Comments on: Users Petition PalmSource for Mac Support

We're looking at a company that was not too sure about its future when these decisions were made. That was a while ago - maybe as early as spring 2002. The first measure is to cut down on expenses - cut down on the employee list. Lots of companies did that in 2002 and earlier. Specifically American employees. People in this country were just fired left and right as a reaction to the declining stock market. At that time the Mac had two things going against it:
A - market percentile
B - OS X
While most companies had always seen the Mac as an additional source of income for their fully developed Windows products, it was ever only a strategy of MAXIMIZING THE MARKET. Get the last 10% out of an existing product. That worked fine with the low percentage of Macs being sold because the Macs were the Beamers, the showcase computers, the stuff featured in Playboy under the "Cool Stuff" category. Some companies developed an excellent software strategie where the core code was kept platform independent and only the gui had to be translated. These companies are still around and Mac users still pay more for their products. They don't complain. Spare parts on a beamer cost you more, duh!
With OS X, however, a lot of companies had a puzzle in front of them. They couldn't figure it out and neither could the programmers.
Programmers had 2 options. They could either run so-called carbon versions of their programs and modify them accordingly or step up to the much greater challange of converting to what is called Objective-C.
What happened then is what actually made major companies stop making Mac software. Here it is:

What is currently called Xcode and is probably the most advanced IDE and language package on the planet builds on C. Xcode uses objective-C as opposed to C and C++. The Mac environment uses Cocoa as a framework (for you old C++ guys and gals).

Here comes where it bubbles up:
The typical C or C++ programmer was suddenly tasked with estimating the amount of time, it would take them to re-write whatever project to conform to Mac OS standards.
They had two choices:
- Spend time making the current code compatible
- Spend time rewriting (well - if their code was written well, they only had to re-model)

What happened:
Most developers were very tight with C++ and the Metrowerks class hierarchy (PowerPlant). That was their life and bread. hese were the people fired. We still see it on Monster sometimes that their skills are required, but mostly those are companies are gone.

To Do Now:
Well - we know a couple of things:
1- the Mac is still around
2- major research is being done using the Mac
3- music and photography are easily the Mac's strength

As a closing observation - companies closed down on the Mac after 9/11 because they wanted more secure investments. It is easy to go with the monopoly, isn't it?

I've seen a lot of online petitions in my time, and in my experience, companies take little to no interest in them. I suppose that PalmSource considers there a difference between putting your name on a web page, and spending extra money to buy Palm devices to justify Mac OS X support.

Mark/Space are indicating that their software may be included in the box for all new Palm Colbalt products from PalmOne. Why petition PalmSource when PalmOne has already filled the gap with a good product?

I use the new Missing Sync 4 with PowerBook and G4 iMac plus CLIE TH55. Works well with all the Mac apps and existing conduits including M$ Entourage.

Don't know what all the fuss is about.

Support for the Mac was likely dropped because it did not provide a significant return on investment. Purchasing Missing Sync is a clear indication to PalmSource that Mac Users are willing to pay to synchronize new Palm OS devices with their Macs. If sales are sufficient perhaps PalmSource or some of the licensees will make a deal with Mark/Space to include their software in the box. If not, at least there is high quality third party software for Mac Users.

Stuart Eichert

One underlying message of the limiting of support is that the company is headed out. Palm, for all its buying and selling of companies hasn't come up with an idea worth investing in for years.

Palms are toys next to PocketPCs. Really, are we going to miss Palm? Get a smart phone and sync it with iSync. It works better and faster than Palm Desktop.

Even better, bet a PocketPC and the missing sync. Whatever you do, don't drop any money on a sinking ship. I'm waving this palm goodbye.

I moved to a G3 about two months ago(For work) from linux, and have been using (struggling through?) the Mac version of Palm Desktop most of that time.

Some of my problems with it:

• The interface is a total pig's breakfast. It's not Apple, it's not Palm. It's horribly counterintuitive.
  
• Miserable note support.
  
• Even MORE miserable note-on-appointment support.
  
• Reliably mangles data - I've had it wipe out my memo classifications twice now.
  
• Very poor backup options - You can either set up a full backup for EVERY hotsync, or not.
  
• Backups are incomplete. Won't backup the Address and Memo databases as .pdb files - So when it fubars them, you're sunk.
  

I don't know about the rest of the world, but some of these are 'Showstopper' level bugs, as far as I'm concerned.

http://wiki.jpilot.org/index.php/Frequently%20Asked%20Questions">The JPilot FAQ says that it runs under OSX - I'd find it hard to believe it's any worse than Palm's offering.