Comments on: Palm Announces New Linux Based Mobile Platform

Details are still really light at this point, as they only vaguely announced the platform with no real technical details yet.

http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/8042/palm-preparing-for-linux-development/
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/8551/palms-open-secrets-exposed/

>>>Is this new Linux platform developed in-house by Palm, or is he loosely referring to Access's ALP foundation?

>>>If it's the former this is fantastic news.

Er, Foo, shouldn't you be on the fekkin ground offering MANY MANY MANY apologies to Beers?

Now be nice and apologize.

I just sent TWO of your emails back at ya.

Be a man. Do the right thing.

If you're here David, speak up. And congratulations. Now what were you saying about ALP?

-------------------------------
http://www.pocketfactory.com
http://www.elitistsnob.com

The graphic accompanying this article (from the presentation) pretty explicitily shows the Linux part is underneath Garnet AS WELL AS standalone - those cutesy arrows aren't there for no reason.

I heard the whole thing (really boring) and I'm not sure Colligan explicitly says the Linux adaptation was entirely done by Palm itself. Am I missing something?
However they had to start from something, and AFAIK whatever distribution they chose the license is GPL: meaning they have to release the source to the community, at least the part regarding the kernel. The garnet emulator and the new API are not part of that.

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Hey Admin: Why do we have to keep two profiles?

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Hey Admin: Why do we have to keep two profiles?

Old news.

Apologies accepted.

Can I get back to work now?

:D

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

I must say that the idea that Palm has really been working on its own Linux port for more than two years cracks me up no end.

It makes the year I spent at PalmSource seem even more surreal, which I didn't think would be possible.

May You Live in Interesting Times

Even if she has nothing to do with Palm any longer -- or even ALP/PalmSource (ALPSource?) -- it'd be good to have her chime in.

Be a man. Do the right thing.

There are plenty of people who ought to step up and eat a little crow. But the typical pattern around here is more like:

-Boldly make predictions or emphatic statements about what will or will not happen regarding Palm (the majority of which present Palm in a negative light)

-Mock anyone who presents an alternate interpretation of the available data (quite possibly referring to them as a "Palm apologist" in an attempt to add to the insult and marginalize their insight)

-When in the course of time what actually happens shows you to be wrong, either spin your original statements around so many times that you were "right" all along or try to distract everyone with some "yeah, but..." statement, hoping they will forget that you were simply spouting ignorance from the beginning.

-Most importantly, avoid at all costs a straight up "I was wrong".

You'd more likely find "men" at an elementary playground during recess.


Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/

Blogged a little more deeply about my thoughts on this latest stuff..

http://comments.deasil.com/2007/04/10/palms-last-chance/

my blog: http://comments.deasil.com/">#comments

Dear God in Heaven (or Ed Colligan, whichever will read this!), Make It So!

I'm telling all of you, THIS is the IDEAL SIZE for devices:

http://products.sel.sony.com/pa/prs/reader_specs.html

This is what UMPCs should shrink to. This is what PDAs should have grown up to.

As much as I lust after a UMPC, when I seriously contemplated right-now use, I had to admit it'd be almost like having to pull out a notebook. The Sony Reader is a drop-in-bag pull-out-now size.

All that being said, I still want a pocketable PDA. I don't need it to have WiFi, either. It's just about worthless on a 320x480 screen (and little better on the Nokia device). I just want to be able to do the core 4: Calendar, Address, Memo, To Do -- and, well, maybe a video now and then...

I WANT A TREO WITH AN TX SCREEN ! NO KEYBOARD ! GIVE YOUR USER THE CHOICE TO HAVE OR NOT A KEYBOARD ON THE TREO LINE !

Yes, what he said.

If nothing else, the iPhone specs should show Palm that there is a market for this type of device. What, do you really think that Apple didn't do at least a little market research before spec'ing out the iPhone? How is it possible that Apple is going to beat Palm to market with a large screen, keyboardless smartphone? Palm should be able to put out POS, large screen, keyboardless Treo at significantly less cost than Apple's iPhone.


Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/

I imagine all of this makes it very tough on the developers who have numerous other issues to content with (software sites not paying comissions, the shrinking market for add-on POS softwareetc). Palm needs to rally the remaining developers (and users) and make '07 a trasitional year now that the way forward has finally been revealed (something that should've been done a year ago IMO).

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

PALM explicitly mentioned "multiple design form-factors".

