Comments on: ACCESS Renames Palm OS to Garnet OS

"Garnet OS" will basically be the stagnant legacy version of the Palm OS. PalmSource/Access has pretty much stopped all development of their version of Garnet for work on ALP.

Palm Inc will likely continue to improve and develop the Palm OS most people use (and still call it the Palm OS) going forward.

Time to merge!

Average number employees/year for designers, engineers, programmers, staff, and directors dedicated directly to OS development: 119
Estimated human resource dollar cost to develop said OS over period: $95.2 million

Average number employees/year for graphic designers, attorneys, accountants, staff, and directors dedicated directly to OS naming, renaming, refreshing and marketing: 341
Estimated human resource dollar cost to develop said OS over period: $294.3 million

... Sounds pretty balanced to me.

Thanks Access. You are carrying on a glorious tradition that Palm OS users appreciate. We get to use a hacked, whacked, and shellacked OS that crashes, freezes, lags, cannot multi-thread, still cannot handle basic clipboard functionality, looks like it's from the tech stone ages, and is breathing it's last gasps as I write.

So, to see YALANC (yet another logo and naming convention) sprucing up our near stiff dead corpse of a platform, really lifts my spirits. When my next Treo freezes in the midst of an important data retrieval process, I get the express privilege of showing all my friends the hottest and most refreshed logo in the tech world. No way they can keep up.

Take that WM freaks and Linux fanboys!

Pat Horne

> Average number employees/year for designers, engineers, programmers,
> staff, and directors dedicated directly to OS development: 119
> Estimated human resource dollar cost to develop said OS over period: $95.2 million

If it was more than 20 programmers/year and about $10 million over the last 4 years, I'd be shocked. They haven't done anything, so I hope they aren't currently paying 119 people/year to do nothing.

Hahahaha!!!

You'll get the same from a Nokia 770!

There is no escape...

Save some ink and stop stamping volatile logos in devices, please.

Wow. I've been saying this for 6+ years and get criticized for it. Now, it suddenly is considered truth. Did it have clipboard functionality in the past and it lost it recently? Did it multithread in the past and it lost it recently? Did it look modern and fresh a few years ago, or is the truth of the matter that even then, it looked like something from the mid-90's? Seems I was more right than wrong all along. What else have I been saying over the years? That Windows Mobile would surpass PalmOS in marketshare? Hrmm.... let me check and see if that happened... ;-)

Colligan seems to be as deaf as his predecessors.

The entire fault is the limited vision of Hawkins. He broke his promise to us. I keep thinking I should essay this. Maybe after my LifeDrive is alive again...

Wish I had 100 developers in the development group I run. I could probably throw 50-60 of them at putting together a new Palm OS over the next two years, a dozen to do my team's work, and still have more than enough left to maintain FrankenGarnet for the Treo.

Back in Palm's world, I cannot fathom what all these people are doing. Unless there is some hidden secret project, WTF are they doing??? You see at one point in time, I thought they were developing a new OS, adding some cool Java VM support, new development tools for the new OS, maintaining Palm Desktop, apps for the Treo, etc. Then 100 people would probably be cutting it a little thin. Today, all I can see them doing is maintenance on the Treo and well that's about it. If they need more than 15, maybe 20, people for that ... well you've got to be kidding me.

There is. The question, of course, is whether or not it's going to be worth this long wait...

RE the complaints about PalmOS, the only one that bothers me are the outdated visuals. Otherwise it plays my mp3's in the background, it can check my email in the background, it caches web pages for me and it remembers what I was doing when I quit an app. For all of WinMob's under-the-hood superiority, it really doesn't offer a hell of a lot over PalmOS for the end-user. Except, perhaps, memory management issues. :P

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680

http://www.palminfocenter.com/ss.asp?f=yarly.jpg

Really!?!

Really!?!

Mmm hmmm. That's exactly what I thought when I looked at the new logo: "Woah, how powerful!"

A contractual obligation, going back a couple of years.

Really.

Interesting. I didn't find such any requirement in the ACCESS press release archive.

http://www.access-company.com/news/press/ACCESS/2005/20050908.html

Please site a source for your assertion. Thank you in advance.

-- http://www.access-company.com/developers/press/palm_faq.html

E.g.:

== "...Q. What will ACCESS name its version of Palm OS Garnet?
==
== A. We will be re-naming all our products with Palm-based names. As
== you may remember, we sold our rights in the Palm Trademark Holding
== Company last May (2005). As part of that deal, we agreed to change
== our then name—PalmSource--as well as all our Palm-based product
== and program names..."

Please site a source for your assertion. Thank you in advance.

Lol. He works for ACCESS. I'd take his word for it. :P

It's morons like this that cause companies like Palm to spend more money on name changes than producing products people want to buy. She wants her money now rather than have an established company for the long haul. Such is the world where the stock market rules over quality and service. Stick a quality product out there for a reasonable price and the investors rake you over the coals for not selling overpriced junk.

Public traded companies + increasingly greedy investors = bad business.

U R right.

