), and I was digging the convergence device. None of the Linux smartphones I've seen have looked that exciting. I've developed with Zaurus's before and while the Linux OS on them ran fine, the devices were disappointing. I guess I could go BlackBerry, but the BlackBerry PIM apps suck. Symbian has never thrilled me either. Back to a paper planner? I don't understand posts like yours. You have plenty of options - just buy some older PDAs and use them like you've always used PDAs. Yes, you won't have the latest in hardware, but at least you'll have a useful device. Face it: even a Palm Vx is a he11 of a lot better than a paper planner. Buy a CLIE TH55 and you'll get a solid device that you can easily get good use out of for another 5 years.
The Palm Economy = Communism™ RE: Terrible terrible idea
I guess the Nokia 770 (http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,74866,00.html) is an option. Not quite a PDA, but Nokia does seem to have gotten some of the Gnome hackers involved in the development of it, so there's a good chance it will see software updates. PalmOS under seige: Circle the wagons, Martha. WinMob's hereThe_Voice_of_Reason @ 8/11/2005 11:32:27 PM #
?Where do we go from here? Here's my plan: Use my T5 until it craps out in a year or so. I also may buy a T|X or whatever it is later this year or early next year. If it's halfway decent and the rumor mill doesn't have any future POS-powered devices slated for release, I'll buy another one or two T|Xs or so and stash 'em away. I'll also keep burnded CDs of all of my registered apps and hard copies of my reg codes etc in case PalmGear/Handango et al tank. I figure I can coast along on a few stockpiled Palm devices for a couple of years. By the time those are totally shot, the mobile computing landscape should be considerably changed and the Moto Q/Razr Smartphone will have had a few generations under its belt and be ready for primetime. hkklife: buy as many European CLIE TH55 as you can afford. It's a KILLER PDA and with Bluetooth AND Wi-Fi included, the TH55 won't be obsolete any time soon. I have several in storage and at this point I almost don't care what happens to Palm/PalmOS. I have all the apps I probably will ever need on a PDA, my setup is stable, and I can link to a Bluetooth phone as necessary. If I can put on my [dusty, barely-used] Palm Apologist hat for a minute: FOR ME, PalmOS 5 can be set up to do MOST of the things I would ever want to do on a PDA. Hell - I would be happy even going back to my monochrome TRGpro if absolutely necessary. Even ancient Palms are great devices if you look at all the amazing things they can do. Yes, multitasking would be nice, but for now I'd rather stick to the CLIEs than reinvent the wheel by switching to Windows Mobile. Of course, StyleTap (www.styletap.com) may change how I feel about this if eventually we start seeing some REALLY good WinMob hardware with OLED screens...
The Palm Economy = Communism™ RE: Terrible terrible ideaVampireLestat @ 8/11/2005 11:39:25 PM #
First pic of Treo 700 with possibly Palm OS 6. RE: Terrible terrible idea
>I don't understand posts like yours. Man, I don't want to be nursing a 10 year old Newton, or waiting for EComStation to release an OS/2 upgrade, or waiting for yellowTAB GmBH to release a BeOS upgrade, or writing a TCP/IP stack and web browser for a Commodore 64. Platforms have natural bit rot. Once the owner of a platform gives up on it, its time to look for something else. Now, I'm not going to throw my Treo 650 away tomorrow, but want to figure out where to go in the future. And beleive me, I bought my last copy of a Microsoft OS and my last machine with a Microsoft OS pre-installed a *long* time ago. I disagree. Palms won't SUDDENLY become useless now.The_Voice_of_Reason @ 8/12/2005 12:11:15 AM #
Man, I don't want to be nursing a 10 year old Newton, or waiting for EComStation to release an OS/2 upgrade, or waiting for yellowTAB GmBH to release a BeOS upgrade, or writing a TCP/IP stack and web browser for a Commodore 64. Platforms have natural bit rot. Once the owner of a platform gives up on it, its time to look for something else. Now, I'm not going to throw my Treo 650 away tomorrow, but want to figure out where to go in the future. And beleive me, I bought my last copy of a Microsoft OS and my last machine with a Microsoft OS pre-installed a *long* time ago. [Palm Apologist mode=ON] Only problem with your comparisons is all of those other examples are all either VERY OLD or never had any significant market share to begin with (and therefore had few