Foleo Delayed Until Late September/Early October?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BqLEq86z-c

http://comments.deasil.com/2007/08/23/poor-palm/

<http://comments.deasil.com/> that is my tech blog. There are many like it, but that one is mine.

We’re not stupid; we’ve been working on lots of complicated sync issues on lots of phones for the last year, including testing with a wide range of Treo devices. The issues haven’t been “it doesn’t sync”, but more like “after syncing large numbers of emails over a four day time period, the operation fails 25% of the time and cannot restart without resetting the device.”

Fair enough.

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Luv them memory leaks, eh?

Quality programming lives!

Uh...somewhere...

At least Palm is trying to QC this contraption before unleashing it on hordes of unsuspecting users.

Look at the bright side - it could be worse - Foleos could burst into flames like some xbox 360's have been doing.

And that's from a fanboy...giggle.

As for the whole Wind River thing, this is about kernel and low-level kernel services, tools and developer support. Wind River's "Platform for Consumer Devices" is not an operating system, it's a platform on which a company like Palm can build an operating system with nicely-integrated tools for both system and application developers. I've been saying all along that Palm, like Motorola, ACCESS, and others before them would partner with a commercial Linux vendor to deliver the low-level parts of the system, rather than doing these in-house. Part of the advantage of Linux that there *is* this kind of layered ecosystem now.

The Wind River Workbench is the piece that will most interest application developers, because it's a state-of-the-art Eclipse-based IDE for embedded Linux development--the kind of thing that would be a huge waste of time for Palm to reinvent. The distro and toolchain have been under development at Wind River concurrently with the development of Foleo, so even the 1.0 version wasn't available at the time Palm started this project. I expect that Palm has known for some time that whatever Linux distro they built on at the start would be updated to the latest and greatest commercial Linux distro from a partner like Wind River or MontaVista near release time. If you want to say for dramatic effect that they are "dumping" the old distro they started with you could do that, but I'd be willing to bet that that distro, too, was something they licensed from a vendor back then, not something that Palm developed themselves and are now "dumping" (along with the internal team) in disappointment and disgust.

They're not "oustsourcing anew"; there have been rumours of Palm and Wind River collaborating for well over a year now.

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

You and that other guy may not like that but it IS what they are doing.

The silly obfuscation about the programmer's workbench is simply silly.

*especially reality television

Definitely the pot calling the kettle black.

They are outsourcing anew. They are dumping their own in-house version of Linux for the Fooleo (and more?) and (correctly, IMHO) buying a more robust version from someone who knows what they are doing.

So, once more: The Foleo OS was developed against a 2.4 Linux kernel that Intel provided with the processor. We have this from Ben Combee. All of the mods that Palm made against that kernel are being ported to the new 2.6 Wind River kernel, which was selected (if you know WR's business) because it plays nice with Wind River's developer tools (especially the debugger) and because it gets patches from the Linux community certified and applied by WR on a regular release schedule. In addition, Palm's custom DirectFB windowing toolkit and application framework--created to avoid all the bloat of X Windows and GTK and the sluggishness that you usually expect from a PC--is not going anywhere. It, too, is just being ported to the new kernel.

There's no evidence shown to date that any of Palm's work at all is being "dumped" or that anything beyond mundane porting, kernel maintenance, support and tool-development is being outsourced. Were it otherwise I expect we'd be hearing about a delay of a couple of years, instead of a couple of weeks.

There also isn't any evidence that Palm is waiting for that port to be completed before they release the product. They certainly didn't wait for it to be complete before they started seeding developers and doing public betas--everything we've seen in still on the 2.4 kernel. Knowing what we know, it stands to reason that Palm is probably having trouble with the Treo software more than the Foleo's: for example, the Bluetooth stack on some of the Treos hasn't exactly worked reliably or uniformly, right?

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

(Ok, I admit it, I'm not "wondering" at all. I'm already quite sure what's going on with SV.)


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/

Does anyone think Palm are taking the early criticisms to heart and desperately trying to add more built-in functionality? Or are they just bug-patching and troubleshooting?

