Run Palm OS Applications on a Pocket PC

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

Frenchie @ 4/28/2005 2:13:52 PM #

Interesting, I'm curious how PalmSource will take this.

The world will end in 2006. Just as it was predicted in the bible along with the release of Microsoft Longhorn.... :p

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

LiveFaith @ 4/28/2005 2:32:41 PM #

Frenchie,

I know that I've wondered for a few years now, when this might happen. When PPC was running 200mhz Strong ARMs and POS was only at 33mhz it seemed obvious to have an emulator.

I'm not tekky enough to know HOW, but POS apps are resource friendly and most PPCs have heavy duty feature sets, so the marriage looks very possible.

Looks like they'll have a lot of display mapping issues (aka the QVGA HE330), but with higher rez screens, even this is more reasonable. This is certainly not a complete overthrow, but it does nothing to help PSRC, when one of your number one selling points is being chipped away at.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

kpr @ 4/28/2005 5:31:59 PM #

[QUOTE]Coming to Other Platforms

StyleTap intends to release versions of this application for other mobile platforms, including the Symbian OS.

"StyleTap Platform is based on the idea that the same application software should run on many different kinds of handhelds, regardless of operating system," said Sokoloff. "This not only benefits handheld users, but also allows developers to target a much larger customer base."[/QUOTE]

I'd like to see a Mac version of StyleTap, since currently there is no Mac version of the Palm OS Simulator, and the Palm OS Emulator for the Mac only supports up to Palm OS 4.

Also, does anyone know if it can run Sony Palm apps?

Can anyone give a list of Palm apps that work well?

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

LiveFaith @ 4/28/2005 6:06:41 PM #

A friend of mine tested these today and said they worked:

iPaq PPC2002 i think:

Minesweeper ... works
Diddlebug ... works, but a little "slow"
BikeorDie ... works great

... looks about like whatever runs thru PACE on OS5 will generally work.

... apparently runs in a nice "window" to accomadate screen rez. He even said that PPC text entry works to the POS app! Cool.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

AdamaDBrown @ 4/28/2005 6:42:26 PM #

Now the disenfranchised can have Grafitti 1 again.

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

LiveFaith @ 4/28/2005 11:57:02 PM #

Adam,
How is that? G1 is not the official text library for WMob is it?

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

wannitnow @ 4/29/2005 1:45:18 AM #

I using a Dell Axim now and the best text entry method is "Block Recognizer" which is basically G1.

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

AdamaDBrown @ 4/29/2005 2:40:17 AM #

Right, PPCs come with three text inputs: Block Recognizer, which is virtual Grafitti, Transcriber, which is handwriting recognition (cursive, print, and mixed), and a soft keyboard.

RE: It works great

Surur @ 4/28/2005 3:08:05 PM #

Interesting. Is there a list of great Palm OS software which dont already have pocketpc analogues. Medical software obviously comes to mind, but most software which are under active development are now being made for both platforms. Anything else ?

RE: It works great

StatCoder.com @ 4/28/2005 3:46:16 PM #

There are a ton of niche applications, developed by hobbyists, that are not ported to Pocket PC simply because the guy who wrote the software doesn't use a Pocket PC. 80% of my software is freeware so it's not like I'm going to make a big effort to develop free software for a PDA that I don't use. I'd rather spend time developing new tools for the PDA that I do use.

ePocrates is, by far, the most popular PDA medical tool. The primary tool is available for both platforms, however, there are a host of add-on applications that are only available for Palm OS.

RE: It works great

Surur @ 4/28/2005 4:36:09 PM #

I've had a look at your home page. Your software seems ideal for use with this emulator. Have you tried to run it yet?

Surur

Save your money

InsGuy @ 4/28/2005 4:47:32 PM #

I just downloaded it and it installed fine; and then wouldn't run a SINGLE Palm program. Save your money; isnt' worth the $29.95 IMHO.

All good things...

RE: It works great

StatCoder.com @ 4/28/2005 4:48:20 PM #

They all work. Even the TealInfo folios, saved preference databases, registration algorithms, and direct-to-screen drawing. Apparently, you can even beam contacts and databases/applications from Palm OS to a Pocket PC device. Truly amazing.

RE: It works great

InsGuy @ 4/28/2005 5:34:17 PM #

I now stand corrected. I decided that the potential of this program was too great, so I just called StyleTap, and a tech support guy walked me through a couple issues. Yes, this program does work very well. I have an X50v, and now can run my POS programs on there as well. I wish this program would've come along back when I changed over to PPC, as I ended up buying the PPC version to a lot of my programs that I had on my old palm. Oh well, at least I can advise others who are changing over to PPC about this program.

All good things...

RE: Doomsayers rejoice

InsGuy @ 4/28/2005 5:37:42 PM #

I would have to agree that this could mean some serious trouble for Palm. In addition, while there were no 'killer palm pdas' for me to even think about changing from my Axim before, this program helps me make sure I stay a PPC user. It is also a very compelling reason for many people who like the PPC hardware and features to now change, especially since they can run POS programs.

All good things...

RE: Doomsayers rejoice - NOT

jbeedham @ 5/20/2005 2:16:09 AM #

I disagree. Having an emulator out there goes to show you that Palm OS is still the dominant handheld OS. Case in point, Windows emulators have been around for years for Macintosh and Linux. Guess which desktop os is still dominant? Windows!

See? Palm OS is here to stay!!!

-------------------------------------------------------
Proud owner of a Sony TJ-37!

RE: The end of palm os?

StatCoder.com @ 4/28/2005 4:13:35 PM #

That's a funny thing to say given that the software that we are talking about is written in Palm OS. If I, as a software developer, can reach both platforms with Palm OS, don't you think I would rather just do that? I think I just stopped development on the Pocket PC version(s) of my software.

Is Palm OS now the universal PDA development platform?

RE: The end of palm os?

james_sorenson @ 4/28/2005 5:21:36 PM #

Sarcasm....please note the bucket-loads of sarcasm in the first post,

Palm emulator on PocketPC is equivalent to:
Windows Emulator on Macintosh.

Palm won't be hurting any more than Windows is.

My question is this: is this a hardware emulator with a copy of the PalmOS included? If so, then this app will definitely be shutdown for handing out free, unlicensed copies of the PalmOS.

If it is truly just a reverse engineering from the applications, then it will be a gray area. Those cases are won by those with the most expensive lawyers.

- Jim

-------
James Sorenson

RE: The end of palm os?

LiveFaith @ 4/28/2005 6:16:01 PM #

Good comments, but I can hear the sales guy at Best Buy now ...

Oh, get the iPaq, because it will run all the Palm apps with an add on emulator anyway. :-)

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

RE: The end of palm os?

AdamaDBrown @ 4/28/2005 6:46:15 PM #

Developers aren't what should worry you, users are. Think of the number of people who stick with Palm OS units, despite the superior hardware of PocketPCs, because Palm is what they're comfortable with. Likewise, as Pat says, one more reason for the salesdrones to point new users to PocketPCs.

Just the other day I was looking for something like this for someone--he's always used Palm, but his m505 is flaking out (digitizer issues) and a new PocketPC would be a lot cheaper for him than a new Palm. This way, he could keep his existing interface while switching up to better hardware.

RE: The end of palm os?

neuron @ 4/28/2005 10:47:17 PM #

It won't run all POS apps. I tried a few, 95% are good, even better than OS5 which runs less than 70% of previous versions.

All language apps won't run. Some multimedia programs won't run either. But for me, it is enough. The POS bugme, listpro in styletap are much faster than PPC bugme and listpro, although not as beautiful as in PPC, which I need a VGA device to take advantage.

RE: The end of palm os?

WareW01f @ 5/5/2005 6:59:35 PM #

Emulator yes, slower? Doesn't have to be. For those of you that aren't aware, after the T|T line, most all of your apps are already running in an emulator already. That's what PACE *is*. Now granted not all of it is in PACE (depending on the app) but there should really be no difference in speed, unless of course their code is slower than the native PalmOS code. To be frank, you could probably do the same thing on a Palm running WinCE apps (don't see a huge demand for this though). Still I'd use the WINE in Linux example before the Virtual PC example (which by the way MicroSoft BOUGHT to make sure it was never a real threat.)

