Comments on: PalmSource Names Jean-Louis Gassee Chairman of the Board

PalmSource today announced Jean-Louis Gassee has been appointed Chairman of the PalmSource Board of Directors. Gassee, 60, was appointed to the Company's Board of Directors in May 2002. He replaces the outgoing Chairman Eric Benhamou.
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Cobalt please!

Wolfgard @ 11/2/2004 12:10:10 PM #
Hopefully now they can get Cobalt out of the door.

pen & paper -> m515 -> Zire72 -> TH55
RE: Cobalt please!
karrock @ 11/2/2004 1:00:07 PM #
Hey, it's only natural, since Palm bought his BeOS...

~Tony

Pilot --> V --> m505 --> Tungsten T3

RE: Cobalt please!
ehanneken @ 11/2/2004 1:20:15 PM #
Cobalt has been out the door for 10 months: http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=6409

The mystery is that no device manufacturers have used it in their products.


RE: Cobalt please!
Token User @ 11/2/2004 1:56:31 PM #
People still have a hard time seperating PalmSource from PalmOne. PalmOne make handheld devices, PalmSource makes operating systems. Cobalt has already shipped to manufacturers, the manufacturers are yet to launch a Cobalt device.

Beside setting corporate direction, does the President of a company actually have much say in when products will ship?



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

RE: A well built PDA please!
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/2/2004 9:31:44 PM #
Cobalt has been out the door for 10 months: http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=6409

The mystery is that no device manufacturers have used it in their products.

A reasonable facsimile of Cobalt was "released" in December, 2003, basically so Palm could say it was out. That version was not redy for prime time and could never have been used on a shipping device unless a manufacturer either had a deathwish or was interesting in testing their ability to recall devices. Sony would have been the ideal company to bring out a real Cobalt device, but they've left the building along with Tort Elvis. The only mystery is why anyone still gives a flying fcuk about Cobalt at this time. People are treating Cobalt like it's the Second Coming. Cobalt is HYPE. As Public Enemy once said, "Don't believe the hype!"

People still have a hard time seperating PalmSource from PalmOne. PalmOne make handheld devices, PalmSource makes operating systems. Cobalt has already shipped to manufacturers, the manufacturers are yet to launch a Cobalt device.

PalmSource and Pa1mone are divisions of THE SAME COMPANY. Do you really believe that they are separate companies just because they say they are? Sheeeeeesh!




******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

You want Cobalt? Get Palm to outsource it to HandEra!
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/2/2004 11:00:33 PM #
Palm should have just fired most of its engineers (and other miscellaneous Rosencrantz & Guildenstern type hangers on) in 2002 and then outsourced the OS development to HandEra. They would probably have had the new OS ready for use 12 to 18 months ago. Palm could have taken the new OS and the T3 design to a manufacturer like HTC in 2003 and had an amazing device on the market for the past year. Instead, they have nothing but the kind of vaporware we haven't seen since the heady days of Sprinboards.

Fast forward to late 2004: a Great American Company (HandEra) has now essentially been killed off, Palm has NO devices shipping with Cobalt, and consumers have started testing the waters with PPC. Way to go, Palm.



******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Cobalt please!
just_little_me @ 11/3/2004 12:47:01 AM #
Palmsource and palmOne ARE NOT divisions of the SAME company! They are legally seperate, publicly traded entities.

Just because you choose not to believe the truth doesn't make it any less true...


JLM.

RE: Cobalt please!
justauser @ 11/3/2004 1:12:09 AM #
Palmsource and Palmone are separate companies. If they were working together, it would be called 'collusion' and the directors would end up in jail. Clearly they are not operating together. To think otherwise is either paranoid delusion or cause to call the cops.

Palm has had enough legal problems without attempting a cartel.


PalmSource vs. Pa1mOne
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/6/2004 8:58:48 PM #
Palm has had enough legal problems without attempting a cartel.

Ever wonder why "Jean-Louis Gassee" looks so much like Pablo Escobar? Now you know. Just make sure you never use JLG's toilet - otherwise you might just end up with a "Colombian neck-tie". Adios, señor...





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

palmOne MS Rumor

hkklife @ 11/2/2004 2:03:19 PM #
I think the main story of today is more likely the rumor about M$ getting in bed with P1 rather than PalmSource's new chairman.

It would help matters if there were any remaining licensees with deep-ish pockets. I cannot help but think that P1 is becoming like Atari of the early-mid 90s---still holding onto decent cash reserves but afraid to spend it on anything of consequence.

My guess is that P1 is amassing all of their cash to do one of two things:

1. Launch a line of high-end M$-powered Treos and keep OS 5.x around for mid to low range smartphones. We will likely never see a Cobalt PDA from P1, at least not in '05. P1 may feel that PalmSource is on its last legs and they want to be able to sit on the fence for a while in case that does happen, knowing full well that switching the OS on some Treos will only further undermine PS' fortunes. P1 & PS will continue tweaking OS 5 (because cheaper is ALWAYS better to these guys!) to successively higher revisions and the Tungsten line will be whittled down to one or two models at most.

2. Keep putting good but not large amounts of $ into Treo development while sticking with the current PDA line and try to juice it as much as possible with minimal R&D $. Essentially, they are going to ride the Treo wave as long as possible while trying to make themselves look attractive to as many suitors as possible for an acquisition or merger of some sort.

RE: palmOne MS Rumor
LiveFaith @ 11/2/2004 9:02:10 PM #
Yep, looks like the photo of a Treo running Windows has surfaced. It's definitely Windows OS!

http://www.churchoflivingfaith.com/images/treo666.jpg

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

RE: Ringo is dead rumor
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/2/2004 9:19:12 PM #
My guess is that P1 is amassing all of their cash to do one of two things:

1. Launch a line of high-end M$-powered Treos and keep OS 5.x around for mid to low range smartphones. We will likely never see a Cobalt PDA from P1, at least not in '05. P1 may feel that PalmSource is on its last legs and they want to be able to sit on the fence for a while in case that does happen, knowing full well that switching the OS on some Treos will only further undermine PS' fortunes. P1 & PS will continue tweaking OS 5 (because cheaper is ALWAYS better to these guys!) to successively higher revisions and the Tungsten line will be whittled down to one or two models at most.

2. Keep putting good but not large amounts of $ into Treo development while sticking with the current PDA line and try to juice it as much as possible with minimal R&D $. Essentially, they are going to ride the Treo wave as long as possible while trying to make themselves look attractive to as many suitors as possible for an acquisition or merger of some sort.

- Palm has almost no cash left.
- Pa1mone and PalmSource are the same company, despite the "official" split. You don't make business decisions in one branch of your company that will harm another branch. (Unless your company is named Sony.)
- Palm's R+D is essentially dead. They will milk the Treo for all it's worth. Then they'll flog it until it's dead. Then they flod the dead hosre until the police show up.

It's too bad Palm annoyed Sony to the point that Sony dumped Palm.





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: palmOne MS Rumor
justauser @ 11/2/2004 9:22:45 PM #
You crack me up Pat

Welcome back!

RhinoSteve @ 11/2/2004 2:24:24 PM #
John,

Welcome back and enjoy the helm. The best thing that PalmOne needs is competition. Get others to use Cobalt, let the B-list that was kept at PalmOne do their Management by Spreadsheet and most of all, start another PDA company to use Cobalt!

The Rhino Charges!
Steve

PalmSource Snookered Twice

Gekko @ 11/2/2004 2:51:51 PM #

Fool me once...


More Apple INCEST
Gekko @ 11/2/2004 6:02:18 PM #

"First I sold them my overpriced company for millions! Then they named me Chairman! What a bunch of a$$holes!" - Jumpin' Jean-Louis

What is it with all of these Apple-Rejects and the INCESTUOUS appointment of Palm leadership??? Didn't Steve Jobs fire all these guys for a reason??? God forbid they bring in an outsider who actually knows what he's doing. I think they're afraid an outsider would come in and fire everyone.

Where's all that fancy BE-OS technology that Palm shareholders paid dearly for and lined Jumpin' Jean pockets??? How many years ago was that purchase and do we see anything in a *REAL WORLD* device??????????????

AMAZING.



RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
Gekko @ 11/2/2004 6:20:02 PM #

At least they paid with Palm funny-money...way to go Yankowski!

Palm Buying Be, Inc.
Posted By: Ed on Thursday, August 16, 2001 9:56:59 AM

Palm, Inc. and Be Incorporated have just announced that Palm is going to buy the intellectual property and technology assets of Be. Palm is also trying to hire Be's engineering team. The price is $11 million, to be paid in Palm stock, following approval from Be shareholders.

"The technology and people from Be are highly regarded,'' said Carl Yankowski, Palm chief executive officer.

http://palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=2236



RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/2/2004 8:58:51 PM #
Where's all that fancy BE-OS technology that Palm shareholders paid dearly for and lined Jumpin' Jean pockets??? How many years ago was that purchase and do we see anything in a *REAL WORLD* device??????????????

Palm really just bought themselves a few engineers with this deal (like Dianne "BDSM" Hackborn, a.k.a. "hackbod") and it turns out that not much of Be's IP could be applied to the PDA front. As if no one knew that right from the beginning! We'll see a little Be-derived eye candy on Cobalt, but not much else. The Be purchase was about as useful as Palm's "brilliant" purchase of Anyday.com - in other words, a real coup.

http://boston.internet.com/news/print.php/383671

If you know anything about how Corporate America works, none of this should be surprising. In the corporate world you grease the Palms of your buddies and they'll return the favor later. Meanwhile Palm stockholders got another (more delicate) part of their anatomy greased, in preparation for something usually reserved for prison showers.





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
rsc1000 @ 11/2/2004 9:07:08 PM #
What a dick. The Beos technology that is currently incorporated in Palm OS is in the form of the Cobolt media server and Cobolt 2d API (might be mistaken about the 2d API - please correct if i am wrong). Why are you asking the question "where is all this Beos technology" of PalmSOurce? They have delivered this technology already - 10 months ago. Ask palmOne or Sony (they are still in the game in Japan afterall). It's fine to be opionated (lord knows i am) but it's important to have opions based on facts.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
Gekko @ 11/2/2004 9:22:35 PM #
>"Meanwhile Palm stockholders got another (more delicate) part of their anatomy greased, in preparation for something usually reserved for prison showers."