== "Linux product by end of year"

but THEN:

== "Smartphone linux product in 08"

Both slight paraphrases but accurate reflections of his meaning.

So, I ditched my Palm last year and got an old Sharp Zaurus SL-5600. Still isn't the integrated PDA, WiFi & phone solution I wanted, but it is very good, nevertheless. It's amusing that Sharp's 4+ year-old form factor device is better in many respects to the latest Treo 600 re-treds that Palm has been peddling. Palm should face the fact that it has lost its ability to innovate and simply take a page out of Microsoft's playbook: steal the innovation of others:
1. Get the rights to Sharp's Zaurus hardware or just shamelessly copy it -- really, the Zaurus hardware is excellent. Keyboard is easy to use (like Treo), screen is great, slider is convenient, etc.... It's like having a laptop computer in a PDA-sized package.
2. Add a phone -- no problem here.
3. Add WiFi -- little worried with this one as Palm has demonstrated over and over again that it can't do phone and WiFi at the same time.
4. Ditch all internal attempts to develop a new OS -- Palm, you CAN'T do it. Talk to the Cobalt team to find out why.
5. Devote all your software people to integrating a Palm interface/compatibility layer on existing Linux PDA software -- Get out of the software business, Palm; others do it better. Base your new Palm OS 6 on the OpenSource Zaurus OS (Cacko ROM) and PM applications (pi-sync).
6. Ship it before I die and I might just consider buying it. But if you keep screwing around, I will crack open a bottle of champagne the day I hear that you are handing out pink-slips to all your employees.

4. Ditch all internal attempts to develop a new OS -- Palm, you CAN'T do it. Talk to the Cobalt team to find out why.

Those were the folks at PalmSource (Now ACCESS). I have faith that Jeff Hawkins's lead will be way more productive.

oh ok then, that settles that. Palm OS it will be! :)

Ooops.

http://investor.palm.com/

http://investor.palm.com/

I'm just so dumbfounded that everyone is so eager to see the death of the PDA for a phone. Look how well it turned out for Colligan the last time though at Handspring, oh wait that killed Handspring. For their sake they better hope Treo users are as loyal as their basterd brethren handheld users have been. Somehow I just don't see that as being the case though.

PDA's Past and Present:
Palm - IIIxe, Vx, M500, M505, Tungsten T, TX
Handspring - Edge, Platinum, Deluxe
Sony - SJ22
Apple - MP2000, MP2100

Funny how everything new they do infuriates me.
I could slash great big red Xs and marked FAILED MISERABLY over tons of the slide objectives.

You can type "shit" into PIC now? When did this become like my blog?

Two Devices!!!!!!!! Big Screen, wifi etcccccc.

We know Palm has the first already licked and the trick to the second would lie in producing a device roughly the size of the LifeDrive (perhaps with a slightly larger LCD) in a thinner package while still maintaining a very capacious battery.

Perhaps now that Palm is transitioning the Treo line to the new slimline formfactor & battery of the 680/750, they will use the old Treo 650/700 style battery to power their "tablet" devices. I'd be more willing to put up with a Seidio 3200mah style "rumpshaker" battery + door on a Palmized N800 equivalent than I would on a 320x320 Treo!

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

It's not because I was being respectful. Or even believed.

By that point I didn't *care* WTF Palm was up to.

Palm Fatigue got me.

Anyway, I'll step up and give you a hearty Congratulations for being RIGHT.

Now you eejits Out There make with the apologies.

I think "Palm's" involvement in Linux dates from about then, more or less.

BTW, in one of his standalone presentations the CFO really derided the PalmSource effort - something along the line of "they really didn't come through" - which is tantamount to calling them unspeakables in the world of corporate words.

http://news.com.com/PalmOne+ponders+OS+options/2100-1045_3-5438347.html?part=rss&tag=5438347&subj=news.1045.20

That article said "PalmOne has been quietly exploring operating systems to augment the Palm OS for some time" and turned out to be right in calling Palm's Windows Mobile move, which we later learned was a deal that was years in the making as well.

When Palm announced the Windows Mobile Treo in Sept 05 and was stone silent about the PalmSource/ACCESS ALP announcement last February, that's what got me seriously thinking the '04 article might have been right about the longstanding Linux plans, too.