great applications available ). A platform is all about the APPLICATIONS available for it, and PalmOS is still in pretty good shape there. There aren't too many things I can do (albeit only one at a time!) on my CLIEs. DateBk5, HandyShopper, Documents To Go, Picsel, TCPMP, DiddleBug, NetFront, SnapperMail, McPhling, MultiUser Hack ;-O, PW-Patcher ;-O, YAUC, BackupMan, McFile... the top PalmOS apps are all rock solid and will be serviceable for years. And given how PalmOS many devices are out now there (and will remain available for a LOOOOONG time thanks to eBay!) the PalmOS market will be around for at least another 5 - 10 years. In fact, even if EVERY PalmOS developer closed shop TOMORROW, those devices don't suddenly stop being useful and those apps don't suddenly disappear. It all boils down to whether or not having the latest + greatest of modern PDA hardware is absolutely essential to you*. [/Palm Apologist mode=OFF] The Palm Apologist of Reason
The Palm Economy = Communism™ My Freudian Slip?The_Voice_of_Reason @ 8/12/2005 12:37:09 AM #
There aren't too many things I can't do (albeit only one at a time!) on my CLIEs. ------------------------ Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted. ------------------------ The Palm Economy = Communism™ Die hard M$-Haters
There's some die-hard MS haters here, arnt there. What happened to using the best tool for the job. Palm is "like Switzerland", why cant you be? If a device has flexibility and features you want, why go to a Nokia 770 when it doesn't even have proper power management? The wide selection of hardware available on the WM side will ensure there is a device that meets your needs. I suggest you give it a try. And for the person who thinks WM5 will be as bad as Win CE 1, you forget as times go on, windows gets better. WM5 promises to be the Windows 2000 of the mobile world. Surur RE: Terrible terrible ideaAdamaDBrown @ 8/12/2005 4:57:10 AM #
I think you guys overstate the impact a bit. This will probably turn out to be a good size boost for Palm's bottom line. And if they don't let things stagnate, if they keep it fresh and try to bring in Cobalt, they could still do quite well for themselves. The only way that they can screw it up is by either pumping out lackluster hardware, expecting Windows to solve their problems, or by allowing the Windows units to take over their product line by not producing anything compelling on the Palm OS side. RE: Die hard M$-Haters
>There's some die-hard MS haters here, arnt there. Its an enitrely rational result of 15 years of dissatisfaction using and developing for MS platforms. On the flip side, I have no interest in helping a convicted abusive monopolist leverage its monopoly to dominate another market.
Wake me when your precious Microsoft is "like Switzerland" and I can: etc. etc.
HAH. Do you want "gray box A" or "gray box B"?
So mediocre, uninventive and insecure. Sounds perfect. Palm Apologists: Is this the best you can come up with? Wow.The_Voice_of_Reason @ 8/13/2005 6:48:47 AM #
>There's some die-hard MS haters here, arnt there.
Its an enitrely rational result of 15 years of dissatisfaction using and developing for MS platforms. On the flip side, I have no interest in helping a convicted abusive monopolist leverage its monopoly to dominate another market. You seem to have a lot of "issues" with Microsoft. Why didn't you simply move to another platform a LONG time ago? You know, the perfect platform.
Wake me when your precious Microsoft is "like Switzerland" and I can: etc. etc. Someone will wake you up right after Apple lets all other digital music players use their compression format and iTunes. Try to remember: this is business - not the United Nations or a volunteer organization. It amazes me to see how many people think they're entitled to get something for nothing (or next to nothing). Please ask yourself WHY companies like Apple might not share certain applications or Intellectual Property with their competition. Maybe someday you'll figure out why your post is so ludicrous.
HAH. Do you want "gray box A" or "gray box B"? The Dell X50v, Loox 720 etc don't look like bland gray boxes to me. In fact, PalmOS users have been drooling for hardware like that for the past 10 years. Instead, we get buggy crap like the absurdly overpriced Tungsten 5 and the Not Ready For Prime Time LifeDrive. I wonder how many longtime Palm users have dumped PalmOS in disgust during the past couple years because they gave up waiting for Palm to release something even slightly as competitive as "gray box A" or "gray box B"?