If you're in a market with mixed devices, you still code 68k as there is little sense in cutting out most of your market. (Or user base in my case) now, granted with the Zire's now moving to ARM chips as well, this may change. I'm still amazed at how long the Palm III held on. (Back then the question was color or not, ha!) You can bet those 505s and 515s will be around as long. (The T|T however is a piece of **** and they just keep getting cheaper. My Palm III survived many a drop from shirt pocket height, the T|T didn't make the first!)

As someone in a company that develops our own software internally I'm all over this. If we can get out of having to code for WinCE (which is a minority of users) and just give them this and our existing Palm apps... score! Hell I'd even tweak the Palm apps make them run better if needed.

RE: Imitation is the best form of flattery

RhinoSteve @ 4/28/2005 7:58:08 PM #

You have that right. Market history has shown that whatever an emulator emulates is being promoted. This is no problem in my hands. While you can run your Palm OS apps on Pocket PCs now, these new users will start to wonder why just get the real thing instead of an emulator.

While the sewing circle ninnies that predominate their opinions on this site will call this a fatal blow for the Palm OS, I view this as just the opposite.

Then there is HotSync / ActiveSynce issues! LOL!

RE: Imitation is the best form of flattery

LiveFaith @ 5/1/2005 3:12:36 PM #

<>

My first genuine laugh of the day! Thanks

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

RE: Things Are Heating Up

LiveFaith @ 4/28/2005 6:18:14 PM #

I hear that BikeOrDie worx flawlessly. Hmmmm.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

zire 72 "upgrade"?

ackmondual @ 4/29/2005 4:40:58 PM #

@sford

Did your T3 die or did you actually "upgrade" from that to a z72?

[signature0]the secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that's even worse[/signature0]
[signature1]My PDAs: Visor --> Visor Neo (blue) --> Zire 71 --> Tungsten T3[/signature1]

RE: Things Are Heating Up

sford @ 4/30/2005 4:07:05 PM #

ackmondual,

It died. :(

In replacing it, I decided that with my new baby I'd rather have the camera at hand than the slider. :)

And it was much cheaper, which is *always* good for my marriage. :)

____________________________________
Pilot Pro -> III -> IIIe -> Nino (yeah...oops!) -> IIIc -> VIIx -> m505 -> NR70V -> NZ90 -> NX60 -> T3 -> Zire 72s

www.PalmKB.com

RE: Things Are Heating Up

neilmitchell @ 4/30/2005 4:20:14 PM #

I too had an "almost" dead T3. I LOVED it and have had it since the first T3's hit the market. The battery life is now awful and the dreaded digitizer drift if frustrating as hell. It also now has the habbit of tuning itself off while using it. So...I bought an E2 as a downgrade (I don't like the T5 - way too expensive for what it is and the rumored T|X is too physically big for me). However, E2 build quality is not great and it has a FIND bug that returns the first 8 contacts (after searching other databases fine) and then when you "FIND MORE" it starts searching from the start of the contacts database again and returns the same 8. I have an RMA arriving shortly to send it back and I will use my T3 despite it's problems.

The only quetion now is:
a) Pay $25/$50 for a reconditioned T3 after fighting through PalmOne's awful tech support, or
b) Buy the brick when it comes out (T|X)
c) Buy a compromised T5
d) Jump to the dark side: HP or Dell with WiFi?

:-(

Atari-Portolio > HP95LX > HP100LX > HP300LX > HP320LX > Nino300 > Nino500 > HP620LX > Jornada680 > PalmV > Vx > m505 > T|T > T615C > T|T3 > T|E2 > (back to) T|T3

RE: Things Are Heating Up

hkklife @ 5/2/2005 10:22:08 AM #

Refurb T3 if you need one immediately. Otherwise, wait for the official T|X launch and see HOW brickish it is and what the early adopters have to say about it.

RE: Things Are Heating Up

ackmondual @ 5/5/2005 1:05:19 AM #

@[b]sford[/b]

Sorry to hear that :(

no chance of getting a new T3 anywhere? Even a used one on Ebay or do u only accept brand new?

@[b]neilmitchell[/b]
I notice my T3 turns itself off sometimes. At first i thought that's b/c the apps i use (all games so far in where it has hppened), may have been implemented in where button presses don't register as presses, so the system auto-offs. I tried this on my z71 and it turns out that this isn't the case. My T3 seems to be aging as well.

If my T3 were to die... I'd have the following choices in order of preference:

1) get a zod2. They're only $265 at compUplus, so it's a nice deal for all the specs it has

2) find a replacement T3. I'd be very wary of Ebay used models, so i'd likely have to be new which will not likely happen

3) get a PPC. Most likely a x50v. VGA, all that WL crap i won't need but nice to know it's there, PPC now has alot of neat freeware choices, better gaming zone, and a change to try out WM05.

4) use my old z71. I'ts in nice condition, but i've been spoiled by the T3's hi-res+ screen that it's hard for me to go back

5) get another P1 model, but none of them appeal to me. I still don't need wifi+BT, nor the microdrive. I hear it's only gonna be as thick as 1.5 T3s, but that still wouldn't concern me anyways.

RE: Runs all Palm OS applications, eh?

skeezix @ 4/28/2005 5:39:18 PM #

*snort* *pop all over keyboard* *grin*

Thats pretty evil of you :)

For the record, Shadow Plan seams to work pretty well under StyleTap..

jeff

The Shadow knows!

It crashes on my Tungsten 5 and Treo 650. ;-O

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/28/2005 10:09:04 PM #

Maybe if someone comes up with an app to emulate PPC on PalmOS you could then load STP to emulate PalmOS on your Treo 650.

Emulated PalmOS on emulated Windows on buggy PalmOS... Rube Goldberg FrankenPalm™ arise! Mmmmmmm... Nagels's brains... Yummy...

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

DIE, Zombie! DIE!!!

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/28/2005 10:19:42 PM #

But we could emulate their ppc programs onto our Palm os devices too...

Why would anyone want to? There aren't too many apps that PPC has that PalmOS doesn't.

PalmOS'memory management and simplistic file system would likely preclude running any current PPC apps on a current (or older) Palm. The fact that the STP beta actually runs on older PPC hardware is amazing. Un-fuc*ingbelievable.

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

AdamaDBrown @ 4/29/2005 2:43:49 AM #

A PocketPC emulator on Palm isn't likely to happen. PPC has vastly more in the way of code, APIs, libraries, and components than Palm does. Call it bloat if you want, but it's what makes PPC so good with networking, multitasking, and stuff like that.

VOR, you'd be surprised at the PPC software you can't get on Palm. Start with BetaPlayer, Textmaker, uBook, Fade, PocketLAN, and Pocket RAR, just to name a few.

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

skeezix @ 4/29/2005 12:06:27 PM #

BetaPlayer is available for Palm (by Picard himself, no less.) TextMaker is needed for PoPC because PocketWord isn't as good as Docs2Go for instance.

Both platforms have a huge overalp in functionality, and some unique apps that are better for their platform than is on the others. Its silly to say one platform is better due to one app, when everyone knows the other platform also has incredible apps.

jeff

The Shadow knows!

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

lorettaboy @ 4/29/2005 12:34:23 PM #

"Its silly to say one platform is better due to one app, when everyone knows the other platform also has incredible apps."

Yes, but now it's quite easy to say that the PPC platform is better, due to its ability to use all programs!

Palm OS - The Universal Development Platform

StatCoder.com @ 4/29/2005 4:07:39 PM #

Isn't it more correct to say that Palm OS is the better programming platform because it can be used by both Palm OS and Pocket PC PDA's?

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

AdamaDBrown @ 4/29/2005 7:22:41 PM #

Ah yes--I'd forgotten that Picard had built a Palm OS media player. And I just plain didn't know that it was identical to BetaPlayer. Well, one down.