Obviously, there's "exploring" and "experimenting" which may have gone on for a long time before any real product development but which can easily be talked about as part of the product development in retrospect. It would be interesting to know when Palm's Linux "explorations" turned into a definite decision to develop an OS product. There were spates of hiring around the time PSRC was acquired and again when Palm got the expanded development rights to Garnet. My guess is they pulled the trigger on productizing their Linux work when they lost the bidding war for PSRC.

Oh, and about the VoIP rumor... there were job postings back in January for Linux developers with VoWLAN/VoIP experience. GPS and LBS were specifically mentioned in job postings last month. If you keep your eye on the job boards at Palm you can learn quite a bit about what they're working on (which was the point of that article I wrote last May).

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

So you can speculate that his first action upon becoming interim CEO in '05 was to greenlight the Linux initiative which had heretofore been just in the "experimental" stages...but is ~2 years enough to cobble together a whole OS? Maybe he even gave it the go-ahead in '04 (more likely, based on the older links Beersie et al posted above).

http://www.palm.com/us/company/pr/2005/051605b.html

http://palmaddict.typepad.com/palmaddicts/2004/10/_this_morning_i.html

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

The real question is how much work they would want to put into compatibility when they did the Garnet emulator. A good enough job for their own PIMs would be easy to do in 6-12 months, so even if they didn't start on that until the OS port was done, that'd still leave them 6 months from feature freeze to ship.

I say that it's a slam dunk that they could have something at the end of this year if they really started no later than January '05.

However, if they were working on a Linux/Garnet combine that early, 2005 goes down as the weirdest year in my professional career. ;)

May You Live in Interesting Times

The parts that are interesting either run on the modem processor and aren't GPLed or run above the kernel in userland and aren't GPLed.

May You Live in Interesting Times

Is that right!? Wow - I never would have guessed that!

Note - I am (no longer!) an "OS guy" so don't follow kernel.org or its content, but would have assumed any generic kernel source available would be rather inefficient compared to one that actually had been tweaked and instantiated on power-starved phones...thus my "Get/got it from Motorola" running commentary.

B. Where's TVoR? He SHOULD come out of retirement/exile and make at least ONE prognostication amidst all of this news.

C. Marty, would you care to kindly point out to the less-enlightened of us some of the most pertinent "amusing hints" dropped in the article/presentation?

D.Of COURSE there are kickbacks involved in selling phones instead of PDAs. Of course, when the dumbphone & smartphone markets have dried up in a few years, I'll expect a renewed push toward data-centric (ie no voice), cellular-enabled (think a Nintendo DS or PSP or PDA-type device) devices and more affordable but limited "feature" plans (Think a $15/month unlimited "gaming data" plan for a PSP or DS type gaming handheld or a $20/month streaming media only plan for a Zune type device). EVERYONE wants to cozy up with the carriers if it'll allow them to sell a new round of hardware and get even a tiny slice of the pay-for-content pie.

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

The CEO =today= said "no third platform for smartphones until 2008".

Well, I'll leave it as an exercise for the OTHER readers to read what I posted but may not have repeated each time I reposted the same thought.

And, in any case, I very MUCH stand by what I posted even if YOU can't find it - no linux-based smartphones this year, now confirmed by PALM within the last few days.

=======

Now a THINKING individual might ask:

== "WAITAMINUTE! They said without ambiguity that a Linux-based
== product (or products) were going to be released by the end of
== THIS year! What type of products are THOSE!!?"

but you can safely ignore that while you attempt to denigrate other posters.

Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/

You're not into reading entire comment sections, eh?

Ok, SeldomVistor, read this entire thread: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130360

Particularly note this quote, the fourth post in that thread: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130363
You said: "The CFO =just= said "no third platform" - there goes Linux!"

And further down in that thread, after David Beers disagreed with you and eloquently predicted exactly what just happened, I chimed in with this: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130387

And you argued back with this: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130393, clearly attempting to show me how I was wrong in what I just wrote (which fortunately for me was in agreement with what David had already written; I'm typically not smart enough to come up with this stuff on my own).

And finally at that point I ended my "discussion" with you by saying this: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130396

Alternately, everyone could have just left the statement ("The CFO =just= said "no third platform" - there goes Linux!") unchallenged, but then it wouldn't have been any fun at all because we wouldn't have had anything to talk about and it possibly would have left the person who made the statement in the first place assuming that there were no other possible conclusions to draw from the evidence. (bold emphasis added)

Then the encore in all of that discussion was that it led to the next thread, started by ballistic, which from the more recent data/news we've heard just might give you even more opportunity to work on your "spin move". ("Palm Founder dislikes Windows software" http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130446)

So my question to you now is, why is it so hard for you just to say, "Turns out I was wrong about that."? Or is it somehow terribly important for you to present a "I-have-never-been-wrong" persona here on PIC?

Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/

Why did you start so late and low with your quotes of what I posted when I EXPLICITLY said:

== "You're not into reading entire comment sections, eh?"

to that other poster?

Because http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130360 was the very first comment you posted! Did you even click on the links?!! Did you not scroll back up the page and notice that the thread I linked to was in fact the first comment you had made to the article? Do you not see that I can't go "up" any further without linking you to information that is completely irrelevant to this discussion because you hadn't posted anything yet? I EXPLICITLY did read the entire comments section. Obviously you didn't.

Or maybe this is just one more feeble attempt on your part to spin, deny and distract. Fine then. Keep it up. You're only proving my point even further. The evidence is all there. Go ahead and dig your hole even deeper.

So my question to you now is, why is it so hard for you just to say, "Turns out I was wrong about that."? Or is it somehow terribly important for you to present a "I-have-never-been-wrong" persona here on PIC?


Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/

No, actually I =didn't= click on your link because it didn't matter to me!

Lol!

You claim that I am "TOTALLY BIASED against reading what I'm posting rather than what you THINK I'm posting...." Say what? You wanted me to read the whole comments section, which I did and you apparently hadn't, and when I did and provided the links to you to show that I had exactly done that, you still want to try to call me "TOTALLY BIASED". Unbelievable!

The timestamp of this message http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130360, the first one you posted in response to that article, was 2/21/2007 9:47:41 AM. Since that is the link I provided above, how about you at least stop accusing me of not reading the "whole comments section"? To keep accusing me of that will real only succeed in making you look foolish.

You then proceed to do the very thing yourself that you accuse ballistic and me of doing. You promptly jump to the end and spin those statements into some meaning that all of your posts up to that point have contradicted. You are the one setting up the "rules" for this discussion. How about you hold to them yourself?

It should be obvious to you by now that the post in which you started out WRONG was http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130363 with a timestamp of 2/21/2007 10:05:41 AM. That's 18 minute after you first post. So as I ALREADY said above, that is the first post that even matters to this conversation.

David Beers disagrees with you. http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130372
You disagree with him (notice that you started the comment with "Nah", a word that most English speakers equate to "No" which would indicate that you didn't agree). http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130374
David responds, this time with a bit "softer" stance. http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130376
You respond with what appears to possibly be some hedging of you previous comments. (Maybe you are starting to think you might have it wrong?) http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130378
But then you come right back and make it clear that Palm will not be using Linux unless it is on the server side. http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130379 You end that comment with this line: "About 38.30 in he says "only two [platforms] today are PalmOS and Windows Mobile"."
That's where I came in for the first time to suggest that you were wrong and David was right by way of explaining how I saw things. http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/9243/#130387 I will quote it here:

Sounds very much like there is no contradiction with what David Beers said above. At this point it is unknown if the future "Palm OS" will be running on a Linux kernel or not, but if not, I really don't understand why they'd purposefully hire Linux programers. I still don't think you can conclude that "there goes Linux" with any certainty at all; that's a big leap. "Palm OS" does not equal the kernel. Seems to me that all you can conclude that Palm will be using WinMob and something called "Palm OS". Maybe that says more about "not-ALP" than anything else. What kernel "Palm OS" will have is an unknown, but Linux make a lot of sense given the other information we have already heard/seen.

Now, we can debate all sorts of things about what "no third platform for smartphones" means, but ... why?

So if you want this to stop this time, how about you quit digging your hole and get on with the "Looks like I was wrong" admission. It'd be so much easier.

Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/

========

(*) BEAS recently released a PR about THEIR option backdating problems and, without explicitly saying so, said that the former CEO was the culprit and might be in deep doo-doo:

-- http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070214/sfw092.html?.v=85

320x480 a great screen size and there is no logical reason to abandon it.
Same for handhelds.

Phrases like " maybe 1 last pda..." are bad. People should be talking about improving, innovating and growing the handheld division. NOT praying and hoping for '1 last device".

In all likelihood Palm will just let the current 3 models fade away and pull the plug on them this fall.