No, I don't think a single drop of lube was used.



RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
Gekko @ 11/2/2004 9:25:14 PM #
>"What a dick. The Beos technology that is currently incorporated in Palm OS is in the form of the Cobolt media server and Cobolt 2d API (might be mistaken about the 2d API - please correct if i am wrong)...It's fine to be opionated (lord knows i am) but it's important to have opions based on facts."

Hey COBOLT Boy - learn how to spell and I'll work on my OPIONS.



RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/2/2004 9:29:01 PM #
No, I don't think a single drop of lube was used.

And they didn't even call the next day.



******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
NDPTAL85 @ 11/3/2004 9:42:06 AM #
rsc1000 @ 11/2/2004 9:07:08 PM

"What a dick. The Beos technology that is currently incorporated in Palm OS is in the form of the Cobolt media server and Cobolt 2d API (might be mistaken about the 2d API - please correct if i am wrong). Why are you asking the question "where is all this Beos technology" of PalmSOurce? They have delivered this technology already - 10 months ago. Ask palmOne or Sony (they are still in the game in Japan afterall). It's fine to be opionated (lord knows i am) but it's important to have opions based on facts."

Um so how many current Palm OS customers have access to a pre-emptively multitasking operating system on their Palm? 0? Oh but I thought you said the BeOS tech was currently incorporated? So which is it?


Those kinky little Be engineers... ;-)
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/4/2004 12:16:58 AM #
Where's all that fancy BE-OS technology that Palm shareholders paid dearly for and lined Jumpin' Jean pockets???

Regarding ex Be Bopper, Dianne "BDSM" Hackborn ("hackbod") - if you've ever been tied up in a meeting this charming young lady, you'd agree that whatever Palm paid for Be was a bargain given she was part of the package.

http://www.angryredplanet.com/~hackbod/



******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
hackbod @ 11/4/2004 8:01:06 PM #
Hi The_Voice_of_Reason,

I would please ask that you stop posting statements as fact when you actually are just speculating and making assumptions.

Many of your comments are easily proven to be false. For example, anyone is free to register as a developer and download the current Cobalt simulator. It has been available to third party developers since February, and there are developers who are currently programming against it. It looks like the 6.1 simulator is also now on our web site, so you can download that and see the most recent version in action, complete with pretty new UI.

I understand the frustration with not having Cobalt available on devices yet -- speaking as someone who put a lot of work into it, I think I am at least as impatient as you are. I can assure you, however, that the long wait has little to do with it being "ready for prime time". (I say little because I will freely admit that the version released in December -- before the 6.0.1 point release a few months later -- was not something we wanted shipped on devices, but it was a very important release to get into our licensee's hands. It was a real, running system from which licensee development could begin; there were just a number of rough edges that needed to be fixed before it actually shipped.)

Ironically, at the same time you are complaining about JLG becoming chairman of the board, you are also complaining about palmOne and PalmSource being "effectively the same company." (You actually said divisions, but from any legal perspective you look at that is clearly false -- they are legally completely 100% separate companies.) In fact JLG's transfer to chairmain of the board is breaking the final last little connection between the two companies. And while you can only take this on faith, I can assure you that we have been been operating as different companies for a long time -- well before the official split happened, even.

The rest of your statements and insinuations about the Be acquisition, PalmSource, and other topics also have little to do with reality, but it would be harder for me to prove so. All I can say is that from my perspective the Be aquisition was really important for PalmSource (and they got an incredible deal on Be because of the time that it happened), there is a significant amount of technology in Cobalt that was being developed by Be at the time (no, it is not BeOS -- but in many ways it is our vision for what a next-generation BeOS should be), and PalmSource's engineering group at this point is extremely strong.

Finally I am not sure what your intent was in bringing up my personal involvement in the leather community, but you can rest assured that I don't mind. I have never put anything up on the Web that I had a problem with anyone seeing.



--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

Dear Dianne Hackborn, from your
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/5/2004 2:50:00 AM #
Hi The_Voice_of_Reason,

Hi right back at ya, DK.

I would please ask that you stop posting statements as fact when you actually are just speculating and making assumptions.

Almost everything I posted was based on the facts at hand (some even gleaned from a couple of people that worked at Palm until fairly recently. From what they say, Palm has been an absolute mess for the past couple years.)

Many of your comments are easily proven to be false. For example, anyone is free to register as a developer and download the current Cobalt simulator. It has been available to third party developers since February, and there are developers who are currently programming against it. It looks like the 6.1 simulator is also now on our web site, so you can download that and see the most recent version in action, complete with pretty new UI.

I also can download Microsoft's Flight Simulator, but it's not quite the same as flying a real plane, is it? http://www.microsoft.com/games/combatfs/
Of course, I'm being facetious, but you get the point. DK, PalmOS 6 (Cobalt, if you must) should have been on shipping devices no later than Spring, 2004 if you had any hope of being taken seriously. Time's up and you're a year late. Sure, you had a lot of headaches trying to drag hoary PalmOS kicking and screaming into the 21st century without breaking all the legacy apps, but then, who said life would be easy? You're a Big Grrrl now - no excuses, please. Please call me when the Cobalt 6.3 simulator (with neural net capability) is available.

I understand the frustration with not having Cobalt available on devices yet -- speaking as someone who put a lot of work into it, I think I am at least as impatient as you are.

Actually, at this point I don't give a rat's a$$ when/if PalmOS 6 finally shows up to the ball. I've seen it and I'm not impressed. PalmOS 5.2 and a couple of utilities give me all the added functionality I need from a PDA. I really think that after all the hype, people will be "underwhelmed". Sorry. I know you worked your little butt off to overcome all the lamea$$ed, slackjawed, sloppy(seconds)-coded inherent limitations of PalmOS, but at the end of the day - for even a power user - compared to PalmOS 5.2, Cobalt ain't all that. I realize it wasn't an option, but Palm should have listened to those of us that had suggested they pull a Microsoft and make a (relatively) clean break with the old OS. You could have hacked together an emulator for those looking for backwards compatibility. Heresy? Perhaps. But sometimes you can't move forward while you're looking backward at the same time.

I can assure you, however, that the long wait has little to do with it being "ready for prime time".

Whatever. If you're saying your December, 2003 PalmOS 6 was ready to be put on a shipping device, I just lost all respect for you. Don't expect me to call you in the morning. I would consider the Christmas 2003 PalmOS 6 to be the PalmOS equivalent of pleather. Gotta love those pleather bodices...

(I say little because I will freely admit that the version released in December -- before the 6.0.1 point release a few months later -- was not something we wanted shipped on devices, but it was a very important release to get into our licensee's hands. It was a real, running system from which licensee development could begin; there were just a number of rough edges that needed to be fixed before it actually shipped.)

What, you say? What? In our house? Will you be saying the same thing (i.e. you just were wanting to get SOMETHING into the hands of developers) about PalmOS 6.1 in a few months?

Ironically, at the same time you are complaining about JLG becoming chairman of the board, you are also complaining about palmOne and PalmSource being "effectively the same company." (You actually said divisions, but from any legal perspective you look at that is clearly false -- they are legally completely 100% separate companies.) In fact JLG's transfer to chairmain of the board is breaking the final last little connection between the two companies. And while you can only take this on faith, I can assure you that we have been been operating as different companies for a long time -- well before the official split happened, even.

Pépé joining Palm's Musical Chairs board game is merely another symptom of the inbreeding rampant at the company. When do I get a turn to play Chairperson? Yankowski PROMISED me a turn! No fair! Waaaaaaaah! Yes I know Palm has "officially" been split into two companies. Palm went to great lengths to dramatize this "official" split. They did a good job, too - at last count there are now seven people over the age of two that actually believe the divisions - ummmmm I mean "companies" - are fully autonomous. No doubt Palm's legal team (by the way, why do you have more lawyers than engineers?) has made gosh darned sure that "they are legally completely 100% separate companies". As Einstein used to say: "Whatever."

Since we're taking things on faith, I just inherited a nice Victorian in the Castro I'd like to sell it to you for $10,000. Please send small, unmarked bills to the post box listed below. I will then mail you the keys and directions to your new home.

The rest of your statements and insinuations about the Be acquisition, PalmSource, and other topics also have little to do with reality, but it would be harder for me to prove so.

Whatever, DK.

All I can say is that from my perspective the Be aquisition was really important for PalmSource (and they got an incredible deal on Be because of the time that it happened), there is a significant amount of technology in Cobalt that was being developed by Be at the time (no, it is not BeOS -- but in many ways it is our vision for what a next-generation BeOS should be), and PalmSource's engineering group at this point is extremely strong.

Fact: Be was a dead company. Pépé is the one who "got an incredible deal" for his white elephant.
Fact: Be had essentially zero experience in PDAs.
Fact: HandEra could have created a stable, functional PalmOS 6 - that was ready to ship one year ago - for a fraction of what it cost to buy Be.
Fact: HandEra had no engineers involved in the BDSM scene. (But I'm starting to wonder about Waldron these days...) Iowa BDSM scene - now that's a scary image...
Fact: HandEra was not owned by someone with personal ties to Palm's previous Board of Directors.

Why is it that this "extremely strong" engineering group has nothing in consumers' hands to prove that strength? Oh yeah - it's not up to PalmSource to actually include the new OS in a real PDA. OK. So how come no one seems to want the Amazing, Fantastic, Shiny OS names Cobalt. Is is like that proverbial pretty girl that never had a date because all the boys (and girls) were too intimidated to ask her out? Meanwhile that Little Slut, Garnet gets more action than Amsterdam on a Saturday night. Also, why is it that this "extremely strong" group botched the minor OS bugfix release (candidate) 5.4 so badly that even the native PIM apps were rendered useless? Oh, was that Pa1mone's fault as well? And around and around we go.