TVoR
The Palm Economy = Communism™
Why it's still early in the game
I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that I think we will all look back on this time and realize we were suffering from a pretty myopic perspective of the "smart device" market. Here are the artificial blinders I see a lot of people in this forum wearing right now: 1. They think of the fairly sluggish US smartphone market as being the whole market when in fact it is dwarfed by the global market. That global market is young and has huge legs on it. 2. They think of smartphones/communicators as a big, important market when in fact it is still currently very small (3-4%) compared to the "pretty smart" phones commonly called feature phones. If companies like PalmSource, MS, and Symbian can give feature phone users ANY kind of reason at all to move up to a smarter device the demand for smartphones will be orders of magnitude beyond what it is today within a few years. 3. They think of the mobile device market as being similar to the PC market. But the more personal a technology is, the more people want it to be personalized and the less popular a commoditized product will be. This means that unlike the PC market there is not going to be a strong consolidation around platforms in the forseeable future. Instead, platforms are probably going to differentiate even more. It also means that the mobile OS companies that do the best will be the ones who give device vendors the greatest opportunity to differentiate and innovate, not the ones whose designs drive mobile devices toward commoditization. 4. They think Microsoft is doing a good enough job to succeed with products like WM 2005 based on comparisons to Palm OS Garnet. The truth is that *nobody* is doing a good job right now in the mobile market. Consumers are spending lots of money on all kinds of mobile devices, but except for media players there is not a lot of satisfaction with them. In other words, what's lacking isn't marketing muscle or more checkmarks against a list of presently available features, it's innovation. Innovation can turn the entire market upside down in the blink of an eye. This market is inherently VERY unstable and full of opportunity, even for the small players. Once you take off the blinders and get the bigger picture it's hard to escape certain conclusions that make a lot of the hand-wringing over the future of Palm OS seem a little bit silly. (Not that there aren't reasons for concern, just that things people are choosing to be concerned about are not the right ones.) First conclusion: The market is very very young and is going to be growing in 20 different directions in the next decade. Growing FAST. Second conclusion: If differentiation and innovation are the key to success then monolithic proprietary platforms like Windows Mobile and Symbian are at an inherent disadvantage in the coming market compared to platforms that build on open, modular kernels like Linux. There's a reason that Linux is growing 4 times faster than Windows Mobile as a smartphone platform. Take a look at the veritable zoo of innovative Linux phones selling in Asia and you can see that open platforms are the path to all kinds of coolness (as well as cheapness). Third conclusion: The game is not going to be won--or lost--by anyone in the next two, three or five years. Not by Symbian, not by Microsoft, and not by PalmSource. In my opinion, Palm OS is a key piece in the Linux success story. Whatever happens with Cobalt, it has one really big thing going for it: it's a really good start on Palm OS for Linux. Just being able to put a really flexible, personalizable, easy to use, OS that comes with 30,000 applications on a Linux kernel is a big innovation from the standpoint of the market. PalmSource is very very lucky to have stumbled into this position where they can repurpose so much of the work on Cobalt and get the proprietary monkey off their back. Will PalmSource succeed in keeping the Palm OS platform moving forward? Hell if I know. Anything can happen at this point. We're only a few moves into a long and interesting multiplayer chess game and it's way too early to call the outcome. I certainly don't think we can call any player in this game any where near dead today.
I've heard enough of these 30 000 apps!
I've heard enough of these 30 000 apps! Its a complete nonsense. Most of these apps are pre OS 5, they have not been updates to one handed, stylus free usage, and will crash NVFS devices easily. They are also ugly and amateurish in most cases, and not adapted to devices with color screens and plenty of processing power. They will also not work at different resolutions The POS platform and software library will be irrelevant in two years time, and what people with "feature phones" want is not a nice shopping list app, but a nice racing game. WM is set to deliver this much sooner and in better quality, with devices that are available now, and can grow to supply the needs of people if they feel the desire to. Surur RE: Why it's still early in the gameAdrenochrome @ 8/12/2005 7:22:20 AM #
David, I don't know why you post here. Your reasoned and courteous posts are an affront to this forum. This is a place to rant about how Palm OS will kill itself in one year. If you can't pick your side and defend it beyond reason, you're just going to seem weak and insightful to the rest of us. This is a site not just with which to predict the future, but to demand your predicted future is true and inevitable. And please take care to shout down anyone who disagrees with you, otherwise you’ll just look rude. RE: Why it's still early in the game
Surer wrote: I've heard enough of these 30 000 apps! Its a complete nonsense. Most of these apps are pre OS 5, they have not been updates to one handed, stylus free usage, and will crash NVFS devices easily. They are also ugly and amateurish in most cases, and not adapted to devices with color screens and plenty of processing power. They will also not work at different resolutions Oh yeah, that's right. Win32 and Symbian applications don't have *any* platform compatibility problems when you move them to a new version of Windows or a device with a different screen do they? ;) Sorry, Surer, WM is a great platform but I'm afraid backward compatibility is *not* an area where it compares favorably with Palm OS. WHICH IS WHY MICROSOFT IS GOING DOWN IN **FLAMES** IN 2006! Alas, poor Bill, we hardly knew ya. BWAAAAAAH!!! (There, does that meet the mimimum hyperbole and childishness requirements for PIC?) The POS platform and software library will be irrelevant in two years time, and what people with "feature phones" want is not a nice shopping list app, but a nice racing game. WM is set to deliver this much sooner and in better quality, with devices that are available now, and can grow to supply the needs of people if they feel the desire to. I don't know why you think graphics and gaming will particularly favor WM over Linux on mobile devices when there is no apparent advantage on the desktop. Even Cobalt has an enviable graphics engine base on OpenGL: powerful and portable. And you're forgetting in all of this that it's not just easy to port old Palm OS apps to the new platform, it's going to be easy to port Linux stuff as well. TiVO on your Palm anyone?