StatCoder, I'm not wholly qualified to say myself--not being a coder--but my understanding of the current development situation for Palm OS is that it's not good. For one thing, the confusion over the future of the platform and what OS is going to be used makes it difficult for devs to plan ahead, not knowing what base to use. Also that PalmSource has been failing to provide as well for developers as they should, which contributes to devs seeking greener pastures. Not to mention the fact that developers are users too, and that they can be lured away by WiFi, advanced networking, and Today screens as easily as mortals can.

And realistically, I doubt that serious developers would say to themselves "Well, I'll just develop for PalmOS, that way if over half the market wants to run my program they can just buy a beta-level $30 emulator."

Breathe, Palm! BREATHE!

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/30/2005 12:31:51 AM #

VOR, you'd be surprised at the PPC software you can't get on Palm. Start with BetaPlayer, Textmaker, uBook, Fade, PocketLAN, and Pocket RAR, just to name a few.

Not to pi$$ on your parade, but:

- The Core Pocket Media Player (a.k.a. BetaPlayer) has been available for PalmOS for several weeks now. And it's already pretty good despite it's so-called "beta" status. [Picard: THANK YOU!]

http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/

- Textmaker? How about Documents To Go, Quickword and WordSmith for PalmOS?

- uBook? Take your pick of over a dozen reader apps for PalmOS. I've used iSilo for years but there are a lot of other options.

- Fade? You're reaching now. How about SFCave for PalmOS? Which is the better game? Really.

- PocketLAN? OK, I'll give you that one.

- Pocket RAR? Oh please. How many zip apps does PalmOS have already? As if anyone cares about zip vs. RAR.

Bottom line is this: both PPC and PalmOS have some apps unique to each platform, but as far as major app categories go, there isn't too much available for one platform that isn't already available for the other. Palm's problem is that their hardware sucks and is ridiculously overpriced. And now nothing is stopping current Palm users from migrating to superior PPC hardware (and taking most of their comfy old PalmOS apps along with them for the ride).

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/30/2005 2:10:42 AM #

Isn't it more correct to say that Palm OS is the better programming platform because it can be used by both Palm OS and Pocket PC PDA's?

Ummmmm.... No.

Your rose colored glass(es) is 1% full, Pollyanna. Nice try, though.

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

rsc1000 @ 4/30/2005 12:37:45 PM #

>>- PocketLAN? OK, I'll give you that one.

I'll field this one:

http://www.iscomplete.org/Store/WiFiGenie.asp

...there is another app that does this as well but i can't find the link.

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 5/1/2005 2:43:39 AM #

I have WiFile, but I had assumed PocketLAN has a lot more features. (I've never used PocketLAN.)

http://www.handshigh.com/html/wifile.html

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

AdamaDBrown @ 5/2/2005 2:07:25 AM #

My general point is that there are plenty of desirable apps that don't have direct equivalents on Palm. Oh, and if you haven't seen BetaPlayer (or Core, whatever) running on the X50v's Intel accelerator chip, you haven't seen Picasso the way it was meant to be seen.

And to answer the implied question, PocketLAN can map shared folders as if they were a memory card, and will automatically remap them every time the network connection is established.

I've never gotten a chance to use WiFile (haven't had a WiFi-enabled Palm). Is it good?

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

Subb @ 1/2/2006 4:08:27 PM #

WiFile works well at what it does - finding, holding onto, and accessing shared directories across the network. In it's own little filemanager interface, that is. You put in an IP or computer name, browse for a shared directory and it's there for good as long as the network is there.

You can use it over USB cable too, in conjunction with something like Softick PPP.

Wifigenie maps these drives to virtual cards so all apps can acces them. I've only tested it over the USB cable and it seems slow... streaming mp3s meant stuttering. Be interested if anyone had other luck with it.

RE: Lawsuit! Lawsuit!

jjesusfreak01 @ 4/28/2005 8:47:32 PM #

Yeah, thats what they should do. If all it could do was run simple things like games and such, I wouldnt ask questions. But, if it can beam databases, and works with things like systeminfo program, I really have to wonder if they completely reverse engineered it. Palm will rip this code apart in 5 seconds, and if any of it is under copyright, expect a lawsuit and an injunction by Monday.

RE: Lawsuit! Lawsuit!

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/28/2005 10:26:45 PM #

Too late. The genie's already out of the bottle. Just ask Aaron Ardiri about what happened with his infamous HaCkMe - and that was an app that was available to users for only a few hours before it was pulled. MultiUserHack also propagated around the world within hours of its release. Welcome to the Internet Age, Palm. And if necessary, STP could always be reverse engineered and further developed by the PPC 1337 hacker community and spread like The Plague. They really should have called this app "EBOLA".

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Allah Akbar!

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/28/2005 9:59:49 PM #

"I wonder if Microsoft fuNded the development of STP..."

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Allah Akbar!

AdamaDBrown @ 4/29/2005 2:48:26 AM #

Five bucks says that 'StyleTap' is actually five former Palm geeks who want to be able to use their favorite legacy app on their new X50vs.

RE: Allah Akbar!

The Voice of Doubt @ 4/29/2005 6:26:24 PM #

Your comments are offensive to Muslims, The Voice of Reason. You are more like the Voice of Ignorance.

RE: Allah Akbar!

cbowers @ 4/29/2005 6:51:55 PM #

Isn't just about everything in the US these days? Sheesh, lighten up. Count yourself lucky that Islam has grown up enough into the mainstream to be part of the vernacular. You don't see the "defiled polytheists" (Islam-speak for Christian) jumping up and down here when a hallelujah, Praise God, or Saints preserve us, pops into the discussion. Granted, PalmOne and the eery absence of other real licensees of late, hasn't given much cause for those utterences for a while. So if you're new in these parts, we'll excuse your overly retentive blunder ;-)

-Peace
(or Peace Be Upon Him - if you'd prefer)

RE: Allah Akbar!

RhinoSteve @ 4/29/2005 7:05:25 PM #

Offensive speech is protected by the Constitution of the United States. If you don't like it, then counteract it but don't try to supress it, that backlashes harder than you can imagine.

If anything VOD, you owe everyone in this newsgroup an apology for trying to censor any type of speech.

RE: Allah Akbar!

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/29/2005 10:39:17 PM #

Your comments are offensive to Muslims, The Voice of Reason. You are more like the Voice of Ignorance.

Allah be praised! Somehow I doubt you speak for all Muslims. Or do you think you do?

The Voice of Ignorance is my cousin, Vinny. People mix us up all the time, but he's actually a little shorter than I am.

TVoR

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Allah Akbar!

GearHead @ 4/30/2005 12:59:30 PM #

I am Muslim, I am not offended. I don't see any difference between "Allah Akbar" and Thank God".

Back to subject:
I think this is a great idea, hopefully Palm will wake up and smell the coffee. PPC people already working on convergence devices, so I can't wait to have a device with Phone+WiFi+Bluetooth+4GB Memory and a great factor, capable of running any software out there. Customers win! I am all for it!

Allah Akbar and Thank God! (same thing anyways)

Palm III>Palm IIIx>PalmV>PalmVx>Palm m505>Palm M515>Tungsten T
Dell X30 624Mhz w/BT+Wi-Fi
Nokia 6600 w/BT

RE: Allah Akbar!

neilmitchell @ 4/30/2005 3:45:15 PM #

There is no question that PalmOne have been struggling in the hardware area. They've been loosing management and engineers which has not helped. I am sure they will stem this flow but they have lost focus on some of their most important markets.

The volume consumer market they have covered well with the Zire range. We can argue details but on the whole they have an appropriate range of products. They have covered the absolute basic PDA and the Camera combo, fun market.

The Tungsten range has lost its way. The T3 was well targeted at the time for the executive types (I include myself) and the "serious hobbyist". The T5 was the first misstep as has been covered in many other of the forums here. The basic issue was the deletion of "little but important" features like vibrating alarm, voice recorder, and the non-inclusion of a docking cradle. The other well documented issue is the lack of new features used by this target audience (WiFi). The T5 was correctly perceived as "compromised". The E family is nice as it hits the basic business user and the E|2 is well targeted but again compromised on build quality and bugs (I know I have one and it is going back). The "non-basic" exec user has been lost. While the rumored Tungsten|X finally seems to be adding WiFi it adds a hard drive and too much bulk for the style conscious power executive user who needs this to fit in a pocket without weighing down his/her trousers/skirt (unless they bring out a replacement to the T|C which is a T|X without the hard drive)? The T|X sound great for the iPod generation who want to combine these two functions (and I expect many will) but once again the power Exec user is bypassed.