I'm not disagreeing that this is possible, but I still think it would be very foolish of Palm to do so. And I'm not saying this because I have some sort of "aversion" to converged devices; I just won't buy anything in the current Treo line. Give me a TX with a cell radio at a reasonable price, and, call it whatever you want, I'll buy one.

But back to my point. How many million PDA's did Palm sell last year? Yes, they'd prefer that everyone buy a Treo instead, but they shouldn't cut off their nose to spite their face. So they still get a tidy little sum of money (revenue) by keeping the PDA line alive. Colligan himself has pointed out what many of us have said, that it is a source of new users who subsequently upgrade to Treos. And until they finally put wifi in their phones, it's still the only POS device with it built in. I think it'd be foolish to concede the PDA market to other companies when it serves a significant purpose and it keeps others from taking away that base.

The current three tiered PDA line-up is almost "right". But they need to give the T3 holdouts and TX users a "TX2" with a mic, LED and vibrating alarms (all of which Dimitry G. put into a TX already), and you should be able to let that device go for a couple more years without even thinking about it. R&D? None needed. Just do it! Keep the TE2 and Z22 almost as they are. But if they could somehow afford to put out a "Z33" with multimedia support (adding no-brainer computer-side software to get the content over to the "new" flash memory card slot), and keep the price extremely low, they could probably go to a two-tiered system and keep those people coming in the door.

Me? I'll take either that TX2 or the TreoX (large screened, keyboardless smartphone), whichever comes first. However, maybe the "secret third business" will change the landscape significantly enough that this sort of discussion will be meaningless very soon.

Oh, and one more thing, Palm, you've got to demand better from the company supplying the digitizers for that new TX2/TreoX. Slide #62 of your presentation says that your "unconventional thinking" will result in:

-Positive customer experience
-Decreased product returns
-Greater intimacy with the customer
-Increased customer profitability

How about a little more "conventional" quality control? That'd result in all of the above for me.

Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Want an alternative? Try this: http://www.ubuntu.com/ or http://www.mepis.org/

Having a new powerful Palm OS based on an open source Linux core is very smart.
1) it makes Palm less dependent on MS.
2) Palm can threaten to drop WM if MS refuses to negotiate decent license fees
3) Being Palm exclusive, if its a success, and it will imho, they get 100% of the profits.
4) Palm has full control over the programming of the OS.

I know it made sound impossible now, but with Palm OS Linux, I believe Palm should start to pull away from MS and eventually stop selling WM devices. They should slowly introduce Palm OS Linux devices to companies.

That abomination of theirs has been out for at least 1.5 years and the amount of apps compared to the original Pilot in the same amount of time is a scandal.

Every time they "update" (downgrade!!!) that crappy OS, all the apps *break*.

Palm has a real shot. I hope they don't blow it.

The real question you should be asking: ACCESS vs Palm.

I'd like to see separate FrankenGarnet/PalmLinux devices.

FG for low-cost PDAs. PL for higher-end, larger-sized web access (and probably Treo too; but probably not this year).

I think that's what Palm will do.

2. I would depending on the hardware it runs on. I prefer candy bar phones but I could live with a flip phone. O2 have a few good looking ones (I assume they're HTC) but I am dubious of their build quality after the amount of Atoms we got back for repair at work.
That teamed with a T|X replacement would be pretty good in my book.

How good are cargo pants, they're a gadget lovers best friend.

Surur

They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...
Hey!! I made associate writer at PDA247. Come see my nattering over there!!
www.clieuk.co.uk/wm.shtml

Undisclosed handset component makers commenting on the software and branding strategy of products from Google? Riiiiight.

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

-- http://finance.yahoo.com/q/h?s=MOT

will be good for a day before the new PRs scroll off the bottom - read 'em soon!

Ask Palm why they paid their old drinking buddy from their Apple Days, JL "Imbécile" Gassée $11 million for Be's rotting carcass in 2001.

"In 1996, Apple Computer decided to abandon Copland, the project to rewrite and modernize the Macintosh operating system. BeOS had many of the features Apple sought, and they offered to buy Be for $120 million, later raising its bid to $200 million, but--despite estimates of Be's total worth at approximately $80 million--Gassée held out for $400 million, which Apple refused to meet. Apple went on to purchase NeXT, the company their former CEO Steve Jobs had earlier left Apple to found. NeXTSTEP was used as the basis for their new operating system, Mac OS X."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gass%C3%A9e

GREED IS A BAD THING, Jean-Louis...

TVoR