RE: Why it's still early in the game
Adrenachrome - your remarks are incisive, blunt and I completely agree with your remarks for many of the regular commentators foudn herein. [Mini Rant Mode=ON] This forum is a place for airing OPINIONS - but some folks are so up themselves that they mistake their opinions as FACTS. Take Adrenachrome's comments seriously, do a reality check before you post and leave that ego bullsh*t outside this forum, where it belongs! Hey - this might even become a nicer place to exchange ideas and comments, rather than the childish mindless bullyboy playground it often resembles! There's some bright people here, why not put that intelligence to more constructive use? [Mini Rant Mode=OFF] So how about lobbying Palm for USB host functionality on their next-gen devices. Sure would be cool to be able to plug in a USB hard drive unit for mass storage on demand, if you're not a LifeDrive fan? Great way of keeping costs down too - only those needing HD storage will need to invest extra in it. Anyhow, looking forward to more constructive posts - there have been some encouragingly mature ones the past few days (if you can wade through the bilge that surrounds it!) Have a great weekend all,
If the stick sh*ts... throw it! RE: Why it's still early in the game
>>> WHICH IS WHY MICROSOFT IS GOING DOWN IN **FLAMES** IN 2006! Alas, poor Bill, we hardly knew ya. BWAAAAAAH!!! (There, does that meet the mimimum hyperbole and childishness requirements for PIC?) <<< By George, I think he's got it! ;-) Glad you're here Cervezas. RE: Why it's still early in the game
It was not me who claimed 30 000 apps. I am only the one shooting it down in flames. From your response it appears you agree with me that the claim is overblown, possibly for all platforms, but definitely for POS. BTW, adding DirectX will make it very easy for game publishers to make money from their back catalogue by porting desktop apps to mobile devices. This is a hot area right now, with many 80's games being seen again on phones. With more powerfull devices the quality of games are expected to increase also. This is MS's way of challenging the PSP via a backdoor. Imagine X-box live games being played via mobile phone. So here I am not talking about the potential of the devices, but MS leveraging their desktop presence into an advantage on a mobile device. Do you find any fault in my analysis? Surur RE: Why it's still early in the game
Dave, Thanks for the very good insights. Altho, surur does have a point on the # of apps. I've always been fascinated by how WM & POS freaks trot out those #s. If I see one more Palm OS app that turns the screen into a compact mirror, then I'm gonna scream! Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com RE: Why it's still early in the game
Yeah, I agree there are a fair amount of crappy apps out there and the 30,000 should be taken with a trowel-full of salt. But you have to admit that the large number of apps does create a lot of loyalty to the platform. I know so many people who use Palms specifically because of some hobby or oddball interest they have where some guy has created a shareware app just for that interest. Just a recent example: I was walking my dogs the other day past some nearby caves that are frequented by spelunkers and there was a guy with an ruggedized Aceeca Meazura on his belt getting ready to go in with a group of cavers. He uses some kind of Palm shareware app that lets him load cave maps and log his explorations. For others (my hand is up) the significance of all the choice is that instead of 3 or 4 different apps for tracking your time working on projects there's more like 20, one of which is exactly the way they like to do it. I'm not sure if this is still the case, but the software options for medical users used to be vastly better for Palm OS than WM. There were one or more tools for every conceivable kind of specialist. People surprisingly often stick to OS platforms just because of a single application that they just can't find on the platform they'd otherwise prefer. Desktop Linux suffers terribly from this problem. I hear all the time: "Open Office is great and Linux looks easy to use now but the only problem is that it doesn't run X, which we have to have." Apps matter. A lot. And not just glitzy multimedia ones, although those do matter a lot too.
