Say Goodbye to Hacks in OS 5

I like it better this way. The mp3 player in the Sony 760 is lame but there aren't any good alternatives because one comes with the handheld and no-one's going to buy one, even a better one, when they've got a free one already.

Everyone thinks Palm should do EVERYTHING. Why doesn't Palm make a hardcase? Why doesn't Palm make a word processor? Because that's not what they are good at. They make handhelds. Leave mp3 players and cases up to companies that are good at it.

If you are going to bitch about having to pay for a third party mp3 player, there'll surely be a freeware one that's lame but free. Pay for it and you can get a good one. You get what you pay for.

I think this is a good move on their part, because mp3 is a "niche" function, and Palm has, and always should, focus on the core applications that are most useful to the most people. Micro$oft likes to trumpet what their machines CAN do. I'm more interested in what I WILL do, and so is Palm.

I just don't like the app. The UI isn't so good. Playback sounds good.

Cheers
Russell

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russ@russb.fsnet.co.uk
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Diga ao Falante pelos Mortos
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You know....you are going to hear that "priceless" comment again....when the Be guys come in and ask for a raise!!

Kidding aside...good luck to you and your team. We are all pulling for you.

Jim Kershaw

It wasn't a replacement for your PC, it was simply a way to carry the important information with you when away from your PC. That's what Palm does well.

Sure, MP3 playback would be nice, but it's not required and certainly not convenient until xpansion prices come down and space goes up. "Gee I love listening to these 8 songs. . . over, and over and over again all day long."

Video? Are you high? What's the point of that? Tiny screen (or people are going to complain that it's a brick) means you can't see jack. Past the "ohh. . . that's cool. . . ." point of interest. What's the use?

You're right, MP3 playing isn't needed in a device like a PDA, but wouldn't it be nice if the PDA could do it if we wanted too. Maybe I don't want to listen to music but listening to an audio book could be useful. And your right.. Who the heck is really going to watch a video on such a small screen? But they do have devices that you can run a presentation off of a PDA and on to a projection. Sure beats carring aroung 5 pounds of laptop.

Wake up and look around. The only reason why Palm was successful, was because there was no other game in town. Newton's where HUGE, and cost close to a thousand bucks. The Palm Pilots as they were called back in the day were much smaller, and in compareds to a Newton, much cheaper. WinCE and PPCs weren't even around. That's why Palm were successful, because it sure wasn't for the crappy PIM software they built in to their OS. Who do you know really uses that alone anyway? Everyone I know is running some other third party app in it's place.

And last, the reason why Palm is beginning to "fade" away as one recent news articale put it, is because of their aragant way of thinking. Not wanting to change the Palm WITH THE TIMES. Sure, it was fine to not need or want color, or play Mp3s and have no more than 256 kbs on your Palm back in 1995, but come on, now there are Cell phone with color displays, more memory, and a better processer than the Palm has today.

It takes companies like Sony and even Handspring to show Palm that their users were dieing for something more and better.

I agree that most of your time using your PDA will not be video playback.

BUT if my PDA could do it and had, say, a 256 meg CF card in it i would definitely watch some simpsons episodes while in the waiting room at the doctors.

It's not a question of "we NEED NEED NEED this or that". It's more along the lines of thinking "someone MAY want this."

The option is there. if you want it, use it. if not, don't.

More options can never be a bad thing. Different PDA's for different users. That's what will work best.

They need to stop thinking "people only need to use this" or whatever. You *don't* know what user X wants or doesn't want. Give the option, and let him or her decide if they will use it or not.

The main reason for hacks, especially those you've cited, are that the OS can't run 2 programs at once. PopUp calc is also my fave hack, however it will be redundant come OS 5 as you'll be able to run a calculator and another app at the same time anyway.

Cheers
Russell

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russ@russb.fsnet.co.uk
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Diga ao Falante pelos Mortos
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I would imagine that the current hack authors will update their software. Making applications that work like hacks have done in the past under OS 5 will be much easier because of MultiTasking. This should also mean that they'll be more applicatios with hack-like behavior on OS 5.

Also, the application running 'under' PopNote will continue to run. So if you're waiting for the computer to take its turn at chess, you can flip to editing memos, and return when the computer has finished. At the moment when you change to PopNote the application under it stops doing any work.

Cheers
Russell

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russ@russb.fsnet.co.uk
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Diga ao Falante pelos Mortos
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That's a great point about not having to wait for one app to complete an operation while another is open.

Let's see what else leaks out from PalmSource!

Like any OS, the PalmOS has a bunch of functions that it makes available to developers in their programs, called an API. However, the functions in the PalmOS are not tied to their names. When a program calls a system function (such as "pop up the keyboard dialog"), the OS first looks up what code snippet is registered to "pop up the keyboard dialog" in a table, then goes and runs that code. It also, however, provides two functions that developers can use to edit that table, one to search it directly and one to change what code snippet the function points to. Hacks work by changing the table to read "first run this block over here, THEN pop up the keyboard dialog", or the other way around, or any other imaginable code the developer wants to stick in there.

The problem is, all existing hacks are coded for Dragonball chips, which are VERY different internally than ARM chips. Older applications can be run in an emulation mode where the OS first mangles the code to make it ARM-friendly, but doing that for hacks, which for all intents and purposes become part of the OS, is impossible. It would have no way of telling what hack was coded for what. That's why Palm never directly supported hacks, they knew they would all break with OS 5. (Hacks were a backdoor discovery and invention in the first place.)

Palm also apparently has taken out the function to edit that table, to avoid older hacks totally messing up the device. Whether or not they will provide some other "system extension" mechanism, I don't know. If not, some intrepid programmer will probably find a way anyway, just as they did with hacks. :-)

Personally, I'm much more interested in if this new "multitasking, multithreading OS" will work on XIP like the current OS or with a split memory architecture like WinCE. The split memory architecture is the single WORST feature of PocketPC, and I really really hope Palm doesn't fall into that trap.

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"Hacks" are inherently "hacky". They are an imperfect solution that can cause conflicts and problems.

Have you considered that perhaps Palm has implemented another mechanism in Palm OS 5 for third parties to extend the operating system in "non-hacky" ways that are more compatible and stable?

Think about it. Then watch the news from PalmSource and learn. In the meantime, be patient and don't believe everything you read.