Pat Horne

The Palmified version of Palm OS ("FrankenGarnet") has grown/been patched/hacked into quite a different beast than the "original" version of OS 5 that Access owns.

Access Garnet is likely not going to appear on any new devices from here on out.

Palm's hacked & extended version will be called "Palm OS" from here on.

Cobalt is dead but I figure Palm MAY lift a few of its best bits if the price is very, very right to merge into FrankenGarnet 5.5 (what they are presumably working on currently for their lower end devices).

ALP will probably appear, if ever, only on Asian-market smartphones like the kind Haier demoed last year.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

Kinda sad to see that Palmsource doesn't have Cobalt listed on their site like before.

Kinda wondering... Maybe this has already been done, but I'm relatively new to this site... Does anyone have any info as to why Palm themselves did not switch to Cobalt when they owned it? From briefly playing with the simulator, it looked good.... Did PIC interview someone from Access who was high up in the Cobalt team? Someone who would know what happened and why? I can't imagine that that info would need to remain hidden any longer since Access and Palm both seem to not want anything to do with Cobalt.

1) It's a huge kludge and would confuse the eff out of people

2) They'd have to pay royalties

3) They'd legitimize a competitor OS

4) Their destiny would be in the hands of others (as if they have a destiny at this point...)

I know your on a self enforced exile right now but i have a question for you. Well a few questions but they all sorta lead into each other. Why don't you believe Palm will ever use ALP?

You're new here, aren't you? :-) The idea of asking TVoR a question like this is a little like the idea that you'd ask the guy under the viaduct who's screaming obscenities and stinking of MD40.

The reason no one is expecting Palm to use ALP is because:
(a) they've never said a single word of encouragement or interest in it, whereas they showed plenty of interest in PalmSource's pre-acquisition Linux OS, and
(b) they've just spent $44M for the right to use the Palm OS Garnet code to build their own next-generation version of the Palm OS. Read Palm's press release.

The fact that they've done this isn't necessarily because they think ALP is a bad product, by the way. Just that they don't see a good enough alignment between their own business goals and those of ACCESS to trust that ALP will go the way they need it to go in the future. For example, they may be wondering if ACCESS is going to be totally focused on handsets, when Palm plans to diversify their offerings into other kinds of devices that won't get the same attention from ACCESS. They also may be worried that ALP could end up in so many products made by competitors that Palm will lose it's ability to differentiate their own products. There are lots of good reasons to have control over both hardware and system software. It's worked for Palm in the past. It's also worked well for Apple.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

on a long enough timeline the survival rate of everyone drops to zero

Well, if that happens, it's goodbye Palm, I'm getting the competition's unit if it runs ALP and Palm sticks with FrankenGarnet. I mean, the only thing that really keeps me using Palm OS is that it's not Windows Mobile, and I'm familiar with it...

Palm TX + 1GB SD + Motorola v3x = awesomeness

It will be Palm Treo powered by Access Garnet OS.

do you own any shares of PALM?

== "...as has been true in past, Palm will only be able to use the
== Palm OS trademark for products that meet the compatibility
== requirements, verified through the compatibility test harness
== used by ACCESS and Palm..."

I'm not sure how this fits in with all the "recent" news, however it was so stated.

I don't think it's as true as it used to be that people don't care about the OS. I see people becoming more educated as they buy more smartphones--Treos in particular, since they now come in a choice of OSes, forcing a decision. For a more statistical analysis, see the recent study discussed here: http://mobilephonedevelopment.com/archives/185

The Palm brand was a complete mess after Palm split and especially after ACCESS acquired Palmsource. Now it's finally becoming understandable to consumers again. Everyone has heard of Palm OS, but "Garnet" and "ACCESS" are a different story. Palm devices that run the "Palm OS" will eliminate the confusion and make a statement about who controls the product. Palm has got to breathing a small sigh of relief these days.

I don't own common stock in Palm or any other company for that matter. And if you think share prices are affected by comments posted on PIC, well... I'd say you're the one that'd be looking silly. :-)

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

No, I don't think that comments on PIC can move the share price - but that doesn't mean that you don't - hence your constant apologist posts as a feeble attempt to prop up the share price or fortunes of the struggling company.

A silly, confusing, conflicting message and a waste of marketing resources that does more harm than good. The OS is NOT the brand anymore, Beersie. The DEVICE is.

PALM TREO with WINMOB

PALM TREO with GARNET

Choose your poison.

Oh, rubbish. He's just a PalmOS fan. Like anyone who posts here. Group hug, anyone?

"Palm OS on Access Garnet OS"? A silly, confusing, conflicting message and a waste of marketing resources that does more harm than good.

From the Access FAQ RE: the new Garnet license.

Q. Can Palm, Inc., use the name Palm OS?

A. Under terms of the agreement, we have given Palm the right to use either “Palm OS by ACCESS” or the product's new name (still to be announced) when referring to the operating system licensed with this new agreement.

Given that the Palm OS name is still recognised and (generally) respected, it's a safe bet they're going to go with that over "Garnet OS".