Finally I am not sure what your intent was in bringing up my personal involvement in the leather community, but you can rest assured that I don't mind. I have never put anything up on the Web that I had a problem with anyone seeing.

"Leather community"? Good one. Is that like "Collateral damage"?I don't know too many lesbian computer engineers into bonding with dominant, sadistic masochists while wearing pleather but you're probably just confused and merely waiting for the right guy. You know what you really want. You wish! Now get me a beer!

www.angryredplanet.com/~hackbod/adult/

I wonder if Mike Cane will ask you for any photos again. Poor little geezer must be quaking in his pixie boots. You should have emasculated him. Wait a minute.. too late.


Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

Sorry for teeing off on you like this, DK, but it appears you're the only one at PalmSource with the cojones to try to respond to this whole sorry situation the company has found itself in. What pi$$es off so many longtime Palm users is the fact that we seem to be seeing a great OS get smothered by an inept parent and no one at Palm seems to be interested in lifting a finger to save the OS. Maybe you'll prove the naysayers wrong, but at this point the burden of proof is squarely on your pleather-padded shoulders. Good luck. And make sure to keep your resume updated - f***edcompany.com might be getting an addition from Milpitas in the next few months if this keeps up.

Remember: the Safe Word is PPC.

;-O




******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
mikecane @ 11/5/2004 9:34:01 AM #
>slackjawed<

And here I was thinking his BDSM remarks were more of his trademark snideness.

How the hell do you *find* these things?!

That said, lay off the gal. She went out of her way to at least *try* to allow us to get a Slash icon in that Status Bar. (Not that I actually have any idea what to *do* with the code she supplied.)

And, yes, having gone over all the traffic here at PIC about Cobalt, they *should* have broken from the past and started anew. Cobalt isn't The Next Big Thing, but that still doesn't stop me from wanting it on a device (hello, **Tapwave**?).

Maybe after Cobalt, they will do Plutonium and *finally* put in all the shizzle the OS desperately needs...

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
hkklife @ 11/5/2004 10:52:01 AM #
Why is it in all of the years I've been visiting & posting to PIC (back in the days of anonymous posting!) we never had such sordid, insider info as we've had the past month or so!? Now in the death throes of the Palm OS all of the juicy bits come out of the woodwork! Egads, I wonder if it was like this in the dying days of Commodore, Atari, Sinclair etc.

I suppose that all of the "insiders" who have been lurking on the site will finally start to come forth and spill the beans. At least the flames will keep us nice and toasty during the long winter months while we wait for the OS6 units to arrive in the spring ;-)



RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
Admin @ 11/5/2004 12:32:15 PM #
TVoR - I welcome your contributions to the site, but the off-topic personal attacks have to stop. I don't tolerate them against anyone. Sometimes you make good points, but they will be lost if you continue to unnecessarily attack or insult any other poster. -Ryan
RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
hackbod @ 11/5/2004 12:46:56 PM #
This discussion has gone lower than I have any desire to continue (especially since I am just posting in my spare time), so a few final thoughts and then I'll bow out:

* I would argue there is more similarity than difference between desktop and PDA OSes. At the least, one of the things PalmSource had been lacking is a modern OS with protected memory and all that good stuff. The engineers from Be had a fair amount of experience building such a thing, and a lot of technology to bring to the table to bootstrap the effort. That doesn't mean we want to make a desktop OS, but most of the desktop/PDA issues center around the UI model instead of the underlying system architecture.

* Much of the work that has gone in to Cobalt has been architectural -- these are things that primarily help our developers and licensees do new things with the platform, and keep us competative. 6.1 is the first really visible taste of what the new platform will allow us to do at the user level, and you can expect to see much more significant changes in the future. You could draw some fair comparisons to the history of Windows NT -- remember that the first version, 3.1, basically looked the same as the old OS, and following versions provided more obviously visible features.

* Cobalt -is- a new OS with a compatibility layer on top. That is why we gave the two versions of the OS different names. (If you ever hear us talk about UILib, that is what we are talking about -- it is the library in Cobalt that implements the compatibility for all of the traditional UI APIs.) It's pretty naive to say we "could have hacked together an emulator" -- just doing that would have resulted in a really poor user experience for -all- of the applications that we currently have on the platform. We think our application base is extremely important, and don't consider that a viable options. As it is, I think our compatibility layer is actually better than what Apple did for Mac OS X, enough that you generally don't even realize it is there.

* Part of the reason it has taken a long time to get Cobalt devices out is due to the fact that it is a completely new OS. Our current licensees have a lot of experience working with Garnet, and it is a big transition for them to port over to Cobalt -- especially if they have done a lot of customization on Garnet. Fortunately it is a lot easier for them to port applications because of the compatibility layer in Cobalt, but that usually doesn't help for system-level customization. I can assure you it would be a much, much harder problem if we had followed your suggestion and just built a new OS with no compatibility with the past.

* Nobody from PalmSource was talking much for the last couple years probably because the vast majority of us were spending all our time writing a new OS that we couldn't publically say anything about. That's why you saw a flurry of activity when it was finally announced (and again when 6.1 was announced). However, given the quality of discussion on these boards, I can't say I feel much desire to continue much more interaction here. This is definitely not my idea of a positive use of my spare time.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/5/2004 10:47:41 PM #
TVoR - I welcome your contributions to the site, but the off-topic personal attacks have to stop. I don't tolerate them against anyone. Sometimes you make good points, but they will be lost if you continue to unnecessarily attack or insult any other poster. -Ryan

Ryan, this is your site do do with as you please, but I wish you'd at least treat everyone the same.

- First of all, Mike Cane (He started it! Waaaaa! Waaaaa!) has attacked me on numerous occasions and you've said absolutely nothing.

- Secondly, the repartee between Mike Cane, Geeko, myself and a few others is strictly tongue in cheek. Most people over the age of 13 would realize we aren't being serious. (And if any of us was serious we'd deserve to be locked in a padded cell immediately.)

- Thirdly, Flames are Fun™. Remember when Palminfocenter was a place for vibrant debates, joking, non-NDA leaks and other fun stuff? Those days are gone, but please don't try to censor any remaining irreverence out of the site. You are still independent from Palm, right?

- Fourthly, see secondly. WE'RE JOKING, Ryan. Yes we slip in a few viciously honest jabs here or there. And yes we (PIC readers) ask some question that Palm would prefer not be asked. But it's all in good fun - and in an effort to keep Palm honest and from committing apparent suicide.

- Fifthly I ALWAYS make good points. If people voted for the best poster here, I'd be #1. You're lucky I don't charge you... I deserve some kind of formal recognition on the main page, don't you think? I was going to send you a few articles I've written for publication, but maybe now I'll hold off until I receive that PIC Proclamation.

TVoR



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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
mikecane @ 11/6/2004 10:12:30 AM #
>>>- Fifthly I ALWAYS make good points. If people voted for the best poster here, I'd be #1. You're lucky I don't charge you... I deserve some kind of formal recognition on the main page, don't you think? I was going to send you a few articles I've written for publication, but maybe now I'll hold off until I receive that PIC Proclamation.

And people say *I* have an ego. This guy not only takes the cake, he takes all the crumbs, platter, cooking utensils and entire damned *kitchen*.

That being said, it doesn't matter *what* hackbod does in her private life. I have no interest in that (although what SF she reads might be interesting) and am only concerned with WTF Cobalt will bring -- if it ever arrives on a *non*-smartphone unit.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
Strider_mt2k @ 11/6/2004 2:07:40 PM #
I'm just glad someone else will cop to being into Babylon 5.

;)

RE: PalmSource Snookered Thrice (Be-by makes three!)
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/6/2004 2:38:03 PM #
And here I was thinking his BDSM remarks were more of his trademark snideness.

Me, snide? You must have me confused with someone else. Yourself, perhaps?

How the hell do you *find* these things?!

Let's just say a little bird told me. The BDSM scene is alive and well in the Bay Area (isn't that a surprise!) and everyone seems to know everyone else. They also showed me an extremely HOT video taken during one of those BDSM "parties". These girls are unbelievable. And unfortunately, UNAVAILABLE. I'm gonna work on getting an invite as a "guest", but I've been advised that that kind of thing is frowned upon. (And before you ask, no I won't send you a copy of the vid...)

That said, lay off the gal. She went out of her way to at least *try* to allow us to get a Slash icon in that Status Bar. (Not that I actually have any idea what to *do* with the code she supplied.)

I actually have more respect for DK than anyone else left at Palm. She also happens to be a very intelligent young lady. I realize she's a little sensitive and is (understandably) defensive of Be and PalmOS 6, but facts are facts. Cobalt is rapidly becoming an albatross around Palm's neck. I believe Cobalt was also a source of irritation to Sony. The simplicity and pragmatism of PACE is what Palm needed to replicate in PalmOS 6, while at the same time introducing a brand new OS that could handle future expectations of a PDA. Yeah, memory allocation might be a biotch, but as Tonto say, "PalmOS plenty heap good"! Hardware has reached the point that Palm could have created a UNIX flavor tied up with a pretty new GUI (Yeah, that's right, Ms. Hackborn). HandEra could have given us a MEAT and POTATOES new OS that we could have seen on SHIPPING devices over a year ago. Instead, Palm tried to reinvent the wheel with the mishmash of parts (Be engineers) they had lying around. Not a good idea, and the recipe for the disaster which has now befallen Palm. Someone here made a joke earlier about Palm continuing to revise PalmOS 5 (Miss Popularity, "Garnette") to something like version 5.999864. I actually think they'll NEED to do this. With Zero Cobalt devices shipped and several million PalmOS 3, 4 and 5 devices in circulation/active use, how many developers will embrace Cobalt? If I was a professional developer, I'd adopt a wait and see attitude regarding PalmOS 6 and would not recompile until I was sure this ba$tard child ever will be released (into the wild, like Melissa - ;-)).

