Comments on: Quickies: April Fools, MemStick Pro, Free Zire & More

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~ "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DV ~

ahahahahhahahhaha. Give it up peacenik.
You peace people lost that battle before you even started. So give it up already. It's annoying.

Right now I use SimpleSketch. It does triangles and creates a BMP file on the desktop which I can email directly to cable vendors. However, there are no undo functions and no object move functions... if you mess up, you do it over.

On Gambit Studios web site, we have "April Fools" in big letters, and we are still getting email from people interested in testing.

But I have to agree... if you are going to pull an April Fools joke, you don't give it away up-front. It spoils the purpose.

Have a great week, and enjoy life!

The only somewhat successful Linux PDA is the Sharp Zaurus, and despite being "open" it has its own "proprietary" issues that I suggest you investigate.

There are plenty of good proprietary operating systems out there (QNX and Solaris for example).

Well, it's available now, it works well on handhelds, it has lots of drivers and software available for it, and it doesn't cost Palm anything. Those seems like good reasons to me. Furthermore, there are hundreds of people working on making it better and more full-featured.

Note that "Linux" does not mean that the Palm has to greet you with a "login:" prompt. Palm could put whatever user environment they like on top of it. A Linux-based Palm would probably look just like an OS5 device and be running most of the same application software.

2. What software would "instantly" be available for a Linux PDA?

Well, let me be clear that I'm not primarily referring to end user handheld applications. Palm users might or might not want to run some of the existing Linux handheld applications.

I would expect that in a move to Linux, Palm would create a GUI library that gives a Linux-based Palm a distinctive Palm look-and-feel.

What I am primarily referring to is things like libraries, development tools, utilities, scripting languages, and drivers. If I need support for some weird networking protocol, image format, etc., on Linux, chances are it's already there and at most needs recompilation for a Linux-based PDA.

The only somewhat successful Linux PDA is the Sharp Zaurus, and despite being "open" it has its own "proprietary" issues that I suggest you investigate.

I have a Zaurus (in addition to a Palm). It has no "proprietary" issues as far as the Linux kernel is concerned. Sharp made the mistake of picking a proprietary GUI, but that's a mistake that Palm could easily avoid. And even with its proprietary GUI, Sharp's use of Linux makes those devices immensely more useful than Palm's, and there are lots of third party applications. If Sharp offered the SL-A300 (which is comparable in size to the smaller Palms) in the US, I'd throw my Palm away in a heartbeat.

There are plenty of good proprietary operating systems out there (QNX and Solaris for example).

The software is proprietary, but the APIs are not, and that's really the issue here.

I'd be just as happy if Palm were to pick QNX or Solaris or any other POSIX-compliant OS for their handheld. But once you decide on supporting open and standard APIs, you might as well go with the implementation that is cheapest and most mature, and Linux is probably that (QNX and Solaris have some features that are good in niche markets but probably don't matter on handhelds).

What is not fine is for Palm to hack away forever reinventing the wheel.

We have two companies in the US, Palm and Microsoft, which for historical reasons dominate the market. Of course, it's difficult for any company to break into that market and attract developers. We have had the same situation with desktop operating systems in the past. That tells you nothing about the quality of their software.

If Palm were to use an open source kernel, it would be a success--simply because Palm is still in a position where anything they put out will catch on. The only question is how long Palm will make it and whether that is good for users and developers.

Furthermore, your biggest argument seems to be for "open APIs". Well, AFAIK Palm publishes all the APIs it considers stable for developers to use. I don't expect that to change.

How does that make the APIs "open"? Open APIs means that they are independently standardized and can be implemented by anybody.

You also seem to want to argue that legacy Palm OS apps will not be easily portable to native OS 6.

No, I'm arguing that PalmOS apps will not be able to take advantage of the new capabilities without significant rewrites. That doesn't depend on what Palm puts into PalmOS 6, it depends on what is lacking in PalmOS 4 and 5.