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680

The corollary of all this suggests PALM cannot call THEIR Next Great Linux-based OS "PalmOS".

I don't see why not. They own the brand. And if they develop it themselves, they own the OS, too. They can call it anything they want, "Palm OS" being the obvious choice. Of course it might end up being something like "Palm System 7" just to make it sound like a bigger deal.

Palm's completed their reacquisition of their brand. They're now the only ones who can use it.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

Adrian Schröter has announced the release of the live DVD edition of openSUSE 10.2: "openSUSE 10.2 live DVD available. The last piece of the openSUSE 10.2 distribution got released today. The Live DVD image has a size of 1.7 GB and can be used on every x86 compatible system with at least 512 MB of memory. It contains a base desktop system (KDE and GNOME) with applications for office, multimedia and Internet usage." Here is the brief release announcement.
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-announce/2007-01/msg00004.html

I'm still waiting for the mythical color HandEra.
Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/lifedrive-notes-dd/

This one single application comparison graphically illustrates what is wrong with Linux and Open Source in general. Compare Apple's iTunes to this hideous monstrosity that Linux users actually believe to be "elegant" and superior to iTunes...

http://amarok.kde.org/

I rest my case.

-------------------------------
PocketFactory, www.pocketfactory.com
The iPhone Blog, www.theiphoneblog.com

With regards to Vista; it will receive the same reception XP did - silence and disinterest. Vista will slowly be assimilated into the market with new PC purchases, which still counts as a success in its own right. The last figure I looked at showed that upwards of 100 million Vista licenses will be consumed this year in the form of new PC purchases alone, not counting existing system upgrades. To give you a sense of scale the total (active) Mac user base is estimated to be somewhere between 35-50 million. No other OS can boast that kind of performance.

I was a Vista beta tester for MS and was given a free copy for my efforts. Honestly, had I not received the gift I probably wouldn't upgrade because I really don't feel the OS is battle worthy at this point. From a technology standpoint there is nothing innovative or new about Vista. Translucent UI, window animation effects, vector based composition? I've been using that technology for over six years now - it's called OSX!

The only innovative features in this OS were stipped out long ago due to timetable issues, like a radical new SQL-based file system (WinFS) that would have dramatically improved Windows and put it on the cutting edge. C|Net's Robert Vermosi described Vista as "A warmed over copy of XP". That's too harsh, in my opinion, but not entirely inaccurate nonetheless.

I had high hopes for this project when it was first demonstrated at PDC 2003, back when Microsoft intended for this OS to be something much more than what it ultimately became. Vista, from start to finish was a collasal failure, rivaling PalmSource's Cobalt fiasco in many ways. Vista was originally based on XP code, which was later scrapped sometime in 2004, where a second Vista project began based on Windows Server 2003 code. Effectively Microsoft threw Vista out the Window (if you'll excuse the pun) and strated over from scratch. Analysts criticize Vista for being more than five years in the making, when actually the OS is less than three years in the making, starting from the point of its second recoding.

Unlike PalmSource, Microsoft had the fortune and market strength (not to mention developer talent) to see the OS through. There's a lesson in there somewhere, not that it matters now in the case of either OS. One succeeded where the other failed, and yet both were failures.

-------------------------------
PocketFactory, www.pocketfactory.com
The iPhone Blog, www.theiphoneblog.com

By AppleInsider Staff

Citing preliminary data from market research firm IDC, an analyst for PiperJaffray said Thursday that Apple's worldwide share of the personal computer market fell to 2.4 percent during the three-month period ending December, down from a 2.8 percent share two quarters earlier.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2413

"I hate the Apple thing. It's a "cultural problem." More specifically, the turtlenecked, Steve Jobs, thumb-up-the-ass, liberal-with-too-much-money "cultural problem."

..."And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born".

-------------------------------
PocketFactory, www.pocketfactory.com
The iPhone Blog, www.theiphoneblog.com

Does anyone know for sure if the "upgrade" retail versions of Vista can initiate a clean install by booting directly from the DVD? Or is the nasty rumor true that a valid (ie activated) XP install must be in place beforehand? That'll be a huge PITA for someone like myself that regularly does custom PC builds for friends/relatives etc. If that is true (that MS assimilates your old XP serial # into the Vista upgrade # and requires a 3 OS discs just to do a clean system install) then how will M$ handle dual-booting OS setups and so on?

I really was hoping for Vista to be at least a step in the right direction for the Wintel platform. But Microsoft is becoming so damm tyrannical in regards to DRM, compliance checks, product activations, and even forcing what sort of installs are performed that I may sit tight with XP for the forseeable future and begin edumacating myself on the Mac scene...