"Something's rotten in the state of Cobalt"
- Hamlet Nagel

And, yes, having gone over all the traffic here at PIC about Cobalt, they *should* have broken from the past and started anew. Cobalt isn't The Next Big Thing, but that still doesn't stop me from wanting it on a device (hello, **Tapwave**?).

Palm needs to decide if it's too late to salvage Cobalt or if they should just can it and start out with a fresh page. Palm needed to do what the dumba$$es at Apple finally did a few years ago: suck it in and MOVE ON. Obviously, given the facts that over two years have been wasted on Cobalt and this would be a major embarassment, I doubt Nagel has the guts to pull the plug. This OS really is the ba$tard child of Be, and if Palm outsourced rapid development of a replaement OS to e.g. HandEra, most of those former Be-Boppers would be let go. But then MAYBE we'd finally see an advanced OS on a SHIPPING Palm device next year.

Maybe after Cobalt, they will do Plutonium and *finally* put in all the shizzle the OS desperately needs...

Needs shizzle? What da fizzuck you talkin' 'bout? "Slutty Garnette" is da shizzit! Word, mofo. Peace.

http://www.asksnoop.com/





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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
mikecane @ 11/6/2004 4:04:29 PM #
If Garnet is as far as palmOne intends to push PalmOS, they are dumber than I ever thought.

TapWave pushed the envelope. 128MB contiguous RAM vs 64MB on the T3 and T5. It's obvious when those people left p1, they took what brains p1 had left.

Dear Ms. Hackborn, don't take Palm's problems personally
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/6/2004 10:57:52 PM #
This discussion has gone lower than I have any desire to continue (especially since I am just posting in my spare time), so a few final thoughts and then I'll bow out:

DK, if you were really offended by anything I said, I apologize. Please don't accept criticisms of PalmOS and the bumbling ineptitude of Palm as being criticisms of you in any way. I'm sure by now you've become quite frustrated with trying to get things done in Palm's corporate environment. That your group has reached this far working under those suboptimal conditions at Palm is quite an achievement.

* I would argue there is more similarity than difference between desktop and PDA OSes. At the least, one of the things PalmSource had been lacking is a modern OS with protected memory and all that good stuff. The engineers from Be had a fair amount of experience building such a thing, and a lot of technology to bring to the table to bootstrap the effort. That doesn't mean we want to make a desktop OS, but most of the desktop/PDA issues center around the UI model instead of the underlying system architecture.

I agree that given the current level of hardware now available, PDAs can now afford to use desktop type OSes, provided the interface is appropriate for their very different data entry and access paradigm. (For the benefit of those unfamiliar with Palm's history) when Palm started nine years ago the übercheap hardware it ran on was the rate limiting step, so their choice of Kadak's AMX kernel and maintaining the KISS principle (eschewing multitasking) was a good idea. But over the years - out of necessity - PalmOS grew haphazzardly, like a city sprawling WELL beyond its borders. After living with years of hacks, FFS, VFS etc, Palm should have just started COMPLETELY from scratch with no compromises. But they were too lazy/indecisive to bite the bullet and get this done until the need to compete with PPC features finally exposed several of the PalmOS limitations. For years, Palm's standard response to criticisms of the OS was "That's not a bug, it's a feature!" Eventually more and more people grew tred of hearing that sad refrain and moved on to other platforms. After Sony and HandEra hacked the he11 out of PalmOS just to get some basic things done, Palm finally committed to upgrading the OS. But then the bottom fell out of the PDA market and tons of staff were being let go. What's a poor PDA company going to do? How can we update the OS with a skeleton crew of disillusioned engineers? Enter, Stage Left: the Be Boppers. (That's when you come in, DK!)

* Much of the work that has gone in to Cobalt has been architectural -- these are things that primarily help our developers and licensees do new things with the platform, and keep us competative. 6.1 is the first really visible taste of what the new platform will allow us to do at the user level, and you can expect to see much more significant changes in the future. You could draw some fair comparisons to the history of Windows NT -- remember that the first version, 3.1, basically looked the same as the old OS, and following versions provided more obviously visible features.

Unfortunately, this isn't 1998 and you don't have the luxury of being essentially the only game in town. Palm can't afford to wait two or three years as Cobalt matures and gets over its growing pains. Palm needed a modern OS in 2003. It's now almost 2005. At this rate, PalmOS 6 will soon become yet another useful OS that was killed by the ineptitude of the company selling it. Palm's board needs to take some lessons from the history of Amiga, OS/2, BeOS and Mac. History repeats. Repeatedly.

* Cobalt -is- a new OS with a compatibility layer on top. That is why we gave the two versions of the OS different names. (If you ever hear us talk about UILib, that is what we are talking about -- it is the library in Cobalt that implements the compatibility for all of the traditional UI APIs.) It's pretty naive to say we "could have hacked together an emulator" -- just doing that would have resulted in a really poor user experience for -all- of the applications that we currently have on the platform. We think our application base is extremely important, and don't consider that a viable options. As it is, I think our compatibility layer is actually better than what Apple did for Mac OS X, enough that you generally don't even realize it is there.

For PalmOS 6, I had expected that Palm would have been brave enough to think UNIX flavor + pretty GUI + PACE clone (the "emulator" I naively envisioned being folded into the Clean Sheet™ OS) running on modern 400MHz processors. Give 30 experienced engineers 1 year to bind all these elements together. I think it could have (and should have) been done.

* Part of the reason it has taken a long time to get Cobalt devices out is due to the fact that it is a completely new OS. Our current licensees have a lot of experience working with Garnet, and it is a big transition for them to port over to Cobalt -- especially if they have done a lot of customization on Garnet. Fortunately it is a lot easier for them to port applications because of the compatibility layer in Cobalt, but that usually doesn't help for system-level customization. I can assure you it would be a much, much harder problem if we had followed your suggestion and just built a new OS with no compatibility with the past.

Yes we've heard that excuse before. A few times, in fact. Unfortunately excuses mean nothing when the market marches by and leaves you standing still + watching your market share slip through your fingers. I never suggested Palm should have "just built a new OS with no compatibility with the past". Please don't put words in my mouth. Palm's major advantage over PPC (besides its superior UI) has been the PalmOS library of apps, even though this is much less of a factor than it was even two years ago. There are many ways of maintaining backwards compatibility while still moving forward with a "new" OS. Mac OS X, PalmOS 5 (with PACE) and Cobalt are three examples I'm sure you're familiar with. And which of these methods of instituting an emulation mode (or more correctly "compatibility layer", as you phrase it) is the best? Actually, it doesn't matter. If they're transparent enough to the end user (adequate speed, stability, etc.), since most end users aren't computer geeks, they really don't care how the end result is achieved. Just look at FFS and VFS. You might think these are ugly hacks/kludges/nasty code. But they do the job, and were coded fairly quickly. I think the Be influx of engineers with "pie in the sky" ideals of creating perfect, pretty code resulted in Palm(Source) losing its focus. All you needed to do was quickly produce a stable, next-generation PDA OS. Not the ultimate scalable version of HAL 2000 you seem to be agonizing over month after month. Hoffman's a very smart guy, but I still don't think he gets "the big picture". But then what would I know - I'm just an "outsider" ;-O. Heh Heh Heh...

* Nobody from PalmSource was talking much for the last couple years probably because the vast majority of us were spending all our time writing a new OS that we couldn't publically say anything about. That's why you saw a flurry of activity when it was finally announced (and again when 6.1 was announced). However, given the quality of discussion on these boards, I can't say I feel much desire to continue much more interaction here. This is definitely not my idea of a positive use of my spare time.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

Sorry you feel that way. I really am. You were truly a breath of fresh air around here and will be missed. It was nice to hear from someone in the PalmOS trenches who understand exactly what's going on instead of hearing the typical apologist nonsense from Michael Mace. Take care, DK. Maybe I'll see you around.

;-)





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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
hackbod @ 11/7/2004 3:09:11 AM #
"How the hell do you *find* these things?!"

All you need to do is click on the link to my profile, click on my home page there, and you will be at the exact same URL that has been posted here. I have never hidden these parts of my private life (hell, many people at work are well aware, in general, of my extracurricular activities), so it's really silly to make such a big deal of it here.

Of course the comments that TVoR goes on and makes about the BDSM scene, while implying some knowledge of it, are basically completely wrong. But that seems to be par for the course for this poster.

Except that... yes, everyone does know everyone, and now probably have a good idea of who the person is that TVoR has been talking with. Of the people who know me, there are very few who are in the scene and would have a negative opinion of the Be acquisition. I wonder how happy this person would be to find out that some conversations he has had with a friend have been used to publicly attack me -- and pointlessly try to "out" me. People in the scene really don't take kindly to that kind of behavior.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

Personal attacks demean us all. -Be ashamed.-
Strider_mt2k @ 11/7/2004 8:00:44 AM #
I think it's shameful to bring ANY personal stuff into a non-personal argument. I don't care WAHT it is.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and bet that the VAST MAJORITY of people who log on here are interested primarily in PALM OS and PALM OS HANDHELDS, and NOT what someone does in their off hours.

If you cannot make an argument and have those arguments stand on their own, then concede the point like an adult and SIT DOWN SIR.

Dredging up personal stuff on someone in some awkward attempt at salvaging a point in an argument is one of the lowest, slimiest things I have ever seen pulled here.
"Seriously F-ed up" as it was put to me by an associate.

(I can hear the flame throwers gassing up as I type this, but it hasn't stopped me from voicing my opinion in the past either.)

As people continue to conduct themselves in this manner (please take the time to read who posts the most of what here in the news section), there will be a widening credibility gap when it comes to PIC.

How can you expect anyone to ever take your technical views seriously if you tarnish what might actually be a valid point with a personal attack?

The answer is they won't take you seriously at all (and don't).


RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
mikecane @ 11/7/2004 1:12:34 PM #
Her! Hear!

Now back to flaying Bradley, Nagel, Slotnick, et al...