These users want the Motorola Razor equivalent as mentioned in some other posts (i.e. well featured, slim, well built and style conscious – I am not talking about the phone functionality – that should be in a separate product – that is the Treo territory). This is what the old Palm V/Vx did so well. It hit its’ target market in its time. We need that type of product still – the reinterpretation of a Vx, slimmer than the T3, as well built as the T3 (unlike the E2/T5), BT & WiFi, T5 res screen, the missing T3 features added back in etc and no bulky hard drive.

So in conclusion (sorry for the rambling), the HP/Dell hardware hits most of the specs (but not the battery life, ease of use due to WinCE and not the slimness and the build quality varies a lot). I want Palm to succeed but it is becoming tough to keep the faith (and I am an experienced used of both Palm and WinCE).

Here’s hoping!

Atari-Portolio > HP95LX > HP100LX > HP300LX > HP320LX > Nino300 > Nino500 > HP620LX > Jornada680 > PalmV > Vx > m505 > T|T > T615C > T|T3 > T|E2 > (back to) T|T3

RE: Allah Akbar!

Surur @ 4/30/2005 4:46:54 PM #

I dont know about thinness, but many new pocketpc's have excellent battery life, due to scalable processors and large batteries (the HP 4700 has a 1800mah battery, the Loox 720 has 1640) They are both around 15mm-16mm. I see from your device history that its been a while since you owned a pocketpc. They work as well if not better than Palms for most common tasks, and mostly better in many uncommon taks. Maybe its time to give it a try again.

Surur

IS it legal? We'll see...

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/29/2005 12:47:44 AM #

For those people who didn't try it, please try it before you say this piece of app is emulator. An emulator always need a ROM image, which is not the case for this one.

If the STP reverse engineered PalmOS to interpret OS calls under WinCE, the app's "legality" is debatable. I'd be interested to see this dissected and find out what APIs are used. Ben Combee would have been a good person to review this "replicator/emulator", but now that he's a PalmSource employee, no doubt he's under strict orders to S T F U about the STP.

Whatever the ultimate outcome, this will be remembered as one of the biggest events to ever affect PalmOS. I'm amazed that people aren't reporting more problems with it so far.

TVoR

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

Masamune @ 4/29/2005 5:13:28 AM #

Before everyone chucks their T3's out the window for Dell Axims, one question - how does it support Bluetooth and Wifi? If the hardware support's not there, then it does limit its use somewhat.

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

skeezix @ 4/29/2005 7:55:04 AM #

Emulation is and always has been fully legal of course (consider POSE even..) -- the trick has always been copying 'roms' and 'disk images' and such around. Emulators don't require ROMs or BIOSes or the like.. while often used, they are not needed. ie: Many emulators (consoles and such) are just recompilers, that change the native code of one system to be the local native code.. this can be very fast. (Consider Java's JVM which is an emulator with just in time compilation.)

Now here they're likely just using a 68k emu (readily available and easy to write) and handling the 'trap's and then using native OS call sinstead. ie: Where in Palm OS trap number 1234 does a WinDrawChars, they'd just call a series of GAPI PoPC routines to do the same work.. this way no ROM is required, and that woudlexplain why things don't look quite 'right' in StyleTap.. different fonts, checkboxes work differently, etc.

Reverse engineering isn't illegal.. its a very legitimate technique, provides its clean-room technique, and is done for the right reasons (such a sinteropability, which this is.) So far all in the clear.

The real question is the clean room .. handling traps is one thing, but what about the documentation of the traps? If they downloaded the Palm OS SDK to get the trap listing, then perhaps theres something in the Palm OS SDK agreement which could nail them (I've not looked).

But just as likely, the CoreTraps.h and such can be found entirely online with google, in which case they're in the clear.

So are they guilty of using PalmSource trademarks or artwork or other goofy things?

I'm sure PalmSource could find something in there to attack, but on the surface it seams pretty safe.

jeff

The Shadow knows!

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

viqsi @ 4/29/2005 10:25:53 AM #

Hm. In that case I'd figure they've been working on this for quite some time. The Wine project's been attempting to do the same thing with Microsoft Windows on Linux for something like twelve years now, and they're still in alpha. (Yes, I know MSWin is a hell of a lot more complex than PalmOS and isn't nearly as well documented; that just means that there'd be a year or two of time as opposed to nearly a decade and a half.)

--
Of course, I don't know how interesting any of this really is, but now you've got it in your brain cells so you're stuck with it. --Gary Larson

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

InsGuy @ 4/29/2005 10:33:58 AM #

Before everyone chucks their T3's out the window for Dell Axims, one question - how does it support Bluetooth and Wifi? If the hardware support's not there, then it does limit its use somewhat.

Interesting question. Why would that matter? I'm curious as to why you would ask THAT particular question, as PPC handhelds have been able to use BT & Wifi okay for a long time? Is there something you forsee as a problem no one has thought of yet?

All good things...

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

skeezix @ 4/29/2005 12:03:46 PM #

viqsi .. MSWindows is a moving target; Wine first did win32 (Win31) and then Win95 and then WinNT and XP etc etc.. its a continuously moving project, and has an infinitely bigger pile of work to do. Emulating a subset of Palm OS hardware and OS is much easier due to the design of Palm OS 5 and earlier .. ie: Most apps do only a limited numebr of things, and those apps wouldn't take too too much work to get going. Its not a 6mo project, but its not a couple years either :)

jeff

The Shadow knows!

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

AdamaDBrown @ 4/29/2005 2:52:06 PM #

According to my understanding, the beta doesn't yet support Bluetooth. I don't know about WiFi.

Come on, people. This is un-FREAKIN-believable!

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/29/2005 11:36:15 PM #

Emulation is and always has been fully legal of course (consider POSE even..) -- the trick has always been copying 'roms' and 'disk images' and such around. Emulators don't require ROMs or BIOSes or the like.. while often used, they are not needed. ie: Many emulators (consoles and such) are just recompilers, that change the native code of one system to be the local native code.. this can be very fast. (Consider Java's JVM which is an emulator with just in time compilation.)
Now here they're likely just using a 68k emu (readily available and easy to write) and handling the 'trap's and then using native OS call sinstead. ie: Where in Palm OS trap number 1234 does a WinDrawChars, they'd just call a series of GAPI PoPC routines to do the same work.. this way no ROM is required, and that woudlexplain why things don't look quite 'right' in StyleTap.. different fonts, checkboxes work differently, etc.
Reverse engineering isn't illegal.. its a very legitimate technique, provides its clean-room technique, and is done for the right reasons (such a sinteropability, which this is.) So far all in the clear.
The real question is the clean room .. handling traps is one thing, but what about the documentation of the traps? If they downloaded the Palm OS SDK to get the trap listing, then perhaps theres something in the Palm OS SDK agreement which could nail them (I've not looked).
But just as likely, the CoreTraps.h and such can be found entirely online with google, in which case they're in the clear.
So are they guilty of using PalmSource trademarks or artwork or other goofy things?
I'm sure PalmSource could find something in there to attack, but on the surface it seams pretty safe.
jeff

The Shadow knows!

*cough cough*

It's not like you're biased towards emulation apps or anything, right, Jeff? I think you're minimizing what an achievement STP really is. To create a STABLE PalmOS emulator is an impressive feat. What these guys have done is essentially create PACE (and an accompanying compatibility layer) for PPC, but I have difficulty believing this could have been done without "borrowing" some code. Still, being able to achieve real time translation without a significant slowdown... all I can say is "Wow". Amazing. Palm should hire these guys - they could use that kind of skill as PalmSource attempts to salvage and resuscitate that rigor mortis OS known as Cobalt.

You say reverse engineering isn't illegal. Are you sure about that? Read the EULAs. And what are the odds that anyone outside of people with unfettered access to Palm's code could create a stable "PPC-PACE™" without "borrowing" Palm's protected code? Not bloody likely. I can't see a small company reinventing the wheel to create the "pure" code you envision. I will be shocked if Palm can't find plenty for their lawyers to chomp on here. I'll be buying my copy of STP before Palm can get an injunction to shut them down.