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

What does all of this mean on a practical level? Users who purchase upgrade copies of the aforementioned versions of Vista will find that they can only upgrade PCs that already have Windows installed. KB930985 clearly states: "you cannot use an upgrade key to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista." According to Microsoft, this happens because Windows Vista does not check for upgrade compliance. If you do not have a previous installation of Windows available, Microsoft recommends that you "purchase a license that lets you perform a clean installation of Windows Vista."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070128-8717.html

If I ever do upgrade to Vista - and that's a big "if", given that in order to use the pretty new interface, I'm going to have to upgrade my PC - I'm simply going to pirate it once it's cracked, as it inevitably will be. I refuse to pay (and pay an enormously hefty sum, at that) for software that is intentionally crippled. So stick with XP, I hear you say. Problem is that Microsoft's desktop OS monopoly means that if I want to be able to run the latest commercial software then in a few year's time I'm going to have to upgrade. So why would I pay for a so-called "Genuine" copy when a pirated one is going to be less of a hassle to run?

The most laughable part is that Microsoft thinks families are able to afford a copy of Vista for each PC they own. At $455 AUD a pop for a copy of Home Premium and a truly outrageous $751 for Ultimate? Sorry, no.

It's worth reprinting twrock's sig link: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

Frightening. So horrendously anti-consumer. One more reason to stick with XP (which is quite reliable nowadays) for another couple of years.

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680

No, you are correct, that was not my intent.

However, I will say this. I run a Dell Latitude Windows XP machine for work. When I was finally forced into it, the Dell and WinXP was a nice upgrade to my old Win 98 IBM Thinkpad. It's a decently stable OS for me to get my work tasks done. I absolutely hate having to deal with all of the "baggage" that comes along with Windows though.

So when it came time for me to get a new desktop at home, and because I could put together a very nice box without paying the MS tax, I went ahead and decided to give Linux a whirl. Yep, there's a learning curve. Yep, not everything is available. Yep, it isn't Mac OSX (or Windows XP/Vista). But it is a complete OS with "bundled" software for everything I want to do on my home machine (and very much more as well). With an incredibly minimal amount of input from me, it installed and upgraded the complete system and apps in 45 minutes with a single reboot (and the majority of that time was a slow DSL service issue). It runs completely stable. It looks good, and it is highly configurable (if I choose to do so). Mock it all you want, but it works well for me and cost me the price of a blank CD to burn the original image.

I would ask that you please don't build up some "straw man" and say that I am saying that Linux is "equal" to OSX (or XP for that matter). I am not saying that at all. And that was in no way the intent of my original post in this thread, otherwise I would have surely used Ubuntu as the example. (I haven't a clue about SUSE Linux.) But what I will now say is that I enjoy a quick-booting, stable-running, virus-free, free-as-in-free-beer OS with a full suite of apps that meets my computing/entertainment needs at home and feel no need whatsoever to denigrate your choice in an operating system.

But as always, YMMV, and it obviously does.

I'm still waiting for the mythical color HandEra.
Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/lifedrive-notes-dd/

http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2007/01/09/nokia-770-the-endgame/

Archos is still, as far as I know, plugging away at their little niche of the market with "upscale" PMP type devices.

You know, Archos would have made a great parnter for Palm to strategically align themselves with a few years ago. Regardless of their UI quirks, Archos units are pretty solidly built and sport a compelling feature set. Palm could have benefitted quite a bit from such a partnership in the short term and the LifeDrive could have ended up being much, much more of a device.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

As a consumer you may think you don't care about Linux. But your comments are sufficient proof that you don't like long delays in seeing advanced products hit the market in a form you can actually use (and afford). I suspect Palm doesn't either. That's why you might want to think again about your preference for Palm OS Cobalt over a Linux-based next-generation Palm OS.

Either way, better get used to the idea that Cobalt isn't likely to show up on any handsets or PDAs in the near future.

By the way, while I never used the Nokia 770, I've been using the new N800 and it is absolutely magnificent. It's not a PDA or a smartphone, but it's the most addictive gadget for surfing, blog reading, emailing, IM, and streaming music that I've ever used. (I haven't tried VoIP or video chat, its other signature features). The screen is mind-blowing (250% the resolution of a Palm TX), the OS is fast and solid (none of the sytem resets you get with Palm OS or Windows Mobile), the browser is the best I've ever seen on a handheld device (S60 held that crown for a short time) there's enough memory to multitask without noticeable slowdown or instability, it has dual SD slots (one of which can be used for virtual memory), the battery life is great, WiFi and Bluetooth just work, the build quality is superb... I could go on and on.

What it's missing is a big application ecosystem like the Palm OS has, but if Nokia keeps improving the hardware and OS the way they have been that could start to change. If the Maemo platform is an indication of the state-of-the-art for mobile Linux we've got a lot to look forward to in the next year or two.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

Windows Mobile Smartphone edition just isn't my cup of Earl Grey. The HTC S620 that I own now is small and practical, but it's just now what I'm looking for, so it's off to FleaBay soon. One thing I will say about WinMob devices - they seamlessly integrate with Exchange, which I LOVE! But in terms of flexibility and utility, Pocket PC phone edition is superior.

So now I'm looking fondly at the N800. The only thing holding me back is that it's not a mobile phone, which leaves me wondering what utility it could possibly offer for my needs. I don't fancy paying $400 for a cool device...playing with it for a few days/weeks...then throwing it in the closet as soon as the novelty wears off.

I don't know.