OK, people. Let's all just take a deep breath and... RELAX.
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/7/2004 3:20:03 PM #
so it's really silly to make such a big deal of it here.

Wow, Mistress Dianne! Would you please take a chill pill? Who's making a big deal of anything? What you do after 5 p.m. is really a non-issue. In fact, your lifestyle is almost tame for The City. You should know better than to make assumptions about people you don't know. I thought you had a better sense of humor than this, DK.

Of course the comments that TVoR goes on and makes about the BDSM scene, while implying some knowledge of it, are basically completely wrong. But that seems to be par for the course for this poster.

Whatever. I'm not a part of the SF BDSM crowd, I just know a few people who are. I never claimed to have much knowledge of the scenes in SF and South Bay. Please don't try to put words (or anything else, Mistress ;-)) into my mouth.

Except that... yes, everyone does know everyone, and now probably have a good idea of who the person is that TVoR has been talking with. Of the people who know me, there are very few who are in the scene and would have a negative opinion of the Be acquisition. I wonder how happy this person would be to find out that some conversations he has had with a friend have been used to publicly attack me -- and pointlessly try to "out" me. People in the scene really don't take kindly to that kind of behavior.

DK, please don't get all paranoid and start trying to find out who I talked to. You won't find out (trust me) and you'll probably end up supecting one of your friends that is completely "innocent". I hope you don't do something really bad to the poor guy you're suspecting talked to me. Remember, it's all about trust. Don't be a hater, Dianne. ;-)

I actually posted an apology to you yesterday in this thread, but if you don't mind, I'd now like to take that apology back. Now go sit in the corner, young lady. When you're ready settle down, let me know and I'll give you your apology back.

Remember, the Safe Word is PPC.

XOXO,
TVoR





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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
hackbod @ 11/7/2004 3:45:29 PM #
"For PalmOS 6, I had expected that Palm would have been brave enough to think UNIX flavor + pretty GUI + PACE clone (the "emulator" I naively envisioned being folded into the Clean Sheet™ OS) running on modern 400MHz processors. Give 30 experienced engineers 1 year to bind all these elements together. I think it could have (and should have) been done."

Easy claims, for someone who is essentially posting anonymously. Tell me, what is your engineering background to be able to make such a statement? Have you thought about these things:

* What the heck do you mean by "UNIX flavor"? Do you know what that is? (Bonus question: do you know what it is about the ARM architecture that makes it very difficult to efficiently implement the traditional Unix process model?) Are you talking about licensing an existing kernel like Linux or FreeBSD? Sure, licensing this stuff makes sense... which is why we licensed STREAMS for our IO subsystem. The kernel itself is a very small part -- we actually have only a few engineers working on ours, not much more than what would be needed to do customization and integration if we had licensed it. Oh and think about this: Be already had a fully functional Unix-like protected memory kernel, one that had been in production use for many years. Cobalt did not ship with the BeOS kernel. Are you saying the Be engineers are so stupid that they just kind-of forgot they had this thing?

* What is this pretty UI? Are you talking about running X Windows? Maybe embedded KDE? What are the trade-offs of these? If you aren't talking about licensing something, how is this any different than what we did for Cobalt?

* PACE clone. Cobalt -has- PACE. That is what runs all of the existing applications. The main difference I can imagine between what is there and what you are thinking is that in Cobalt PACE (for the most part) doesn't take care of translating the old system calls into what is needed in the new system architecture. Instead, we implemented that part of the compatibility layer outside of PACE so that (a) ARM native applications could also use them (to ease porting of existing applications to ARM); and (b) for the initial release we could re-use and grow the existing APIs instead of introducing a completely new application framework. This decision was a significant measure in cutting down on the time to market: by making the traditional APIs available in ARM it was much easier for us to port all of our own existing apps, and we could avoid a -ton- of work in designing, documenting, and testing a full set of new APIs.

"I'm sure by now you've become quite frustrated with trying to get things done in Palm's corporate environment."

Actually, I am quite happy at PalmSource these days. In my opinion, it is in far, far better shape than the Palm that I started working at three years ago. All of us at PalmSource have put in a lot of effort into getting the company moving in the right direction and working well. While things could still be better (nothing is perfect), much of that effort has paid off. And really, building a production-quality OS from basically the ground-up in less than three years is a claim that very, very few companies can make.

Of course you continue to insist that I work at Palm, a company whose internal behavior these days I know nothing about, so probably nothing I can say is going to get through your think skull.

"There are many ways of maintaining backwards compatibility while still moving forward with a "new" OS. Mac OS X, PalmOS 5 (with PACE) and Cobalt are three examples I'm sure you're familiar with."

That's funny. In fact, with Cobalt we took the same basic approach that Mac OS X did for backwards compatibility. And PalmOS 5 is a completely different situation, since it is the EXACT SAME OS, just running on different hardware. If you want to compare PalmOS 5 to something, you'd be far closer looking at Apple's transition from 68k to PowerPC.

"I think the Be influx of engineers with "pie in the sky" ideals of creating perfect, pretty code resulted in Palm(Source) losing its focus."

Would you care to name any of these ideals and how they were expressed in Cobalt? In fact Be had a long history of doing very practically-oriented work on a previous OS, with a product to show for it. Whether or not BeOS was successful in the market is irrelevant to this -- sure, you could argue that trying to make a new desktop OS was a bad idea, but you can't argue that Be didn't actually make one, one that worked, and worked well. Not only that, but the Be engineers were able to avoid all of these feelings of perfection and then make that OS work on really, really low-end hardware in BeIA.

I have heard this argument before, and whenever it comes up I like to tell this story about my time at Be. When we were doing BeIA, we had a problem. There was no hard drive and thus no virtual memory, so if you started to run out of memory the entire system would tend to crash and crash hard. (This is one of those interesting characteristics that you tend to see in a "UNIX flavor" OS.) This was especially troublesome because our main UI was a web browser, an application whose memory consumption is really hard to control, and whose code that we had licensed from a third party. Worse, we also had to run Java, Flash, and RealPlayer... at least one of which had pretty bad memory leaks.

Now addressing this problem cleanly would require a fair amount of architecture work on the system, and we had a tight schedule to keep. Instead, this is the solution that was used: when the system started running out of memory, it would just steal memory from the web browser for use in other processes. That allowed the OS itself to continue to run. Of course, the web browser would eventually crash, but we could deal with that by just freezing the screen, killing that process, and restarting it. Because the browser was able to restart where it left off, the user usually wouldn't even be aware of what happened.

That is truly pie-in-the-sky thinking, isn't it?

"Just look at FFS and VFS. You might think these are ugly hacks/kludges/nasty code. But they do the job, and were coded fairly quickly."

And they continue to exist in Cobalt. So your point is...?

"All you needed to do was quickly produce a stable, next-generation PDA OS."

Software development looks -so- much easier in theory. There is a reason software schedules tend to slip. And platform-level software development (where one needs to deal with compatibility and other such meta-issues) introduces another huge wrinkle into the effort.

One thing my experience in the software industry has taught me: be very skeptical of anyone who makes any claims about the amount of effort needed to do something, unless they have either implemented the same kind of thing before or have lots and lots of experience working on related types of software. And if you don't have the advantage of either of these things (often the case when you are doing novel software), all you can do is be aware that in the beginning you are basically making guesses and absolutely must keep careful track of progress so that you can adjust schedules, features, and plans, when ultimately you find you need to. Even better, have lots and lots of back-up plans: "the software is going to do X, Y and X... but if a problem comes up in this Y thing we don't understand, we can fall back on doing X and W which we do understand."

Personally, I think one of the things we desperately needed to do at PalmSource was to have a big vision for our platform that could drive really novel work, while ensuring that we weren't dependent on all of that novel work actually panning out (because some of it won't). Without that, you end up just doing small safe incremental feature after feature, and are unable to really make a contribution to the industry. A platform company is going to have a really hard time surviving in the long term if it can't make these kinds of contributions.

"Hoffman's a very smart guy, but I still don't think he gets "the big picture"."

Oh my ghod, that is -so- funny. So tell me, where do you know George from? Or is this again more grumbling from your friend who left PalmSource a couple years ago? In fact, of all the people at PalmSource, George is probably the best overall "big picture" thinker we have. I only wish I had 1/10 of the ability as he does at this.

While we were developing Cobalt, George pushed me over and over to be more agressive at doing only what we needed now and not try to dot every i and cross every t. In fact, if you wanted to pick someone who was a perfectionist, I would be a much better candidate than George.

The thing that your friend doesn't understand is that George really -is- able to look at the big picture. That means he can come up with a huge vision of what we want to accomplish, and at the same time figure out which small parts of that we should actually -do- in a particular release to specifically address what we need now, while still fitting that work into the overall vision. That is an invaluable skill to have for a platform company, since it helps you avoid a lot of cases of shooting yourself in the long-term foot while still meeting short-term deadlines.

"It was nice to hear from someone in the PalmOS trenches who understand exactly what's going."

So now you finally admit that you don't know the situation in PalmSource? (Or at best all of your information is based on comments from someone who left two years ago.) Jeeze.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
hackbod @ 11/7/2004 5:12:50 PM #
"Wow, Mistress Dianne! ... Who's making a big deal of anything?"

Are you even aware of what you are writing?

"DK, please don't get all paranoid and start trying to find out who I talked to."

Actually, I have some responsibility to do so. You clearly posted this information without knowing how out I was. It so happens that this isn't an issue for me, but there are many people in the scene who are not out at work and such a situation could cause them a really big problem. Your behavior here crosses over a significant line that is, for good reasons, generally not tolerated in the scene.

"Remember, it's all about trust."

Which this kind of behavior completely destroys.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

Breathe in... breathe out... breathe in... breathe out... br
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/7/2004 9:00:07 PM #
(Since my previous post was deleted for some strange reason, I'll say it again for the last time.)

Dianne, I'd suggest you go back and read my posts + your responses. Next time, please take a deep breath and THINK before you press "send".