I think you could hear a pin drop and the tumbleweeds roll over at PalmSource and pa1mOne right about now. The rats are starting to flee the Palm Companies™ and I don't blame them one bit.

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/30/2005 12:15:15 AM #

Before everyone chucks their T3's out the window for Dell Axims, one question - how does it support Bluetooth and Wifi? If the hardware support's not there, then it does limit its use somewhat.

And if STP doesn't support PalmOS 1.0 apps, "then it does limit its use somewhat".

Don't make me laugh, Bubba. This app would be a godsend even if it was HALF as good as it already is in its current BETA stage.

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

Masamune @ 4/30/2005 4:47:55 AM #

Don't get me wrong - Having a Palm quality OS on a PPC quality handheld has been everyone's dream here for years. I'm just thinking about some compatability issues that could occur with bluetooth and wifi using software (Warfare Inc as an example). I use bluetooth quite a lot on my Zodiac, and I was curious about how you would access email and web browsing through a mobile phone. If it could use PPC drivers and whatnot then that would be a godsend for everyone given Palm's sporadic driver release cycle.

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

skeezix @ 4/30/2005 12:18:13 PM #

Don't get me wrong.. its very well done and a fantastic achievement. (Especially supporting high res and VFS already.. really quite an achievement for first release. Obviously they wanted to get pretyt far before the lawsuits begin :) But its ont rocket science .. Due to the Palm OS 5 design, with PACE on ARM, PACE is really well encapsulated. Its not that much more complicated than an Atari ST or Amiga emulator, which is pretty old hat.. its much less complex that knocking out something like a PS2 or XBox emulator, which have also to some extent been done in peopels spare time. (I've been writing emulatord for various platforms on and off 10 years or so, yes :)

ie: 68k emu? there are dozens available open source as working models, and writing one is not hard, but its work. IT can be very fast.. witness PACE itself, which runs well on a 132MHz device.

The PNO's are a nice touch, but due to how careful PalmSource is about definign that sort of thing, PNO's are very tightly controlled, and StyleTap works only with those trhat follow the rigid rules. But ipressive they even attempted to bring that on board :)

Traps? Given most of the apps are 68k apps, they just call a few dozen traps.. ie: 99% of the apps use only 20% of the traps. Sure its a lot of work, I'm not minimizing that.. but its not that hard either. Remember, these guys didn't just do this by accident.. they went out of their way to carefully do this in a controlled fashion, so its not hard once they get the first its going.

They're down the road from me; with luck I'll have dinner with them next week and get the scoop :) (Thanks to some other friends who talked to them)

jeff

The Shadow knows!

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 5/1/2005 2:50:58 AM #

Jeff, I guess I'm a lot more impressesd than you are. If you do meet the guys in TO, please tell them "Thanks".

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

Masamune @ 5/1/2005 4:48:36 AM #

My knowledge of OSes is a little limited but isn't this program exactly what Palmsource has been looking for? Would they not just need to fine tune this app to run on Linux?

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 5/1/2005 5:11:39 AM #

My knowledge of OSes is a little limited but isn't this program exactly what Palmsource has been looking for? Would they not just need to fine tune this app to run on Linux?

Not quite. First problem: STP is a PalmOS 5 "emulator" for PPC. Palm needs to rewrite PalmOS 6 to be truly based on a Linux kernel (core). And coding a simple emulator sitting on top of Linux would not be enough - it would introduce a ton of "issues", ranging from speed to stability to suboptimal compatibility with legacy applications to lack of native apps (ARMLinux). It's one thing for a small company to hack an emulator for desperate Palm users. Expectations will be fairly low and most people will forgive any shortcomings. But anything coming from Palm will (rightly) be expected to be as stable as PalmOS 1 - 5.2 were, while providing reasonable backwards compatibility.

Palm already created something called PACE (Palm Application Compatibility Environment) to allow legacy Palm apps (ones coded for the old Motorola Dragonball 68k processors that Palm used from 1996 - 2003) to run on modern ARM processors. Doing so uses more processing power, but the ARM processors run at much higher clock speeds than the Dragonballs did and can easily handle this overhead.

http://www.palmos.com/dev/core/

PACE Native Objects (PNOs) allow new PalmOS 5 apps to fully take advantage of the ARM processors resulting in (potentially) significant improved performance over old 68k code being forced to be translated through PACE. Cobalt already has a PACE-equivalent. I believe STP is analogous to PACE + a WinCE interface for PPC. (I can't verify that yet, since I have yet to see any documentation on STP. STP is almost certainly PPC-PACE™, though, since I doubt anyone would be so cheeky as to port a version of Palm OS Simulator to PPC and rely on ARM processors to brute force the processing!)

Hope that clears things up a bit.

Not to minimize the daunting task that PalmSource has ahead of them (they have been overwhelmed by the burden of suddenly having to dump Cobalt and create PalmLinux), but the fact that a small company could produce a PalmOS 5 emulator quickly suggests that PalmSource lacks the talent to get the job done. As I've said before, had Palm simply outsourced the OS development to some talented, practical, no nonsense engineers like HandEra and licensed fully developed apps like DateBk5, BackupMan, etc. for the ROM, Cobalt would likely have showed up on REAL shipping devices one or two years ago. It's ironic that yet again, Be engineers have failed to get anyone to want their OS. Voting former Be bossman, Pépé Gassée as head of PalmSource is the final insult. This shifty Pied Piper is leading PalmOS to its doom.

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

Surur @ 5/1/2005 6:16:52 AM #

Not quite. This is like the 16 bit WOW subsystem in windows xp. It does not add multi-tasking between palm OS apps, and when one crashes it will take down the whole emulator. It does not add any stability to the whole system, and makes the whole thing an even bigger kludge.

Surur

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

InsGuy @ 4/29/2005 10:43:35 AM #

Second thought is the Launcher/Menu interface. I use a combination of ZLauncher, Initiate, and CoLaunch. With this combo, I can bounce around apps, files, and data with instantaneous ease. Does the PPC interface do ANYTHING instantaneously (besides crash)?

Try actually USING a new PPC device before making inaccurate comments such as this. Most people who've changed recently to PPC because of the crap P1 has put out the last few years, love PPC, its STABILITY, and the ability to jump just fine between apps.

All good things...

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

RhinoSteve @ 4/29/2005 7:10:49 PM #

You have that right. No conduit support makes it pretty useless in the enterprise area.

I honestly think this emulator, while a software engineering marvel, is more of a BWE (big white elephant) than anything else.

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

justauser @ 4/30/2005 10:47:31 AM #

When I read this at first I thought to myself, if the world ends and Palm do actually go under I'll get me the latest and greatest PPC and run this. But how long is anyone seriously going to run a Palm OS shell on a top end PPC? I prefer Mac but the programs I need aren't available on that platform. I'm not going to try to run them at half speed on virtual PC. So I have a PC. Similarly, I'm not buying a PPC when I want to run Palm apps.

Anyway, I like the Palm OS platform, not any particular app. I'd take my T3 over anything I see on the shelves at the moment. I'm sure I'm not alone.

Thinking this emulator is going to kill Palm is as naive as thinking that Firestorm is going to kill Nintendo.

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

neuron @ 4/30/2005 4:41:26 PM #

Well, if 95% softwares you need or preferred are only in Macs, while there are still 5% softwares which you bought and definitly need only exits in PC, I think you still will choose Mac + Virtual PC.

You just don't get it.

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 5/1/2005 1:45:34 AM #

When I read this at first I thought to myself, if the world ends and Palm do actually go under I'll get me the latest and greatest PPC and run this. But how long is anyone seriously going to run a Palm OS shell on a top end PPC? I prefer Mac but the programs I need aren't available on that platform. I'm not going to try to run them at half speed on virtual PC. So I have a PC. Similarly, I'm not buying a PPC when I want to run Palm apps.
Anyway, I like the Palm OS platform, not any particular app. I'd take my T3 over anything I see on the shelves at the moment. I'm sure I'm not alone.