-------------------------------
PocketFactory, www.pocketfactory.com
The iPhone Blog, www.theiphoneblog.com

And ALL of THIS DONE TWO YEARS AGO

By the way - where did you buy your N800?

I just picked it up at my local CompUSA.

I've been using this much more as a home appliance than a real mobile device. Don't think of it as a substitute for anything you already own. For me it's for surfing on the couch, at bedtime, or reading the news at the breakfast table--all things for which I rarely if ever used a phone, PDA or laptop. I also found that when I'm working I like having it on the desk as kind of an ambient email device: the Contacts icon changes from pastel to a brighter red and green color when I have mail, which is much less distracting than having the desktop email client pop up a window in front of my work. Interestingly, email is so much a part of the system that you don't have to have the email client open for the N800 to tell you there are messages.

This week I'm using it while I travel for the first time. It's nice to have with you when you need to kill time in airports and hotels with WiFi and don't want to pull out a laptop and wait for it to boot just to have a nice browsing experience. I'm dying to find (or develop) some decent PIM and notetaking software for it to see if I can press it into service as a PDA, but I'm wierdly satisfied with the thing even without this. It's been quite a surprise. It's an example of a product that solved a problem I didn't even know I had.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW4y_at0gm4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPipGn7JmMM

i love how nagel is so impressed with the friggin "actual shadow on the second hand" like it's such a big innovation.

IMO, this cobalt demo was simply part of a fraudulent scheme with capricorn one-like-fakery to fool stakeholders and try to stay one step ahead of the truth. just like a pyramid/ponzi scheme, it's only a matter of time until you get found out.

(I put that smiley there for the "slower" among us.)


"twrock is infamous around these parts" (from my profile over at Brighthand due to my negative 62 rep points rating)

Goes to show what your opinion's worth, Gordon. I've still got a Tungsten 3 that we re-flashed with Cobalt, and I can do exactly that demo on it, accessing the Internet over WiFi. And in fact, that "friggin' shadow"-which, as Nagel said, demonstrated the alpha-channeling capabilities of the Cobalt graphics stack, was a significant innovation on a handheld device at the time it was demoed...

a little OT humor -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWsKR2xg6HE

I've still got a Tungsten 3 that we re-flashed with Cobalt, and I can do exactly that demo on it, accessing the Internet over WiFi. And in fact, that "friggin' shadow"-which, as Nagel said, demonstrated the alpha-channeling capabilities of the Cobalt graphics stack, was a significant innovation on a handheld device at the time it was demoed...

If it was that innovative why didn't Cobalt actually get onto any devices? Why didn't Palm adopt it?

I lurrrrve that movie.

Shortly after the time we brought the (ex-)Be folks in, they persuaded management, when we were already pretty well along with something that looked a lot more like the way you do drivers for UNIX-like systems, to go with an arcane, object-oriented, C++-based driver model-over my protests, for what it's worth, but when we got the Be folks, I also got an ex-Be guy as my director-and silicon vendors didn't write drivers for the platform. (Most of these ex-Be folks are over at Google now, and have been instrumental in the design of Android. Make of that what you will.)

As far as Palm goes, I guess what it amounts to is that they got cold feet at the last minute, and decided what they really wanted was to get plain old Palm OS 4 on ARM, hence the genesis of "Palm OS 5" aka Garnet. They had a big investment in OS 4 apps, OS 4 experience, etc., and they decided they didn't want to do the rewrites that would have been necessary to move their stuff forward to the new platform, and they didn't want to run them in the Cobalt legacy Palm OS emulator, even though the platform as a whole had numerous advantages (not that legacy apps could take advantage of those). Treos would be a lot better devices if they had been based on Cobalt, in my opinion. You'd have had real multitasking and much better graphics, including alpha channeling and such several years ago.

David, you appear to the sinking even deeper and deeper into the muck with each post you make here. You are truly a bitter, bitter, little man. I'm sorry to hear that our arrival disrupted your life so much. Truth be known, until we arrived your group was drifting along without a clue. I've never seen a more paranoid, disorganized, unskilled collection of coders in my life. Your people would never - I repeat NEVER - have been able to produce a functional PalmOS 6 without the contribution/direction of the former Be employees. It's telling that Google has since cherry picked several former Be employees from Access, yet wouldn't touch the non-Be Access coders with the 10 foot pole. I wonder why?

By all means continue your feeble attempts to cast aspersions on the Be alumni, the iPhone, Apple, Steve Jobs, Android, Google and everything/everyone else who has ever threatened your pathetic little existence. Anyone with more than two brain cells sees you for what you are: a loser. I wonder why you've entered complete "panic mode" in recent months, David? Why all the "lashing out"? Could it be that all is not well in the land of ALP-OS? Do tell. How many phones will we be seeing in 2008 running Access' laughable LEGO®-styled OS? Could it be possible that Access bit off more than it could chew? Guess what: producing a second rate browser doesn't suddenly qualify you to be a player in the mobile OS game. Whoda thunk it? Do you really believe that Access has a snowball's chance against Android, Windows Mobile, iPhone OS, Linux or even PalmOS? Are you really that dimwitted?. The sad reality that you face is that ALP-OS doesn't have a Ghost of a chance against its competition. I see the PalmSource legacy of lies, denial and delays are alive and well at Access. Unfortunately for you, no one is drinking the Access Kool-Aid. Posting to web sites bashing Access' competition and your former bosses isn't going to do anything to help Access produce a stable operating system that is actually shipping in cell phones that consumers can purchase. Get a life, Mr. Schlesinger.