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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
mikecane @ 11/8/2004 4:18:46 PM #
hackbod, is George the one who made sure wireless was a priority for 6.1? And what about putting landscape in there (well, I hope it is; those 3 screensnaps PIC posted at the time of the debut didn't have the LS icon on all of them)?

Gee, wouldn't it be nice if PalmSource became hugely successful and wound up acquiring *palmOne* -- in order to save the platform from fools!

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
hackbod @ 11/8/2004 5:00:31 PM #
Not really, George is in engineering. He is my boss -- he is a senior director, reporting directly to the VP of engineering. It is the marketing people who decide what is actually in the product. Though that said, with George's "big picture" view of the system architecture, he tends to make a big contribution to the overall vision of the platform.

The telephony focus, however, is something that started before 6.1. One of the big design points of Cobalt from the beginning has actually been telephony. For example, way back in the beginning on the project, when explaining why we wanted to do a real multi-threaded UI one of the examples I often used was being able to interact with the user about an incoming phone call regardless of the state of the current application.

And yes, Landscape support is a part of 6.1. We do both hardware and software landscape, so it will be supported on every device where it makes sense. (Probably doesn't make sense on a square screen device.) A number of those screen shots looked like they were from older development builds of the OS, which is probably why they didn't have the icon.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

Mike Cane: Is it all coming into focus for you now?
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 2/21/2005 2:11:38 AM #
Palm needs to decide if it's too late to salvage Cobalt or if they should just can it and start out with a fresh page. Palm needed to do what the dumba$$es at Apple finally did a few years ago: suck it in and MOVE ON. Obviously, given the facts that over two years have been wasted on Cobalt and this would be a major embarassment, I doubt Nagel has the guts to pull the plug. This OS really is the ba$tard child of Be, and if Palm outsourced rapid development of a replaement OS to e.g. HandEra, most of those former Be-Boppers would be let go. But then MAYBE we'd finally see an advanced OS on a SHIPPING Palm device next year.

What do you say now, Nostradamus-boy?





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Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

*************************************************************************************





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

Told you so...
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 2/21/2005 12:33:03 PM #
"For PalmOS 6, I had expected that Palm would have been brave enough to think UNIX flavor + pretty GUI + PACE clone (the "emulator" I naively envisioned being folded into the Clean Sheet™ OS) running on modern 400MHz processors. Give 30 experienced engineers 1 year to bind all these elements together. I think it could have (and should have) been done."

Easy claims, for someone who is essentially posting anonymously. Tell me, what is your engineering background to be able to make such a statement? Have you thought about these things:

* What the heck do you mean by "UNIX flavor"? Do you know what that is? (Bonus question: do you know what it is about the ARM architecture that makes it very difficult to efficiently implement the traditional Unix process model?) Are you talking about licensing an existing kernel like Linux or FreeBSD? Sure, licensing this stuff makes sense... which is why we licensed STREAMS for our IO subsystem. The kernel itself is a very small part -- we actually have only a few engineers working on ours, not much more than what would be needed to do customization and integration if we had licensed it. Oh and think about this: Be already had a fully functional Unix-like protected memory kernel, one that had been in production use for many years. Cobalt did not ship with the BeOS kernel. Are you saying the Be engineers are so stupid that they just kind-of forgot they had this thing?

* What is this pretty UI? Are you talking about running X Windows? Maybe embedded KDE? What are the trade-offs of these? If you aren't talking about licensing something, how is this any different than what we did for Cobalt?

* PACE clone. Cobalt -has- PACE. That is what runs all of the existing applications. The main difference I can imagine between what is there and what you are thinking is that in Cobalt PACE (for the most part) doesn't take care of translating the old system calls into what is needed in the new system architecture. Instead, we implemented that part of the compatibility layer outside of PACE so that (a) ARM native applications could also use them (to ease porting of existing applications to ARM); and (b) for the initial release we could re-use and grow the existing APIs instead of introducing a completely new application framework. This decision was a significant measure in cutting down on the time to market: by making the traditional APIs available in ARM it was much easier for us to port all of our own existing apps, and we could avoid a -ton- of work in designing, documenting, and testing a full set of new APIs.

Now that Nagel's seen the light, it looks like you're having to do EXACTLY what I said you needed to do, Dianne: PRODUCE PalmLinux. I'm amazed you had the cojones to come on PIC and make all those posts trying to discredit me when you knew I was telling the truth all along. *SIGH* I guess your boss put you up to it, right Mistress?

"I'm sure by now you've become quite frustrated with trying to get things done in Palm's corporate environment."

Actually, I am quite happy at PalmSource these days. In my opinion, it is in far, far better shape than the Palm that I started working at three years ago. All of us at PalmSource have put in a lot of effort into getting the company moving in the right direction and working well. While things could still be better (nothing is perfect), much of that effort has paid off. And really, building a production-quality OS from basically the ground-up in less than three years is a claim that very, very few companies can make.

Of course you continue to insist that I work at Palm, a company whose internal behavior these days I know nothing about, so probably nothing I can say is going to get through your think skull.

If you're so happy with PalmSource will you still be working there in 6 months? I hear you won't.

"There are many ways of maintaining backwards compatibility while still moving forward with a "new" OS. Mac OS X, PalmOS 5 (with PACE) and Cobalt are three examples I'm sure you're familiar with."

That's funny. In fact, with Cobalt we took the same basic approach that Mac OS X did for backwards compatibility. And PalmOS 5 is a completely different situation, since it is the EXACT SAME OS, just running on different hardware. If you want to compare PalmOS 5 to something, you'd be far closer looking at Apple's transition from 68k to PowerPC.

*YAWN* Wake us up when you have a STABLE, SHIPPING version of PalmLinux like what Apple did with Mac OS X. Until that day, it's all talk. And you know what talk is good for...

"I think the Be influx of engineers with "pie in the sky" ideals of creating perfect, pretty code resulted in Palm(Source) losing its focus."

Would you care to name any of these ideals and how they were expressed in Cobalt? In fact Be had a long history of doing very practically-oriented work on a previous OS, with a product to show for it. Whether or not BeOS was successful in the market is irrelevant to this -- sure, you could argue that trying to make a new desktop OS was a bad idea, but you can't argue that Be didn't actually make one, one that worked, and worked well. Not only that, but the Be engineers were able to avoid all of these feelings of perfection and then make that OS work on really, really low-end hardware in BeIA.

I have heard this argument before, and whenever it comes up I like to tell this story about my time at Be. When we were doing BeIA, we had a problem. There was no hard drive and thus no virtual memory, so if you started to run out of memory the entire system would tend to crash and crash hard. (This is one of those interesting characteristics that you tend to see in a "UNIX flavor" OS.) This was especially troublesome because our main UI was a web browser, an application whose memory consumption is really hard to control, and whose code that we had licensed from a third party. Worse, we also had to run Java, Flash, and RealPlayer... at least one of which had pretty bad memory leaks.

Now addressing this problem cleanly would require a fair amount of architecture work on the system, and we had a tight schedule to keep. Instead, this is the solution that was used: when the system started running out of memory, it would just steal memory from the web browser for use in other processes. That allowed the OS itself to continue to run. Of course, the web browser would eventually crash, but we could deal with that by just freezing the screen, killing that process, and restarting it. Because the browser was able to restart where it left off, the user usually wouldn't even be aware of what happened.

That is truly pie-in-the-sky thinking, isn't it?

Strange how history seems to be repeating with you Be people, doesn't it? You just can't seem to make the (HUGE) step from an interesting collection of ideas to a STABLE, SHIPPING product that anyone wants to use. Palm needed a quick and dirty next-generation PalmLinux. Instead they got a late, half-baked Cobalt. Be has effectively destroyed the PalmOS platform. Congratulations, DK.

"Just look at FFS and VFS. You might think these are ugly hacks/kludges/nasty code. But they do the job, and were coded fairly quickly."

And they continue to exist in Cobalt. So your point is...?

The point is Be engineers were typically never any good at quickly producing RESULTS-oriented code. That legacy has now come back to bite you in your little a$$.

"All you needed to do was quickly produce a stable, next-generation PDA OS."

Software development looks -so- much easier in theory. There is a reason software schedules tend to slip. And platform-level software development (where one needs to deal with compatibility and other such meta-issues) introduces another huge wrinkle into the effort.

One thing my experience in the software industry has taught me: be very skeptical of anyone who makes any claims about the amount of effort needed to do something, unless they have either implemented the same kind of thing before or have lots and lots of experience working on related types of software. And if you don't have the advantage of either of these things (often the case when you are doing novel software), all you can do is be aware that in the beginning you are basically making guesses and absolutely must keep careful track of progress so that you can adjust schedules, features, and plans, when ultimately you find you need to. Even better, have lots and lots of back-up plans: "the software is going to do X, Y and X... but if a problem comes up in this Y thing we don't understand, we can fall back on doing X and W which we do understand."

Yes, software development (and especially OS development) is hard work. Is that somehow news to you?

Personally, I think one of the things we desperately needed to do at PalmSource was to have a big vision for our platform that could drive really novel work, while ensuring that we weren't dependent on all of that novel work actually panning out (because some of it won't). Without that, you end up just doing small safe incremental feature after feature, and are unable to really make a contribution to the industry. A platform company is going to have a really hard time surviving in the long term if it can't make these kinds of contributions.

More important than a "big vision" would have been keeping the platform alive by shipping a REAL product on schedule.

"Hoffman's a very smart guy, but I still don't think he gets "the big picture"."

Oh my ghod, that is -so- funny. So tell me, where do you know George from? Or is this again more grumbling from your friend who left PalmSource a couple years ago? In fact, of all the people at PalmSource, George is probably the best overall "big picture" thinker we have. I only wish I had 1/10 of the ability as he does at this.

While we were developing Cobalt, George pushed me over and over to be more agressive at doing only what we needed now and not try to dot every i and cross every t. In fact, if you wanted to pick someone who was a perfectionist, I would be a much better candidate than George.