RE: Why it's still early in the game
Surer wrote: So here I am not talking about the potential of the devices, but MS leveraging their desktop presence into an advantage on a mobile device. Do you find any fault in my analysis? Sure, no question that leveraging their successful desktop (and server) technologies is Microsoft's strong suit and it makes them a formidable competitor. Increasingly, though, the technical advantage of this is getting blunted by a reluctance among device makers to get locked in to proprietary OS vendors that tell them in considerable detail how their devices are going to look and work, when they are going to receive OS updates, what kind of screen resolutions they can use (not the low-cost 320x320 panels in the case of WM), etc. All this stuff matters, too.
RE: Why it's still early in the gamePenguinPowered @ 8/12/2005 2:03:31 PM #
Ah, a clear and well reasoned comment. Very insightful, David. Thanks. Now, the real question: which of the many players will execute well? WM has more apps than POS - Handango
If you are going to look purely at number of apps then, it appears WM has more apps available at Handango.com than POS. WM 16903 Titles WM Smartphone 1465 Titles POS 15261 Titles Another myth of POS superiority shown to be false. You know things have really changed since 2001. Forget anything you know from then. Surur RE: Why it's still early in the game
cervezas said Increasingly, though, the technical advantage of this is getting blunted by a reluctance among device makers to get locked in to proprietary OS vendors that tell them in considerable detail how their devices are going to look and work, when they are going to receive OS updates, what kind of screen resolutions they can use (not the low-cost 320x320 panels in the case of WM), etc. All this stuff matters, too. Yes, due to MS's reputation for creating a generic platform vs a collection of proprietary less differentiated devices MS has had less penetration with large players. This has resulted in MS approaching smaller players and offering to be their "star maker". So far this strategy has worked very well, due to MS's focus on business users and due to the network effects of standardizing over many different manufacturers. The API was the same (in general) on an Acer device as a HP device. HTC for example has done very well as the ODM for HP, Dell, FSC, and have made more than a billion dollars last year. They are a small company, but are selling spectacular devices right next to Nokia and Motorola. Having multiple proprietary platforms actually hurt users. Look at the CDMA vs GSM example. Standardizing on Windows has reduced the amount of work developers had to do and the platforms they needed to support, while still serving 90% of the market. If every city had is own voltage the cost of electrical appliances would increase accordingly. Networks are settling on TCP/IP, and this is fueling the growth of cheap Internet connected appliances, and reduced the amount of training networks specialists need to have. If something is intended to be basic and fundamental it benefits from being standardized. Things that were previously high level, such as network protocols, benefit from being standardized as the number of elements in the network grows. Even the standardization of containers had an enormous effect on increasing the efficiency of international trade. In summary then, having a standard OS for mobile devices will be of benefit to users, and will lead to greater development of the platform and greater penetration amongst the general population. The OEM's may fear it, but due to the benefits its virtually impossible to resist. Palm has just succumbed to this pressure. Surur RE: Why it's still early in the gamePenguinPowered @ 8/12/2005 9:54:35 PM #
I think there's nothing funnier than describing M$'s software design approach as standardized. That's kind of like discovering the horse of a different color in the wizard of oz as 'monochrome'. RE: Why it's still early in the game
Its a de facto standard of course, not de jure. Doesn't mean you cant still run your win 98 apps on Windows XP. That developer who wrote the educational software 6 years ago is very glad he can still make money on his software due to this, and he is probably quite glad that things have remained largely stable. Surur Time to stop the B.S., Palm Apologists. NO MORE LIES!The_Voice_of_Reason @ 8/12/2005 10:28:39 PM #
Anyone who claims PalmOS is superior in 2005 because it has "30,000" [or any bogus number you want to choose] doesn't have a clue what they're talking about. Really. You should know better, Beersy. Repeating mindless drivel like that only gives Palm detractors more evidence that those defending PalmOS have little to back up their flimsy position. The sad thing is that once this nonsense gets said once it's repeated as if it were fact. If it wasn't for Surur, it's actually amazing how many lies and halftruths posted on the Palm sites would go unchallenged. I'm sick of the deception. Ultimately, the market will separate the wheat from the chaff. Until then, the Palm Apologists need to stop ignoring truths that are obvious to all impartial observers. (Denying the existence of WinMob Treos, then rationalizing that they won't hurt PalmOS is a particularly egregious example...) I will destroy some of the more recent lies later. TVoR The Palm Economy = Communism™ RE: Why it's still early in the game