I hope you land on your feet if/when Access goes bankrupt. Just be damn sure that no job offers will be forthcoming from Apple or Google next year. You've done a very good job burning your bridges.

TTFN

PalmOS 5.x (aka Garnet) was a stop gap for Palm so they'd have an OS to run on their first ARM devices, but a remarkably successful stop gap. It was suppose to bridge Palm over until Palm OS 6 (aka Cobalt) was available, but 6.0 was boring and uninteresting. 6.1 had UI improvements and became a lot more interesting but the BEOS people had botched stuff up under the covers. Instead of fixing that, PalmSource (pre-Access) switched to Cobalt-on-Linux but couldn't really ever seem to make that work so abandoned that for ALP.

Palm OS 6.1 (Cobalt-with-new-UI) was a nice improvement to Palm OS, and generally easy to port applications from Palm OS 5. It really solved a lot of PalmOS issues, but brought in a lot of new baggage from BEOS.

The success of RIM has shown how bogus were the arguments for abandoning 6.1 instead of fixing the BEOS botch-ups. (Can we say "custom drivers")

You have just made someone VERY happy.

Oh.

That would be ... uh ... ME!

Thanks much.

"When in a rare moment, all of the QA divisions would say thumbs down to shipping the buggy OS, the infamous Dave Nagel would say ship it anyways."

Garnet definitely predated Cobalt. (and my brief time at PalmSource)

Cobalt seems not to have been adopted by Palm because it was originally aimed at the wrong market (PDA only, when Palm was starting to concentrate on the phone market) and took longer to finish then expected.

Google did not merely cherry pick former BE people from PalmSource. A number of non-BE people who have left PalmSource are at Google, and a number more have turned offers from Google down (in at least one instance, more than one offer.)

The arcane C++ driver model did come from BE people and was a fiasco. There are several excessively OO artifacts in Cobalt, some of which live on in Android, which might be appropriate in a true OO system, but are a disaster in a mixed environment like the Linux kernel.

Much of the blame for the schedule delay does belong in the laps of specific former BE people. Much of it belongs in the laps of PalmSource's management. One thing that the former BE employees did not bring to PalmSource, nor carry to Android, is an ability to effectively scope, schedule, and complete work. Given how little work has been done to date on Android and how long it has gone on, they seem to be remaining true to form. Fortunately, Google, unlike PalmSource, can afford the luxury of delay.

The Iphone is what it is, and will remain with us as a niche device. It's a nice niche and Apple is to be commended for it. It's a cheeky combination of excellent industrial design and coming late to the party but claiming what has already been done as 'firsts'.

Android is, um, interesting, but it's hard to see what way it's meaningfully differentiated from the dozens of other attempts at a linux phone. Fortunately for its producers, it has Google's deep pockets, and will be given the time to find its own ground. If it penetrates the markets it will be because of Google's clout in establishing advertising relationships with cell carriers, and not because of any particular combination of features of the platform.

Nokia is not standing still, but they're not advertising what they're up to either. They may yet 'get it right'. 'son of symbian' may yet fool people.

Rim, meanwhile, is pretty much stuck in its business-only model, which may well be enough to keep it going.

Microsoft, of course, is not standing still either, but I'm not inclined to comment on their plans, as I'm both too close to them, and have no idea what they're up to.

May You Live in Interesting Times

Write 'em a letter, by all means. It'll save me the trouble of telling 'em I'm still not interested.

And to be completely accurate, Garnet only predated the name Cobalt, not the project. "Palm OS 6" had its genesis many years before anyone thought of porting Palm OS 4 on top of ARM, as a project called "Atlas" around 2002.

"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it... and soon it's impossible to tell the two of you apart."

"Keep your friends close... and your enemies closer."

Lefty's time-line is a bit weird.

PalmOS 5.x (aka Garnet) was a stop gap for Palm so they'd have an OS to run on their first ARM devices, but a remarkably successful stop gap. It was suppose to bridge Palm over until Palm OS 6 (aka Cobalt) was available, but 6.0 was boring and uninteresting. 6.1 had UI improvements and became a lot more interesting but the BEOS people had botched stuff up under the covers. Instead of fixing that, PalmSource (pre-Access) switched to Cobalt-on-Linux but couldn't really ever seem to make that work so abandoned that for ALP.

Palm OS 6.1 (Cobalt-with-new-UI) was a nice improvement to Palm OS, and generally easy to port applications from Palm OS 5. It really solved a lot of PalmOS issues, but brought in a lot of new baggage from BEOS.