Thinking this emulator is going to kill Palm is as naive as thinking that Firestorm is going to kill Nintendo.

For less than $400 you can get an Axim that blows away every pa1mOne PDA in terms of hardware, also probably keep running most of your old PalmOS apps while having the option to also use some native PPC apps. Sounds like the best of both worlds. On top of that, depending on how your PalmOS apps were coded, there might be ZERO speed penalty when running under the emulator. (Speed probably will depend on the screen draw routines used in the app.) As the gulf in features + quality of hardware between PPC and PalmOS increases, eventually it will be difficult for most Palm users to rationalize ignoring the better hardware.

Unfortunately, once people start using PPC, they may find that it's not as bad as they thought and gradually start using + buying more PPC apps. At that point the smell of death would be all over Palm and developers + users would likely start jumping off the bandwagon faster than you can say "Netscape".

For you to say that STP could not easily kill off Palm shows that you're either naive or shortsighted.

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

justauser @ 5/1/2005 3:10:00 AM #

neuron - believe me, I agonized over my PC purchase for some time. The fact is that Mac just doesn't have the software I use most of my week (rather I should say there are alternatives that cost $20k more than I'm prepared to pay and I'd have to relearn a whole new package!). All reports are that the software I use runs like a dog in VirtualPC. It would be insane for me to buy a premium platform and then spend all my time on it trying to run applications that run twice as fast on a cheaper machine.

Voice - agreed that I could MAKE it work. I certainly didn't pay $400 for my T3. I know STP has more development left in it, but I just tried it today and I had to laugh. My friend came strutting in with his iPaq claiming he could run any of my apps now. I beamed him a couple. They looked shocking. As he doesn't have a hires PPC, the resolution was all over the place (even on the icons for the launcher). He tried switching to optimised mode but this created a watch sized little window in the centre of the screen. What's more, we were both looking at the same app - me with my 320x480 screen and him with his dodgy tiny 160x160 window. But I guess it ran. As I said, I laughed. He will probably delete the app after he is finished with his taunts. His opinion was at $30 it cost too much.

It's a toy app. I'm sure a few biased sales people will say to the newbie "Buy PPC cause you can run both". I don't think most discerning buyers would go for this blanket statement without looking into it further or asking for a demo. Aren't sales people already saying "Buy either platform cause the same applications are available on both"? I can't think of many applications that I currently wave in front of my PPC mates without them showing me the PPC equivalent. If someone is not already enticed by a feature packed PPC, this app will not change their mind - anyone can see it's not going to run like their Palm (their Palm apps won't be able to make use of the precious WiFi using STP anyway!).

I never dispute that I may be naive. However, so called Palm killer rumours have littered the paths of my PDA purchases since year dot. I've stuck with Palm and have never regretted it. This app is ingenious yes, but a Palm killer - no way.

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

Surur @ 5/1/2005 4:00:27 AM #

Palm is dying by itself, this is just another nail in the coffin. If there is only one or two apps keeping you on the Palm bandwagon, and it works adequately with this software, then people WILL jump the fence.

Surur

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

twrock @ 5/1/2005 5:18:53 AM #

I'm sure a few biased sales people will say to the newbie "Buy PPC cause you can run both". I don't think most discerning buyers would go for this blanket statement without looking into it further or asking for a demo. Aren't sales people already saying "Buy either platform cause the same applications are available on both"?

That's not what I've heard the sales people saying. What I've heard is more like "Buy a PPC; it's better integrated with your Windows PC." The unsuspecting consumer doesn't ask for a demo to prove the point. How could they? Besides, the apps in a PPC are "Microsoft"; isn't it obvious that MS apps are going to work better with other MS apps? And now those same sales people are going to hear about this "fantastic new app" that lets users run "all" Palm apps on a PPC. I can just hear the wonderful advice they'll be tossing around now. Unfortunately, I think ignorant consumers outnumber discerning ones.

It isn't about reality; it's marketing. And the marketing just got easier for PPC's.

On the other hand, in the last two months, three new Apple shops have opened up in the local computer mall. If Apple has somehow found a way to "stay in the game," maybe there is hope for Palm. But it's hard to believe it's going to happen with the current management at the helm.

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

justauser @ 5/1/2005 6:42:05 AM #

You're right that a demo request from a buyer is unlikely. But many newbies will seek advice from an exerienced friend (I've had enough calls RE PDA advice)

I've heard sales guys argue PPC has "better integration with windows" and "PPC runs exactly the same applications as Palm" several times from sales people. Surely the best arguement against Palm has always been "Palm can't read native formats" - and it couldn't for years. But even that didn't kill Palm. My point is that this is just another PPC argument that will be as effective/ineffective as any of the others.

I won't be upgrading my Palm for another year or two anyway. So if all the prophets-of-Palm-doom are correct, surely by THEN it'll be clear whether Palm lives or dies. Somehow I think I'll be here again reading posts complaining about the Treo900 or Tungsten X3 or whatever...

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 5/1/2005 7:40:23 AM #

Voice - agreed that I could MAKE it work. I certainly didn't pay $400 for my T3. I know STP has more development left in it, but I just tried it today and I had to laugh. My friend came strutting in with his iPaq claiming he could run any of my apps now. I beamed him a couple. They looked shocking. As he doesn't have a hires PPC, the resolution was all over the place (even on the icons for the launcher). He tried switching to optimised mode but this created a watch sized little window in the centre of the screen. What's more, we were both looking at the same app - me with my 320x480 screen and him with his dodgy tiny 160x160 window. But I guess it ran. As I said, I laughed. He will probably delete the app after he is finished with his taunts. His opinion was at $30 it cost too much.
It's a toy app. I'm sure a few biased sales people will say to the newbie "Buy PPC cause you can run both". I don't think most discerning buyers would go for this blanket statement without looking into it further or asking for a demo. Aren't sales people already saying "Buy either platform cause the same applications are available on both"? I can't think of many applications that I currently wave in front of my PPC mates without them showing me the PPC equivalent. If someone is not already enticed by a feature packed PPC, this app will not change their mind - anyone can see it's not going to run like their Palm (their Palm apps won't be able to make use of the precious WiFi using STP anyway!).

I never dispute that I may be naive. However, so called Palm killer rumours have littered the paths of my PDA purchases since year dot. I've stuck with Palm and have never regretted it. This app is ingenious yes, but a Palm killer - no way.

STP is currently most functional in VGA PPCs. Take a look at it running on a Dell Axim X50v and you'll probably change your mind. On top of that, remember: this is still in BETA, and it's already useful enough to get longtime Palm users to dump their precious Palms for better-featured PPC hardware. What if STP ends up adding fullscreen, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth compatibility? I can see the marketing now: buy a less expensive, better-featured, better-built PPC, spend just another $30 and also get a PalmOS PDA! What are the odds that Palm can compete with that sales pitch? Not likely.

Sales of PPCs happen frequently because people are told lies by sales people that PPC works better with Windows (or else they assume this because PPC is also a Microsoft product). One of Palm's colossal failures was not marketing the fact that PalmOS actually works BETTER with Microsoft Office core apps than PPC does.

I'm amazed that you're still not seeing why STP can easily become the final nail in Palm's coffin. For the past several years, a significant number of Palm's customers have become disillusioned with the crappy hardware being offered by Palm. Those that could afford CLIEs switched to that lineup, but now that's no longer an option. PPCs and their Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/CompactFlash (with REAL expansion devices with REAL drivers and reasonable cost!)/SD/VGA screens/replaceable batteries/better quality construction/lower prices keep tempting Palm Faithful, but people have stuck with Palm because they like their PalmOS software and the intuitive PalmOS interface. I know several people that have stuck with Palm because they've become attached to a single app that they just can't get on PPC. Now that they can self-port their familiar apps to PPC, I anticipate a lot of people will switch in order to get the better hardware. Once they switch, they'll start getting used to PPC and many will find it to actually be an OK OS. Many will likely end up using native PPC apps before long. The momentum swing derived from thousands of hardcore PalmOS users jumping ship at the same time can't be overemphasized. Even before STP was announced, PIC regulars frequently heard from longtime PalmOS users that had switched to PPC after they gave up waiting for modern hardware from Palm. Not too many of them seem disappointed with their switch - even though up until now, moving to PPC hardware meant giving up familiar PalmOS apps. STP may be a Palm-killer because it finally gives people what they've wanted for years: PalmOS apps on PPC hardware. Palm-killer? Yes way.