>In summary then, having a standard OS for mobile devices will be >of benefit to users, and will lead to greater development of the >platform and greater penetration amongst the general population. Man you just lined up at the Microsoft trough of hype and took a big bite didn't you? The Microsoft PC monopoly has stifled innovation in the PC market and led to artificially high OS prices. As the price of every major component of a PC has come down except for the OS. Microsoft has systematically taken apart the PC ISV market via bundling and unfair competition. This also has led to artificially high prices and lack of competition. Microsoft is a complacent monopolist and has little incentive to invest in their own products once monopoly status is reached. This leads to wonders like IE staying essentially frozen with a borked up CSS implementation for 5 years. The Microsoft monoculture combined with Microsoft's own lax approach to computer security has led to a abundandt environment for virus, worm, and trojan writers, costing its customers billions when they need to essentially halt computer operations because virus du jour is wreaking havoc on their networks. This also necessitates Microsoft's customers spend billions of dollars and hours on virus and anti-spyware software and procedures, which should in reality be paid for my Microsoft since the only reason they exist is to patch faults in Microsoft's own software and security models. Just wait and see what happens if the Microsoft monoculture takes hold in the mobile phone market. Imagine entire wireless carriers take offline as there networks are infiltrated by worm du jour. Take the Code Red scenario of a few years back and multiply it by 100. Stagnation, artificially high prices, insecurity and instability. That will be the "benefit" of Microsoft dominating the mobile device market. Sounds alot like the PC market right now. Enjoy cleaning some nasty bluetooth enabled spyware of your Loox smart phone. FUD-tasticThe_Voice_of_Reason @ 8/13/2005 5:17:15 AM #
Golly gee whiz. The anti-Microsoft FUD's getting a little silly now. When are we going to hear that Gates was really The Lone Gunman? ------------------------ Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted. ------------------------ The Palm Economy = Communism™ RE: Why it's still early in the game
Are you saying there were no benefits on the desktop? And are you saying there will be no benefits of standardization in the mobile field? You need to look at the bigger picture. Surur Don't expect a coherent, intelligent response, SururThe_Voice_of_Reason @ 8/13/2005 5:40:03 AM #
Quite frankly, I'm embarassed at how poorly the Palm Apologists have done in trying to argue in favor of the platform. I suppose this anti-Microsoft basher feels it would be better if the desktop market was evenly divided between Windows, MacOS, 5 flavors of Unix (including Linux), Amiga, Atari, Commodore 64, Commodore Vic 20, and Coleco Adam. All incompatible with the other. All requiring unique applications. Windows has its own set of headaches, but if set up properly and running the best apps, it's a pretty stable platform these days. You also know what you're getting and there's decent support of legacy applications. There will likely be some consolidation of the numbers of mobile OSes but it will be good once developers are able to minimize their efforts in covering the various types of hardware. It's too bad JAVA hasn't lived up to its hype - it could have saved us from a lot of redundancy. Perhaps the other environments that promise easy porting will mature to the point of usefulness, but I not expecting this will happen soon. I expect the mobile device market will quickly standardize on: PalmOS is committing hari-kiri even as we speak and will not survive as a major player long enough for PalmLinux to be created, debugged and released (2007). PalmSource's problem is that PalmLinux is VAPORWARE, while Windows Mobile and Linux already exist and are developing momentum. Had PalmLinux been released in 2003 or 2004, PalmSource actually had a good chance to have become a major player in the mobile device world for another decade. Instead, they are stuck with a hopelessly-overextended simple organizer OS that's overmatched in trying to compete with modern OSes. (But it's still impressive to see what a brave effort PalmOS 5 put up in devices like the Treo 600 and the CLIE VZ90. PalmOS 5 ("Garnet") is like an older middleweight champion - that should have already have retired - trying to take on a vicious young heavyweight champion (think Mike Tyson in his prime). No contest. I just hope PalmOS' corner throws in the towel before PalmOS gets killed in the ring. It's already taken several savage blows to the head and is about to be given a standing eight count. TVoR
The Palm Economy = Communism™ RE: Why it's still early in the game
I can't think of any other industry where one company so completely dominates the field, be it aircraft manufacture, oil and petrochemicals, automobile, pharmaceuticals, finance, retailing, entertainment, telecoms etc. Therefore Microsoft's domination of the computer OS industry does seem on the face of it, unnatural when compared to all other industries on Earth. "What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog" - Dwight D. Eisenhower RE: Why it's still early in the game
I think its pretty natural that one OS became the standard, due to network effects and interoperability concerns. However the fact that its one company thats in control of that OS,when looking at from your perspective, its pretty strange. Its probably a side-effect of copyright law. Patents expire in 17 years, copyright in 70+lifetime. Only MS can make Windows. Surur RE: Why it's still early in the gamePenguinPowered @ 8/13/2005 11:10:11 AM #
Windows is no defacto standard. There are well behaved programs written for windows version X that fail to run on windows version successor(X) for all values of X. Microsoft enjoys gratuituously changing interfaces and only does a half-hearted job of maintaining release to release compatibility. Even something as simple as a service pack upgrade for a particular version of Windows, most recently service pack one of XP, will break compatibility within that version. That's what makes claims of M$ "standards" so funny. By contrast, IBM maintained binary upward compatibility over significant OS changes, and significant hardware changes across thirty years, back in the days of 360/370 hardware. That set the standard (pun intended) for defacto standards. RE: Why it's still early in the gamePenguinPowered @ 8/13/2005 11:20:04 AM #