The success of RIM has shown how bogus were the arguments for abandoning 6.1 instead of fixing the BEOS botch-ups. (Can we say "custom drivers")

Actually, the timeline is right, but it differs from the public timeline you're familiar with. What became known as PalmOS 6/Cobalt was supposed to have been the follow-up OS to PalmOS 4 (which itself wasn't much different from PalmOS 3, 2 or 1). Only problem is that Palm's management had around 1000 layers of bureaucracy and the majority of the Palm coders were incompetent. You might not know, but back as recently as 2001 the latest PDAs from Palm and other PalmOS licensees were shipping with the ancient 33 MHz Motorola Dragonball. Palm claimed the Dragonball was being used for battery life reasons when in fact it was because they didn't have the know-how to get a modern OS onto ARM. When it became obvious that there was no way for a next-generation OS to be released by the time Palm and other licensees desperately needed to switch to ARM processors Palm came up with the PalmOS 5/Garnet hack job as a stopgap. It wasn't until the Tungsten T release running PalmOS 5 in late 2002 that Palm finally left the Cave Man era and joined the rest of the world with RISC-based/MIPS/ARM processors. PalmOS 5 was only supposed to be a transition OS in use for 12 - 18 months. Instead it's been pressed into service for more than 5 years, and each year it's had to pull an increasingly heavy load (NVFS, telephony stacks, etc). The instability seen in most of Palm's PalmOS devices released since 2002 can be traced directly back to the fact that PalmOS 5 was a kludge that was not meant to still be running on modern hardware.

You can blame Be alumni all you want, but the fact remains that Palm's own coders were incapable of delivering the goods on their own. They were THAT bad. And the few people they had that actually knew what they were doing had their voices drowned in the Sea of Incompetence that was Palm circa 2000-02. Be was purchased by Palm for $10 million from Be founder and ex-Apple France head Jean-Louis Gassée in August 2001, 5 years after JLG had arrogantly turned down an offer of $200 million from Apple for his BeOS to become the basis of the next Mac OS. Ironically, had Gassée accepted the offer Apple would then never have paid Steve Jobs $400 million for NeXT four months later, Jobs would never have come back to lead Apple and there probably wouldn't have been an iPod or iPhone. It remains open to debate whether or not the failure to license BeOS was a good thing for the industry ;-). When Be arrived at Palm in late 2001, many of the Be people soon took over as supervisors of the bumbling Palm incumbents/incompetents or as leads/senior designers in the OS teams. Basically, the Palm quarterbacks weren't doing the job, got benched and the ball was handed to the Be alumni. As you could expect, there was (and still is) a lot of resentment on the part of Palm's hacks towards the Be people. Admittedly, the Be alumni could be somewhat condescending towards the Palm people, so overall it made for a bad situation. Much of the work that Palm's people had done on the next-generation OS got tossed into the dumpster out back along with a few million Palm Vx ;-) and everyone started from scratch. Coming from a desktop OS (BeOS) background + thinking some familiar frameworks that apply to a desktop model could be transferrable to a mobile model was a major mistake. There were also some problems with the stubbornness and inflexibility of certain (3 in particular) Be alumni who saw the project as a way to recreate the grand elegance of BeOS and achieve redemption.

PalmOS 6 was initially supposed to be the next-generation PDA OS, then was repositioned as the smartphone OS, then became the red-headed stepchild we're-not-sure OS. Dates kept slipping while Palm lost market share and PalmSource (and later Access) made excuses. The embarassing December 2003 "release" of PalmOS 6 by PalmSource occurred because it had been promised that the OS would be shipped by that date, so something had to be released before the end of December. Ever see a child try to do their entire science project the night before it's due? Not a pretty sight. But it's not a good idea to try and tell Sprint and Verizon that you'd like to sell them a phone with an unfinished OS, so the hacking of Handspring's version of PalmOS 5 continues to this day. Truth be known, with a few smarter choices with regards to hardware, an organized approach to cleaning up bugs and a proper preinstalled software suite, PalmOS 5 devices could have been rock solid for at least the past 3 years and could easily have blown Blackberry out of the water by now. Chatteremail, Resco Backup and TealLock should have been licensed and the features seen in Butler should have been added by Palm's own coders with the Treo 650. Yes, Palm/PalmSource/Access failed to execute in terms of OS strategy, but Palm-the-hardware-company should shoulder a large part of the blame for their post-2002 devices being unstable as well. Furthermore, GoodLink or Seven should have been purchased by Palm, packaged with stable Treos and marketed to businesses as a "one stop shopping" cheaper alternative to Blackberry for corporate push email. The subsequent switch in strategy from PalmOS 6.0 to 6.1 to Palm Linux to the addition of the PalmOS Emulation Lego® Block to Access' tragic LEGO®-styled ALP-OS is well known. As is the confusion that begot the schizophrenic OS powering the prematurely-birthed, stillborn, genius Hawkins child known as Foleo. What an incredible history Palm has had. So much potential, all flushed down the toilet by arrogant, stupid management. And even today the shameless plundering and manipulation continues.