If Dell starts running some crazy cheap deals on the Axim X50v (say $300 - $350), Palm can kiss its current quarter's profits goodbye. No profits -> Wall Street panic -> devalued stock price -> more Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt for consumers + developers -> further decline in sales -> death spiral continues. If Dell smells blood, they may move in for the kill and start a price war later this month - just in time to coincide with the debutante ball for Palm's upcoming brick-like PalmCube™. The Dungsten 5 has been a dud (deservedly so) and the PalmCube™ is also expected to be a complete flop. So that leaves the cheap-a$$ed TE² and the paint-stripped Zire 72 to hold up the fort? Wow.

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

Surur @ 5/1/2005 9:25:11 AM #

You've missed this deal, but they come around every once in a while.

Deal: 25% off all refurbished Dell Axim handhelds at Dell Outlet Click Here
Posted 11:09 PM PDT 4/21/05 by Ben

Dell Outlet has 25% off all refurbished Dell Axim handhelds with coupon code FWCD0K8M7XVVT$ [Exp 4/22, 11:59pm CDT, 400 uses]. Free shipping.
Axim X50v Advanced Graphics 624 MHz and VGA display $389 - 25% = $292

http://www.bensbargains.net/ktalk/1114150187,76552,.shtml

Surur

Dell X50v price war soon?

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 5/1/2005 11:37:46 AM #

Dell's X50v was on sale for 399$ Canadian ($315 US) in March. I'm betting Dell will put the X50v to $349 US or less this month.

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

neilmitchell @ 5/1/2005 3:17:14 PM #

I agree with VoR overriding message... PalmOne has lost its hardware way. I disagree that the forthcoming T|X/PalmCube/Brick will be a total flop. I think it will find some homes but not for the executive user that is necessary for Palms long term survival. It will find homes in the iPod/PDA combo homes of the young (although they are least likely to afford a $499 Palm). Meanwhile, serious users have little choice but to (at least) consider PPC and the slow trickle is in danger of becoming a flow. Once this happens, momentum will have been established and resistance to change will have been overcome. Once invested in new hardware and software, these “switchers” will not be changing back for sometime and only when there is an overriding reason to switch back would this be considered. I for one would not look to switch back after investing $’s in new hardware and new versions of the software I use.

BTW, I have personal experience of how Dell works. They are EXTREMELY AGGRESSIVE (cost and low-ball innovation) and if Palm keeps its' eyes off the ball for much longer, the match will be a foregone conclusion. Palm is in for the “ride of it’s life” over the next 12-18 months. We can get emotional but I am at the point of sitting back and saying “let the games begin” and “may the best team win”.

Atari-Portolio > HP95LX > HP100LX > HP300LX > HP320LX > Nino300 > Nino500 > HP620LX > Jornada680 > PalmV > Vx > m505 > T|T > T615C > T|T3 > T|E2 > (back to) T|T3

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

neilmitchell @ 5/1/2005 3:51:54 PM #

Oh BTW, many may find the lack of innovation in the next version of WinCe interesting...

http://www.mobile-review.com/pda/articles/wm2005-magneto-en.shtml

Atari-Portolio > HP95LX > HP100LX > HP300LX > HP320LX > Nino300 > Nino500 > HP620LX > Jornada680 > PalmV > Vx > m505 > T|T > T615C > T|T3 > T|E2 > (back to) T|T3

------------------
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. - Sir Winston Churchill

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem - Henry Kissinger
------------------

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

Surur @ 5/1/2005 4:25:49 PM #

Each revision of Windows Mobile reduces the objections of Palmistas. What kind of innovation do you exactly need?

This new version is built on a new kernel. One handed usage will be much improved. Its designed to work in non-volatile memory. The pocket office apps will be much improved. It will integrate better with the new outlook. Bluetooth will work better. Push e-mail will be integrated. WMP10 will be included which has the ability to sync playlists with wmp 10 the desktop, as well as use services like napster to go and rhapsody to go. An auto-update for pocketpc will be included. etc etc.

Is it not innovative because some-one else has done it already? It doesn't really matter then, as MY platform will be getting better and better, to add to its other many advantages.

Surur

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

justauser @ 5/1/2005 5:58:29 PM #

STP is software not hardware. This is unlikely to worry Palmone if they are actually considering going PPC with the Treo. In fact, it is more likely to help their transition.

Voice, your reasoning is sound. But again, aren't you forgetting that MS is a software company? Assuming they do get STP running OK with the conduits and wireless etc... To promote STP is to promote (or at the very least accept) (a) someone else's emulator program (b) 1000s of software titels - many of them competitors (c) the main competitor's OS platform - Palmsource. It doesn't sound like MS style to keep the opposition alive.

I imagine with Palmone rumoured to jump ship, Palmsource would be interested to know that at least their developer's apps can run on PPC. I don't believe cross platform integration is an OS killer.

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

svrontis @ 5/1/2005 7:55:02 PM #

> Is it not innovative because some-one else has done it already? It doesn't really matter then, as MY platform will be getting better and better, to add to its other many advantages.

Isn't it interesting how M$ employees keep posting here about how much better WinCE/PPC/WinMob/whatever is 'gonna' be someday. This has been going on for years. In the meantime, of course, ActiveSync still crashes regularly, you can't rely on calendar alarms, Pocket Word still strips out the formatting of documents, etc, etc.

It's problematic whether the 'Magneto' version of PPC will ever be released. The WinCE/PPC/WinMob/whatever division has been bleeding money for years. There have been a succession heads of this division which have come and gone (4 in the last 3 years on my count) - but none of them have achieved the promised turnaround. Sooner or later the M$ beancounters will axe this division, just as they have so many other unsuccessful ventures in the past.

Even if 'Magneto' is released, it will likely be similar to previous WinCE/PPC/WinMob/whatever updates - big on hype, some more eyecandy (eg, fancy colours or icons), a new name, but short on improvements of any substance. Just examine the record and see for yourself.

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

Surur @ 5/1/2005 9:34:52 PM #

svrontis, do you actually believe the things you say. Magneto is very real, its its running on real devices, and the features I wrote of are there to see for yourself. Eye candy has been the last feature to be added whereas PalmOs seems to look quite pretty. Not only is WM approaching profitability, its also strategically important for MS. Its not going any where.

svrontis, you need a reality check.

Surur

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 5/2/2005 1:34:46 AM #

STP is software not hardware. This is unlikely to worry Palmone if they are actually considering going PPC with the Treo. In fact, it is more likely to help their transition.

Most of pa1mOne's products run on PalmOS. STP will lure people to PPC, away from PalmOS, resulting in lost sales for pa1mOne. STP hurts pa1mOne.

Voice, your reasoning is sound. But again, aren't you forgetting that MS is a software company? Assuming they do get STP running OK with the conduits and wireless etc... To promote STP is to promote (or at the very least accept) (a) someone else's emulator program (b) 1000s of software titels - many of them competitors (c) the main competitor's OS platform - Palmsource. It doesn't sound like MS style to keep the opposition alive.

You're forgetting that as far as PDAs go, Microsoft is mainly just an OS company. Again, STP will lure people to PPC, away from PalmOS, bringing in more license fees (profits) to Microsoft. Once they start using PPC devices, it's highly probable that those people will stick with PPC, further hastening the decline of PalmOS market share. All that matters to Microsoft is that it sells a lot of PPC licenses and PalmSource doesn't sell a lot of PalmOS liscenses. How people use PPC is irrelevant. Still, once people start converting to PPC, they'll gradually start switching to native PPC apps and give up their legacy PalmOS apps.

I imagine with Palmone rumoured to jump ship, Palmsource would be interested to know that at least their developer's apps can run on PPC. I don't believe cross platform integration is an OS killer.