It's not "natural" that one OS dominate the market, although it's been true since the 1960s, when the OS was called "OS" and came from IBM. It is "natural" that effective monopolies slow innovation, as witness the change of pace in telecoms innovation since AT&T was broken up. In the 80s, we figured out how to interconnect large numbers of widly different computers running wildy different OSes. The buzz phrase was "interoperability" and key was open standards. Then along came M$ and the "pc revolution" to hijack the whole thing. As a result, in 2005, commercialy available distributed computing is still about 10 years shy of what the research community had in 1985. This is double the pre-m$ delay for adoption of research advances into the commercial sphere. The most recent release of visual studio, for example, is about 2/3 as useful as the IDE on a 1980 vintage Smalltalk workstation. That's the tradeoff, and the irony, of OS monopolies. Monopolies bring about ease of deployment at the same time as they stiffle the innovations that would be worth deploying. RE: Why it's still early in the game
PenguinBoy - maybe PSRC employees should stop wasting their time posting here spinning and attacking MSFT. maybe they should just get back to their own work on the good ship PSRC. These schmucks have wasted the last 4+ years - and got nothing done. PSRC is circling the bowl and all the spin in the world isn't going to stop it from going right down the drain. After 4+ years of spin and empty promises, we're tired of all the bullshiit. RE: Why it's still early in the game
So at least you admit it leads to ease of deployment? How about playing devil's advocate for a second and think of the other advantages of a monopoly. Surur PenguinPowered - some reading matter for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly Network effects are considered separately from natural monopoly status. Natural monopoly effects are a property of the producer's cost curves, whilst network effects arise from the benefit to the consumers of a good from standardization of the good. Many goods have both properties, like operating system software and telephone networks. Open that closed mind a bit, it needs an airing. Surur PalmSource employees: Less SPIN, better OS, pleaseThe_Voice_of_Reason @ 8/13/2005 1:20:35 PM #
PenguinBoy - maybe PSRC employees should stop wasting their time posting here spinning and attacking MSFT. maybe they should just get back to their own work on the good ship PSRC. These schmucks have wasted the last 4+ years - and got nothing done. PSRC is circling the bowl and all the spin in the world isn't going to stop it from going right down the drain. After 4+ years of spin and empty promises, we're tired of all the bullshiit. Well said Gekko. It's pathetic seeing how far these people will go trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Posts from PalmSource's SPIN PhD (the late Michael Mace) were just as odious as Mr. Fout's current attacks on Microsoft. You'd think that if Microsoft had no redeeming qualities, by now there would be an alternative desktop OS. MacOS, BeOS, OS/2, Linux, etc have all failed to take any significant amount of market share from Microsoft's desktop OS in the past 10 years of trying. Instead of constantly wringing their hands and blaming "evil" Microsoft for their failures, perhaps supporters of these alternate OSes should take a hard look at WHY their pet OSes aren't/didn't catch on. Despite what Microsoft bashers would have us believe, the blame for the failures of Microsoft's competitors frequently should be placed squarely at the feet of the companies producing those alternate OSes. I'd encourage people to read about the history of MacOS, BeOS and OS/2 before mouthing off at how "evil" Microsoft is. And if you think Apple, Be and IBM were benevolent OS companies out to save the world, guess again. Some of the crap those guys have pulled over the years makes Microdoft look like Mother Theresa. I do have a lot of respect for Linux though, and with a LOT of effort (and MUCH better support from application developers!) it has the potential to theaten the Windows hegemony. The Palm Economy = Communism™ God Bless Surur! ;-OThe_Voice_of_Reason @ 8/13/2005 1:52:13 PM #
Surur, you crack me up! Do you EVER get tired of making people look like idiots by debunking their lies with independent, referenced info? (Not that I trust an online encyclopedia, though. Maybe you wrote that definition of "Natural monopoly" this morning? ;-O) You're such a bada$$ - too bad you're a member of Bill's Redmond Collective. One question, though. I've never seen this brought up before: are you a Microsoft employee or are you paid to post on Palm sites? You're absolutely relentless, Bubba! I'm currently writing an opinion piece on why PalmOS may STILL be a better choice than PPC/WinMob but I expect it won't withstand a withering Surur-style cross examination. But given the pathetic peformance of Palm Apologists like Jeff Kirvin, PenguinPowered/Marty Fouts, just_little_me (another PalmSource employee? I'll check with my sources next week...), svrontis, RhinoSteve, etc, I figure I should at least try to play Devil's Advocate and defend the platform. [Anyone else notice how all the Palm Apologists seem to either work for/want to work for/sell software for Palm/PalmSource, while the people critical of Palm/PalmSource are mainly longtime PalmOS users? Hmmmmmmmmmm...]