The thing that your friend doesn't understand is that George really -is- able to look at the big picture. That means he can come up with a huge vision of what we want to accomplish, and at the same time figure out which small parts of that we should actually -do- in a particular release to specifically address what we need now, while still fitting that work into the overall vision. That is an invaluable skill to have for a platform company, since it helps you avoid a lot of cases of shooting yourself in the long-term foot while still meeting short-term deadlines.

So, do you think Hoffman is going to stay with PalmSource after what happened? What's that, DK? I can't hear you...

"It was nice to hear from someone in the PalmOS trenches who understand exactly what's going."

So now you finally admit that you don't know the situation in PalmSource? (Or at best all of your information is based on comments from someone who left two years ago.) Jeeze.

That's definitely an interesting way to interpret what I said. Wow. No more cafffeine for you.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

For how much longer will that title apply, DK?

CARPE NOCTEM







*************************************************************************************

Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

*************************************************************************************





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

Mike Cane: Will Palm still be alive in two years?
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 2/24/2005 3:31:30 AM #
Shine up your cracked crystal ball, Swami.





*************************************************************************************

Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

*************************************************************************************





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

Will p1/PS be around in two years?!
mikecane @ 2/24/2005 5:51:19 PM #
At this point, I don't give an eff. Cobalt is a no-show. Palmix is still a mirage. I have zero interest in a Treo -- or any p1 product with that FRAM scheme.

I'm waiting for Sony to continue to shrink the U until it can compete in pocketability with the OQO.

PDAs are dead.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 2/25/2005 3:06:52 AM #
At this point, I don't give an eff. Cobalt is a no-show. Palmix is still a mirage. I have zero interest in a Treo -- or any p1 product with that FRAM scheme.

I'm waiting for Sony to continue to shrink the U until it can compete in pocketability with the OQO.

PDAs are dead.

If you really feel that way, why are you still here? Either buy a TH55 or S T F U. From now on Palms will be shipping with that stinky effedRAM™ (F-RAM), so get used to it. If you can't even afford a $500 CLIE, I doubt you will EVER buy a U series Sony. Stop fooling yourself, Cane. The closest you'll ever get to a U series is a store display.

Newsflash: PalmLinux will be finished by the end of 2005. The deadline has been set.






*************************************************************************************

Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

*************************************************************************************





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: PalmSource Snookered Twice
mikecane @ 2/25/2005 12:04:02 PM #
>>>If you really feel that way, why are you still here?

To annoy the mnothereff out of YOU.

How do shocking baaaaaaad artificial dreams end?
Fake Jeff Hawkins @ 3/25/2008 5:55:02 AM #
The final clue: The Usual Suspects.

;-O





...and to all a good-night!




***POOF!***


TWO nightmares in ONE day

mikecane @ 11/2/2004 4:57:36 PM #
One fulfilled -- that fop Gassee now in charge of PalmSource.

The second yet to be: dumbfounding LANDSLIDE VICTORY for Dubya.

Just you remember over these next four years: *I* voted for NADER. (At least I voted *for* someone, not *against* someone!)

Oh, and then the chaser: on 10/5 palmOne announces that everyone should really switch to PPC because *they* will be putting out an MS Smurfpone!



RE: TWO nightmares in ONE day
LiveFaith @ 11/2/2004 5:18:12 PM #
Wrong! 10/5 is the day that the Dell X50p & Treo 800g will be released.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com
RE: TWO nightmares in ONE day
mikecane @ 11/3/2004 9:58:59 AM #
What are those? A Dell running PalmOS and a Treo running WinMob?

(Oh, if only it was so. I know of two delightful posters here who'd have instant heart attacks!)

How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm??????

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/2/2004 10:33:27 PM #
If someone is willing spend a couple of hours doing some REAL reporting, this would make an interesting story. Total up the payouts to these executives over the past 5 years:

Todd Bradley
David Nagel
Jeff Hawkins
Donna Dubinsky
Carl Yankowski
Jean-Louis Gassee

Over $50 million? HMS Palm has been fully plundered. Time to get off and scuttle the ship. Ahoy, mateys!



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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm??????
just_little_me @ 11/3/2004 12:57:13 AM #
You are a complete twat mate. Seriously, go back to your 7-Eleven and do us all a favour.


JLM.

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm??????
mikecane @ 11/3/2004 8:28:27 AM #
Sorry, JLM, but I think he's right (one of his very, very few lucid moments). This is the sort of corporate fiduciary abuse that made me vote for Nader.

Nader 2008: You wish you had him in 2004!

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm??????
Token User @ 11/3/2004 8:58:07 AM #
Over $50 million? HMS Palm has been fully plundered. Time to get off and scuttle the ship. Ahoy, mateys!

I was starting to think that TVoR and Gekko were two different sides of a schitzoid personality - so was really surprised to see this VERY lucid and inciteful comment. Especialy after the complete drek about Pa1mone and PalmSource being the same company, and the lack of BeOS input into the PalmOS up above.

I wanted to buy Palm stock at the time ... I thought the market was at the right point, but it went too high too fast, then cam crashing down. Better to invest in Walmart - the Palm group of companies are fading fast.

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

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm??????
hkklife @ 11/3/2004 9:39:32 AM #
I myself figured that TVoR was Facey/;-o under a different handle. Come to think of it, didn't someone post on PIC a year or two back some approximate amounts of the various golden parachutes that had been issued at Palm Inc. over the previous couple of glory years (like '98-'01)?

Unrelated T5 spotting:
Oh, for what it's worth, the overpriced travesty that is the T5 now has a cradle available for it on P1's site
Just a mere $50 for the cradle and you also get the lovely benefit of a audio out port on it as well.

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm??????
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/3/2004 4:26:31 PM #
I was starting to think that TVoR and Gekko were two different sides of a schitzoid personality - so was really surprised to see this VERY lucid and inciteful comment. Especialy after the complete drek about Pa1mone and PalmSource being the same company, and the lack of BeOS input into the PalmOS up above.

I wanted to buy Palm stock at the time ... I thought the market was at the right point, but it went too high too fast, then cam crashing down. Better to invest in Walmart - the Palm group of companies are fading fast.

The five faces of Geeko will continue after this brief commercial message. Maybe I'm actually Ska, after dropping the fake Asian "accent". Or FaceMan, from the A Team. You decide.

Palm's "split" was a sham that fooled no one besides the naive fanboys posting here.

Be's scanty assets did not just justify the price paid. Palm execs were just doing an old buddy a favor by floating Gasse some $$$ for a nearly defunct company.




******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm??????
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/4/2004 10:23:15 PM #
Sorry, JLM, but I think he's right (one of his many, many lucid moments). This is the sort of corporate fiduciary abuse that made me waste my vote by voting for Nader.

Nader 2008: "Sure I caused an ImBushile to win TWICE just in order to feed my own ego, but please still vote for me!"


Oh oh.

- Mike Cane admitting I am right.
- The pathetic Boston Red Sox winning the World Series.
- George W. Bush (with a reported IQ of less than 90!) being elected to a second term as PRESIDENT of these United States.

Was it Revelations or Nostradamus that listed these as signs that the End is Near?





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm??????
rcartwright @ 11/4/2004 11:10:21 PM #
Actually, if one troubles to look the "looters" didn't get cash but stock options valued by the media at that time. I had occassion to be at the SEC website and there was no reporting of cash but of stock options. Which do not appear to be exercised other than a steady selling of small lots by the officers and directors of Palm One. No insider can cash out in a big way w/o big problems, so most sell off on a regular schedule in order to diversify and not give the appearence of insider trading.

PalmOne has a lot of treasury stock to fill options for this,so they do not have to buy on the market. PalmOne's not wasting cash with exec comp.. there doing it the old fashioned way by spending more than they earn from bad products.

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm??????
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/5/2004 2:07:15 AM #
Actually, if one troubles to look the "looters" didn't get cash but stock options valued by the media at that time. I had occassion to be at the SEC website and there was no reporting of cash but of stock options. Which do not appear to be exercised other than a steady selling of small lots by the officers and directors of Palm One. No insider can cash out in a big way w/o big problems, so most sell off on a regular schedule in order to diversify and not give the appearence of insider trading.

Palm's Board members that have looted the company have received an interesting combination of stocks, $ and payments for useless intellectual property and companies. Anyone remember the money paid out to one exec for a set of SD cards with pre-installed programs that Palm was supposed to sell on their website? Or the "consultant" fees paid to several former Board members? Or the $1.4 million golden parachute Palm gave Carl Yankowski when he was ousted? The ridiculous purchase of Be was just one of the most egregious examples - exactly WTF was a never-was desktop OS going to contribute to a PDA company that for years was running on underpowered hardware? Ummmmmmm.... nothing?

Take a look here to see the how Palm execs have UNLOADED millions in stock recently. It's quite remarkable:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=PLMO
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=psrc

David Nagel alone unloaded $4.5 MILLION in August!


PalmOne has a lot of treasury stock to fill options for this,so they do not have to buy on the market. PalmOne's not wasting cash with exec comp.. there doing it the old fashioned way by spending more than they earn from bad products.

Just as governments can't simply print more money to erase debt, Palm's stock options aren't free. If their execs weren't receiving tens of millions in stock, the company could have offered equivalent shares on the open market. And just who is paying those guaranteed prices to buy the "Automatic sale" shares? Palm? Hmmmmmm... Palm has been looted and pretty soon the marauders will torching the remnants of this dotbomb posterchild.





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm????
hackbod @ 11/5/2004 3:24:16 AM #
"exactly WTF was a never-was desktop OS going to contribute to a PDA company that for years was running on underpowered hardware"

Sorry to inject another fact into these thrilling rants, but BeIA (the stripped down version of BeOS for those wonderful Internet Appliances) was running on hardware that was less powerful than what we have on current PDAs. And the full BeOS was able to run on dual 66MHz PPCs for its entire life, though admittedly by its last releases you probably wanted something with a little more oompf.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm??????
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/5/2004 6:16:37 AM #
And I had Windows 95 running on a 90 MHz computer. Is this an equally valid point?