Didn't someone on TC (maybe it was even TVoR) post a rumor a while back that the 680 was NOT on the list of initially approved Treo to sync with the Fooleo? I seem to recall reading that so far just the 700w/wx/p, 755p and 750 were on the approved device list. That's an AWFULLY short list of compatible smartphones. And if the 680 is indeed a no-go that just adds fuel to my gnawing that the best "value" proposition amongst the Treos, the 680, is soon to be discontinued in favor of a GSM version of the Centro.

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

I remember reading that but don't remember how/from where what I read was linked. It doesn't seem to be of much relevance here, though, so doesn't appear to be something =I= would have mentioned - the stupid Hawkins' comment about wanting a faster processor made WHILE giving the first very-public D demo is something I would have commented about here, have to admit, but I don't remember doing so (but believe I must have at least once!).

> ...Perhaps the tech-savvy types don't read Barron's?...

I read everything that crosses my screen and a lot of stuff crosses that screen but do not regularly visit Barron's - if a link to a Barron's article shows up somewhere ELSE, however, I'll follow it down and read there, too.

Who cares about stability?!?!?!?

Who cares about missing functionality?!?!?!?

Who cares about bad hardware/software QC?!?!?!?

Who cares about customer service?!?!?!?

NONE OF THAT MATTERS!!!!!!!

THE TRUE THINGS THAT MATTER:

1. PALM IS DESIGNED FOR ONE HANDED OPERATION!

2. PALM HAS CUT AND PASTE!

PALM RULEZ!!!!! DR00L!!!!! :P

Seriously, Palm is in major trouble.

Didn't you pre-order a Fooleo for Dear Miss Beers?

I'm not supposed to reveal anything about it that hasn't already been made public, of course, but I can say this: the Foleo has *great* industrial design and the OS is quite elegant and unique. It really drives home that the best system design is inseparable from good hardware design. Palm has a lot to be proud of, developing the first really new "PC" hardware and operating system we've seen in many years.

I've seen the spreads on the Eee and even from a distance it looks like your dog's dinner by comparison to the Foleo. Hopefully it's not as toy-like and cheap as it appears, but the ergonomics and aesthetic appeal both look quite weak. I can't see there being a big overlap in the target audience. Foleo is a serious tool and a class act.

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

I'm not supposed to reveal anything about it that hasn't already been made public....

Fair 'nuff. But you know we all expect a serious write-up just as soon as it's allowed. So you'd better start now; we aren't a very patient group. ;-)


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/

Others have commented as you:

-- http://discussion.treocentral.com/showpost.php?p=1335084&postcount=67

[note - I don't believe this particular poster makes or is trying to make any money off of either the Foleo or EEE]

Some questions:

1) You on WordPress? How about just going there if you're not and creating a test blog. Does the Flopeo -- OK, I'll stop the smartass stuff -- does the Foleo play well with all features of the WordPress web interface? Posting, changing settings, et al.

2) I'd need to do some basic photo editing. Nothing Photoshoppy. Basically being able to resize things down to 320x240 (or even to 450 x whatever), crop, and cut the palette down so the photo when posted in the blog doesn't choke devices with limited CPU and RAM (hey, like the Foleo!). I guess the current bundled Photo app has none of that capability?

My aneurysm is also making me wonder why Palm is so intent on Treo email syncing. Look at the iPhone: YahooMail is built in. Not only would I be able to have mobile access to YahooMail without struggling with its web interface on a wee screen, but I'd be doing it *without* paying the $$$ a POP account would cost. Why can't Palm strike a similar deal and include YahooMail and even GMail in the Foleo? That'd be a big selling point!

So now that your missus has had hands-on with it, is she still in mad love with it? Does it live up to her pre-fondle illusions?

I agree. I was just answering this guys question.

No how does the Foleo compare against my 12" G4 iBook? Thinner I imagine but I don't see it being that big of a difference as far as carrying around.

PDA's Past and Present:
Palm - IIIxe, Vx, M500, M505, Tungsten T, TX
Handspring - Edge, Platinum, Deluxe
Sony - SJ22
Apple - MP110, MP2000, MP2100