Anyway, the die is cast and it's time to move on. Access is holding an empty bag, as most people have now figured out for themselves. Palm is hemorrhaging money, practically giving away Centros in an effort to maintain its market share + visibility, has given away its war chest to finance the Elevation deal and with no prospects for its own version of Palm Linux arriving in anything but pre-alpha stage within the next year, is slowly bleeding to death from the 1000 paper cuts inflicted by the 100 different so-called executives that have tried to ru(i)n the company over the years. Android (free, Free, FREE!) is gradually rounding into shape and has the luxury of time and $$$ in its goal to reach eyeballs. Windows Mobile has became what Palm should have been, but will be changing (yet again) into what Jeff Hawkins dreamed of. iPhoneOS is slick execution incarnate, but style > substance and proving that Steve Jobs still knows what people want better than anyone else in the business. Exchange integration with iPhone is the next stage, with better thin client computing to follow. Again, Apple will perfect that which Palm literally fumbled away on the opponent's 1 yard line first 5 years and then 2 years ago. A little over a year ago Palm's "Simple" Ed Colligan infamously claimed, "We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in." Looks like the chickens are coming home to roost, Ed.

A few final words about Google and the other big players here in the Valley: first of all, there's a limited amount of local talent and the Valley is very "incestuous", with employes shuffling amongst the major players with predictable frequency. People tend to hire the people they know or else recruit from companies where they've worked, resulting in a massive amount of inbreeding that ultimately stifles true creativity. Some days it seems like everyone here has worked for Apple at one point or another in their career. Google has tried to change the status quo to some degree - partly out of necessity given the sheer number of new employees they needed to attract in a short period of time - but they are also guilty of some of the "my sister/my wife" Ozarks-style Human Resources decision-making seen at most other tech companies in the Valley. Secondly, it's not unusual for companies to make "strategic" hiring decisions based more on how a particular individual's loss will damage their current employer (a competitor) than how much that individual's skills will assist the company recruiting them. Such was the case with some (much?) of the recruiting Google did to Palm's/PalmSource's/Access' detriment over the past few years. Take that with a grain of salt, but THINK whenever you hear people running their mouths on Internet forums or elsewhere about how badly Company X is trying to recruit them.

It's sad to see Palm decompose into the putrid entity it has now become. The finger pointing could go on for all eternity, but what's the point? Like (future) President Obama said, "What we shouldn't be doing is tearing each other down, we should be lifting the [platform] up." Can I get me an "Amen!", Reverend Wright? ;-)

PKD FTW!

;-)

To sum-up:

1) iPhone still going despite carping

2) Palm still sinking despite all hands-on-deck

3) ACCESS is still going nowhere

4) I have a new respect for Android OS and will now move it closer on my radar screen

5) WinMob: As usual, yawn and yecch.

Pray continue!

Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon 755p

> ...I'm sorry to hear that our arrival disrupted your life so much.
> Truth be known, until we arrived...

I just looked. Oh yeah!

http://www.angryredplanet.com/~hackbod/

>>>I currently work at Google on the Android platform.

I'm gonna have to pay some attention to Android now, I see.

(Of course, get onto a *real* phone, not this frikkin button-heavy HTC thing that's been leaked with its cheap-ass WinMob-like teeny-weeny Viagra-needing screen!)

AND you also appear to have brought TVoR back out of his/her self-imposed "retirement".

How sure are you that FJH is deVoidofReason?

That said, let's just sit back, enjoy the ruckus, and wait on those Treo 800w leaked images/specs that should be making the rounds any day now...

Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon 755p

Puhleeze. He's in his bunker, hunkered down with the Last CLIEs On Earth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=485X1v50VdY

I would point out to fake-skippy that by the time Access came into the picture everybody but one unfortunate vendor knew that Cobalt was over with and Access never gave any indication that they thought otherwise themselves.

As for Android versus iPhone: Google has bit off the same insolvable mess that Symbian and Microsoft have - they're trying to establish a platform rather than build a product. You put people with the academic purity bent of the former Be folk at Google on a problem that nebulous and they'll pound sand until even Google runs out of money, without ever hitting on a solution. But it will be very beautiful, the thing they never quite build.

Besides the industrial design, the other thing Apple got right is building a product, not a way of life.

By the way, had JLG accepted Apple's offer, it would have meant another Taligent, and Apple would have probably missed the entire generation of Power-PC based Unix-ish MACs, only getting around to OS/XI just in time for dual-core.

Alas, phone-os land is starting to look like another playing field where the all-together-but-not-all-the-same camp will be played by linux phones rather than Unix workstations, Intel will be played by ARM with a hoard of fab-house understudies, most notably TI, Qualcommn and Broadcomm, with Marvell as the dark hourse, and the role of Microsoft will be played by Microsoft.

May You Live in Interesting Times

Completely.

How sure are you that FJH is deVoidofReason?
Completely.

Confirmed.

Pass me the smelling salts.

Not very likely. I expect that's just another disinformational effort on DeVoid's part.

He would rant about how PalmOS had to be LINUX-based. He'd call Gassee "Pepe" (as in Le Pew!).

No frikkin way.