The Palm Economy = Communism™ RE: Why it's still early in the game
No, I'm no MS employee. I do not even work in IT. I'm just a WM fan who has been disappointed by Palm in the past. My first PDA was a Palm IIIe. I had that PDA for more than a year, until it fell and broke the screen. I do not know if you recall, but Palm released a ROM update, and I discovered my device had no flash ROM, only normal ROM. While other Palm III's could upgrade, my Palm IIIe was a deadend. Lets just say Palm lost my admiration and custom after this. Either way, I just like to debate, and will listen to any reasonable argument either way. I do however feel any theory needs to at least explain reality e.g don't say more people buy Palm OS devices because they are simple, when more other devices are sold. I look forward to your Defense Of Palm OS, and to dissecting it too. ;) Surur PalmOS platform under siege + attacked from within.The_Voice_of_Reason @ 8/13/2005 3:53:26 PM #
No, I'm no MS employee. I do not even work in IT. I'm just a WM fan who has been disappointed by Palm in the past.
My first PDA was a Palm IIIe. I had that PDA for more than a year, until it fell and broke the screen. I do not know if you recall, but Palm released a ROM update, and I discovered my device had no flash ROM, only normal ROM. While other Palm III's could upgrade, my Palm IIIe was a deadend. Lets just say Palm lost my admiration and custom after this. I had a 4 MB IIIx at that point. I knew about the memory limitation (MaskROM?) in the IIIe. But to be honest, that model was intended for newbies. I doubt even 1 in 1000 people who bought IIIe would have flashed their devices if they had normal RAM. Yes, Palm cut corners on the IIIe to save a couple bucks, thereby making their device less functional (SEE A TREND?), but at least there were other options available - like the IIIx - had you done a little research back then (1999?). Either way, I just like to debate, and will listen to any reasonable argument either way. I do however feel any theory needs to at least explain reality e.g don't say more people buy Palm OS devices because they are simple, when more other devices are sold. So I guess you find Jeff Kirvin as annoying as I do! ;-O He is probably the worst debater and weakest advocate for the PalmOS paltform I've seen on the various Palm sites. I look forward to your Defense Of Palm OS, and to dissecting it too. ;) Be gentle! ;-O Actually I'm not sure if I'll post it, since it's not passing my own litmus test. It's not good when you're able to easily deconstruct a position you're trying to argue in favor of... I've loaded up on CLIEs in my bunker and know the PalmOS app library so well that I now have hundreds of apps (many are obscure) that do everything I would ever want to do on a PDA. It would be impossible to fully replicate my setup with a Windows device. (Are there equally-simple apps like Plonk, Open, MultiUser Hack, Picsel, AppStats available for WinMob?) There are also some specialty app I use that were either abandoned or will never be ported to Windows Mobile. Plus it's nice using a comfortable, familier environment + apps. The one ever-present question is StyleTap Platform. If they continue to improve their PalmOS emulator, Palm is totally fcuked. But the only way I would completely switch to WinMob is if someone created a design as noteworthy as the CLIE UX50 (but with an OLED screen) and there are no "issues" with StyleTap. Otherwise, I'll be quite happy using my CLIES for the next 5 - 10 years. (Just as even today there are many people content with still using Palm III, V, m505 (YUCK!), Handspring Visors, etc.) I have a feeling this kind of siege mentality will soon set in among PalmOS users, much as it did with people who own Newtons, PSIONs, Amigas, etc. TVoR
The Palm Economy = Communism™ RE: Why it's still early in the gameAdamaDBrown @ 8/13/2005 4:25:35 PM #
There's some misuse of the |
According to a report from 
*IF* the imminent realease of a WinMob Palm is TRUE -
1. Will it lead to the eventual end of any NEW PalmOS devices by any real licensee - including Palm?
2. Will it lead to the eventual death of Palm (the hardware company) in the long run?