;-O



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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm??????
mikecane @ 11/5/2004 9:43:39 AM #
I see now.

The reason why *I* don't get p1 or PS people to reply to *my* posts is that I'm not abusive enough.

I guess I just don't have it in me... (hell, I thought I was being *very* abusive!).

(Sidenote: Vote for that stiff, Kerry? And let his psycho wife be First Lady? Had it been Bush v Kerry only, I would have stayed home!)

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm????
hackbod @ 11/5/2004 12:40:20 PM #
Sorry Mike, it's probably that I am still sensitive over all the "lie big and long enough and people will believe it" tactics that went on during the elections. Especially since they clearly work. :(


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

RE: How many millions have Palm execs pocketed from Palm??????
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 2/21/2005 3:04:47 AM #
Who's telling the truth now, Dianne?

Get out of PalmSource before you get "downsized", DK. The cuts will be here soon. I hope you CY pretty little leather-wrapped A and bounce back with a stable company in a few months.





*************************************************************************************

Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

*************************************************************************************





******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

palmOne's latest acquisition?

mikecane @ 11/5/2004 9:45:57 AM #

Nagel Redux: Copland = Cobalt

Gekko @ 11/7/2004 9:00:01 PM #

Dateline: December 18, 1995

Apple executives insist that Copland has the stuff to put Apple back on top. They say they hope for delivery in 1996, but make no promises. ``We've got an aggressive timetable, but we're going to make sure it works,'' says David S. Nagel, senior vice-president and chief technologist. But insiders say that despite new software tools and management controls, there's too much testing ahead to get Copland out in 1996. Says one recently departed Apple engineer: ``There's no way in hell Copland ships next year. I just hope it ships in 1997.''

Getting Copland out is up to Nagel. But developers worry that the longtime head of research and development is too enamored with Apple technology. ``The game is to cut it down to the three or four most compelling features as opposed to having hundreds of nice-to-haves,'' says one software executive. ``I'm not sure that's happening,''

http://www.businessweek.com/1995/51/b345595.htm



RE: Nagel Redux: Copland = Cobalt
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/7/2004 9:24:25 PM #
Dateline: November 7, 2004

Palm executives insist that Cobalt has the stuff to put Palm back on top. They say they hope for delivery in 2004, but make no promises. ``We've got an aggressive timetable, but we're going to make sure it works,'' says David Nagel, senior vice-president and chief technologist. But insiders say that despite new software tools and management controls, there's too much testing ahead to get Cobalt out in 2004. Says one recently departed Palm engineer: ``There's no way in hell Cobalt ships next year. I just hope it ships in 2006.''

Getting Cobalt out is up to Nagel. But developers worry that the President and Chief Executive Officer is too enamored with BeOS technology. ``The game is to cut it down to the three or four most compelling features as opposed to having hundreds of nice-to-haves,'' says one software executive. ``I'm not sure that's happening,''


http://www.macworld.com/2000/09/bc/buzzwindingroad/

Is Apple's David S. Nagel related to PalmSource's David Nagel?

"Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it."
- Sid Vicious




Brilliant, Geeko. Brilliant. (The only problem with this comparison is that Cobalt has really shipped. Keep up the good work, though. I just sprayed Coke over my UX50 screen laughing when I read your post. Now the waitress is looking at me funny!)




******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Nagel Redux: Copland = Cobalt
hackbod @ 11/7/2004 9:32:35 PM #
*sigh*

Of course, Cobalt has actually shipped. No, it is not on devices, but our customers are our licensees and developers, and they have their hands on it.

Also the way we approached Cobalt was much more like what was done for Mac OS X and Windows NT -- write and design a new system, and then implement the compatibility on top of it. I am not that familiar with Copland, but my impression was that the approach being taken for it was to start with the current OS and "grow" into it these major, architecture-shifting features like protected memory. That's a really rough road to travel.

I also don't have any clue what happened during the development of Copland but, even if we were to assume a very extreme case where Nagel was completely responsible for its failure due to his own mistakes... you know, people -do- learn from their mistakes. In fact you are often probably better off having someone who has already tried doing what you want to accomplish and failed at it, then to have someone who has never done anything like it before and so doesn't even know what kinds of problems there can be.

Finally, Nagel is the CEO of the company. The CEO doesn't make engineering decisions. He guides the overall direction of the company. The impact he will have on things like engineering decisions is entirely indirect, through the quality of people he hires to work for him.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

RE: Nagel Redux: Copland = Cobalt
Gekko @ 11/7/2004 9:57:55 PM #

I'm a results-oriented type of guy. How much market share has PalmOS lost under Nagel's watch?

The buck always stops with the CEO - that's why he/she gets paid the big bucks.



RE: Nagel Redux: Copland = Cobalt
mikecane @ 11/8/2004 4:12:38 PM #
Oh stop. Let's get one thing straight here. Plummeting market share is the fault of *palmOne*. Nagel only gets his if *less* than 11 devices running Cobalt ship next year.

RE: Nagel Redux: Copland = Cobalt
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/8/2004 5:19:07 PM #
Oh stop. Let's get one thing straight here. Plummeting market share is the fault of *palmOne*. Nagel only gets his if *less* than 11 devices running Cobalt ship next year.

Did you mean to type 11 or 1?

Just checking, Lapdoggie.

;-O




******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Nagel Redux: Copland = Cobalt
mikecane @ 11/9/2004 8:44:48 AM #
Eleven. Same as your IQ.

RE: Nagel Redux: Copland = Cobalt
temp_user @ 2/21/2005 7:35:10 AM #
"Finally, Nagel is the CEO of the company. The CEO doesn't make engineering decisions. He guides the overall direction of the company. The impact he will have on things like engineering decisions is entirely indirect, through the quality of people he hires to work for him."


The CEO is everything. He is responsible for the company’s growth and profitability - no matter what! I was recently a palmsource shareholders, after I read his latest interview, I sold my shares.
Nagel, talking about the strategy of the company to a reporter, doesn't qualify him to be a CEO. He shouldn’t even mention Cobalt and Linux from the start; all this should have been the company’s secret - a surprise attack on Symbian and Microsoft. You just don’t go to war with an open strategy!



RE: Nagel Redux: Copland = Cobalt
Gekko @ 2/21/2005 8:46:34 AM #

history repeats.



Who Controls Palm?

AlanF @ 11/8/2004 12:02:08 AM #
I can't believe I'm wading into this morass, but this question has been bugging me for a couple years and this seems like the time and place to ask it. So: Are PalmSource and PalmOne still effectively controlled by 3Com? I'm not sure I can buy any of the old-boy-network stuff that's implied above, but Eric Benhamou is 3Com. While they supposedly spun Palm off years ago, they certainly seemed to keep a controlling share of the stock. Is that still true? And if so, are PalmSource and PalmOne effectively controlled by the same people/company? Because obviously us folks in the peanut gallery, upgrading our Palms every year or two, have been wondering why, other than the brief but influential Sony epoch, there have been no first tier licensees other than PalmOne.

Okay, I'll let the artillery open up now.

But before I go, let me get this out of my system: I've been a poster here for years, but I've been pretty much dormant for the last couple. And all I can say is !!!!!!!!!!!

WHAT ON EARTH has happened here, Ryan? Who ARE these people?!!

RE: Who Controls Palm?
hackbod @ 11/8/2004 2:07:00 AM #
PalmSource and palmOne are separate, completely independent companies -- from each other and from 3Com. Jean-Louis Gassee's appointment to chairman of the board (replacing Eric Benhamou) removes the last dangling little thread connecting PalmSource to palmOne and 3Com.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

RE: Who Controls Palm? Their executives do. Heh Heh Heh.
The_Voice_of_Reason @ 11/8/2004 3:16:11 AM #
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=PSRC
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=PSRC

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=PLMO
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=PLMO



******************************************************************
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

RE: Who Controls Palm?
MountainLogic @ 11/9/2004 8:44:04 PM #
Dianne,

I hate to break in with something on topic, but does your title
"PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager" mean that developers will see a C++ framework for development or is it just for internal OS use? FWIW, I've found POL a lifesaver.

-scott

RE: Who Controls Palm?
hackbod @ 11/10/2004 2:21:47 AM #
Well, large parts of Cobalt are written in C++. In fact, many of the C APIs you see today (including all of the multimedia and UI APIs, and even things like the event manager or even feature manager) are really just wrappers on top of corresponding C++ services and frameworks.

Given that, it's pretty safe to assume we would like to expose these to developers in the future. In fact, for the most part I consider the C++ APIs to be the -real- APIs in Cobalt. Unfortunately I can't give you any kind of time-line for when you might see them: for 6.0 we basically implemented the frameworks only as much as was needed to implement the C APIs, so there is still a fair amount of work remaining to bring them to the point where you would actually want to write an application with them.

In addition, there are advantages to us by not being too agressive about exposing these APIs: once third party developers start to use them, we have much less flexibility in how we can grow them, it becomes more time-consuming to implement new features, etc. Given that we do have the C APIs, to some degree we can use those as a crutch to hold off a bit longer on exposing the C++ APIs.

Btw, if you are interested in the new APIs, the current developer newsletter has an article on the "Binder Shell" that gives some small hints about them: http://www.palmsource.com/developers/newsletter/20041001.html (Note that this article was written against the 6.0 APIs, and they have in fact changed enough in 6.1 that I think many of the examples will not work there.)

If you want to talk more about Cobalt technical issues, feel free to join the Protein developer mailing list and ask questions there. Many of us in engineering are active on that list.


--
Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

The End

Gekko @ 11/8/2004 9:25:47 PM #

This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend
The end

It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me

The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

http://www.coolmidi.250x.com/midi/d/doors-the_end.mid


RE: The End
mikecane @ 11/9/2004 8:45:35 AM #
Hey, duuuuude, didya get yer Dell yet? Why not, duuuuude?

RE: The End
Gnam @ 11/9/2004 9:10:48 AM #
I got my Dell X30 yesterday and it's so much better than my TE...

Bye,
Gnam

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