PalmSource doesn't care about developers. It's in business to sell copies of PalmOS. PalmSource continues to lose money and needs all the licensing fees it can obtain. Anything that significantly cuts down on the number of copies of PalmOS sold can easily kill PalmSource.

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

AdamaDBrown @ 5/2/2005 2:30:36 AM #

svrontis, your argument has some questionable facts. For one, Magneto is supposed to be unveiled next week. Also, while the WM division of Microsoft isn't yet independantly profitable, their losses are very narrow, and have been that way for some time. I have to guess that by not dabbling in the dark side, you've missed how much has improved over the years.

By the way, ActiveSync is much improved since 3.6, and the calender bug has long since been fixed. It's true that Pocket Word still sucks.

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

Altema @ 5/2/2005 1:58:35 PM #

"you've missed how much has improved over the years."

You're right, there has been tremendus improvement over the years. The first WinCE device I worked with was downright unusable. Things improved to the point where they were almost tolerable on my Jornada, and actually ok on my last iPaq (2215). However, palmOne still has a few devices that hit the sweet spot (the 532Mhz T3 being one), and since I prefer an OS that's more 'to-the-point' and instant, I'd rather run it natively.

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

RhinoSteve @ 5/2/2005 4:02:33 PM #

svrontis you have it more right than anyone else. This discussion group has made a mountain over a molehole concerning this product. While it is techically admireable, it is going to have much less market impact than everyone here thinks. Not to mention it give VOR one more thing to doom-say about in his IT cubical between middle of the night server backups.

The problem with a lot of these technology review, never-marketed-nor-wrote-a-line-of-code-in-their-career types is that they have way too much of a desktop / feature importance mentality. This has been shown time and time again not to be the major factor in sales.

Ok, there is a third party emulator on PCC to run Palm OS apps, whoop-dee-doo! Without a major bundling deal with a Dell or HP, this emulator will have minimal impact in the market.

Everyone here keeps on forgetting that the vast majority of PDA users are not that savvy and couldn't make a third party emulator work sans massive IT handholding.

As far at the PPC division being profitable, I would LOVE to get a third party accounting firm to start auditing Microsoft's books to see what the real cost is going into PPC.

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

Surur @ 5/2/2005 5:28:43 PM #

Rhino, you underestimate the power of the Internet. Yes, this app will not save the clueless, but its very easy to do product research these days, often simply by posting on a website to see what other users think. This software may also be too unwieldy for regular users, but complexity usually does not scare of power users. This could decapitate the Palm user base, the ones who have been crying out for powerful devices. Once the power users go Palm will have even less pressure to innovate, and would soon be seen by everyone to have jumped the shark.

Surur

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

NewtonDKC @ 5/4/2005 4:37:20 PM #

Srvonits - dude, get real!!! What innovation has the Palm OS released lately? NVS Ram? Oh wait, that's hardware...Maybe the Launcher app?
They can't even get a NEW OS on any device a year and a half after it's been available! And now that it has been scrapped for Linux, it will probably be next summer at the earliest that we see anything truly new (tho I am curious to see what the LifeDrive includes).
I guess continuing to tack hooks onto the aging Garnett are your idea of innovative progress? Don't get me wrong - I want (all parts of) Palm to succeed - I want them to have some winning hardware to run amazing system software and useful, powerful apps (from Palm and 3rd parties), but if you honestly compare platforms, Windows Mobile has made leaps in hardware development, power, features, useability, etc the past few years (and even greater since it began - tho of course I am more than willing to concede a good part of that is simply because it started out so bad ).
But really, the Palm OS looks like it did on Day 1. Some can argue it started perfect and hasn't had to change, but I beg to differ. Even very basic things (multitasking, copying between apps, storing native files internally) are either still MIA or just beginning to appear (and thus not on the "platform" but a slect number of devices (or device, as is often the case). And don't even get started on hardware - The very hardware the majority of people hope for on this board (and other boards) already exists - on the CE side of things!!!

And yes, Pocket Word is very basic - but the thing is it is included for free on EVERY Pocket PC (and no, not every Palm includes Docs2Go, just like most Palms don't include a standard web browser, etc - these "missing" apps can hurt because there is no stadard to rely on, even a poor one.

And, just as Docs2Go exists for Palms (3rd Party software - whether bundled with some Palms or not), so TextMaker (which handles almost every bit of Word - even better than Docs2Go does - ck the comparisons!) is available to those who need that on the PPC side. Obviously, Pocket Word, lame as it, is sufficient for the majority of users (most people simply want a way to read their email attachments that come in Word - not compose a technical manual or heavy formatted document on a PDA).

Same is true for Excel and PowerPoint add ons. I guess if some vendor bundled these with some Pocket PC's then it would be considered that the PPC suddenly was the "better" platform? Hardly...IMO, the "best" platform is what works best for the person using it and that person's needs.

The stuff you cite about PPC's is really outdated. ASync does not crash (I have to admit I never have had problems with it - not even old versions) and alarms - while problematic in PPC 2002 (there were freeware fixes) were fixed in 2003 and 2003 Second Edition. So at least be contemporaneous in your comparisons. Otherwise, you'd have to go back to comparing...what was out then, Palm m505's or the T1 maybe? (Just guessing - but hopefully everyone can see my point).

It really bothers me when people spread their own ignorance or bias - be truthful about the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms, and make sure you really KNOW what is the current state of the PDA world is. Offering up old info or wrong info only makes you look bad and confuses newbies! And please don't take this the wrong way - I am not slamming you as a person, or trying to insinuate you are a bad person, etc - it's just this sort of thing happens way too often. I'd rather a platform win on its own merits and answering the needs of the user - NOT because someone "dissed" it, and for outdated or non-existant reasons at that.

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

RhinoSteve @ 5/4/2005 8:25:11 PM #

Surur, you really over estimate the influence of power users. The Internet is good for a lot of things, however you have been spending too much time with computer-types of people and no those that have money and buy PDAs.

I stick to my word, this simulator/emulator is a flash in the pan that will get some enterprise deals and that is about it. It is in no way the silver bullet that will kill the PalmOS the same way other emulators have not killed the platform they were trying to doppelganger.

Turn off your computer, get some time in a mall, get a few dates -- if you can -- and see what the real market for this stuff is like.

RE: Doesn't make a difference to me.

ackmondual @ 5/5/2005 1:36:17 AM #

By VoR
Sales of PPCs happen frequently because people are told lies by sales people that PPC works better with Windows (or else they assume this because PPC is also a Microsoft product). One of Palm's colossal failures was not marketing the fact that PalmOS actually works BETTER with Microsoft Office core apps than PPC does.

Actually, they have marketted. What's wrong was they could've ddone a better job of marketting it. Somewhere on PalmOne's website, there's a link to compare and contrast pOS and PPC, and P1 explains why they think pOS and its hardware is better than PPC for the most part. IIRC, activeSync was part of the argument... as well as DTG retaining formatting and other rich features of M$ Office compared to to the Pocket suite.

.

by NewtonDKC
And yes, Pocket Word is very basic - but the thing is it is included for free on EVERY Pocket PC (and no, not every Palm includes Docs2Go, ..........

no comment on the web browser which is y i omitted it, but nowadays, practically every new P1 handheld comes with DTG. A handful of Clie's and old Palm Inc. even had it bundled. The only P1 handhelds that doN'T bundle DTG are: zire, z21, z31, and z71. It's a shame the z71 didn't have it, but as for all others, even tho they can run it, it's best to have a color hi-res screen anyways.
http://www.dataviz.com/products/documentstogo/dxtg_hhbundle.html
Of course PPC now has a viable Office solution, and that is also some 3rd party app... this one costing IIRC $30 to retain all formatting in Word, Excel, and even Powerpoint files? Office on PPC isn't a concern now since if you want it, you'll just have to factor in an extra $30 for it and then you're set

RE: Pocket PC emulator for Palm

twizza @ 5/4/2005 10:10:55 AM #

Wont happen, you will never have enuogh RAM to run WinMob as an emulator (lol).

antoinerjwright.com

RE: Pocket PC emulator for Palm

ackmondual @ 5/5/2005 2:03:50 AM #

It could technically, as higher end pOS devices 'll have the juice (proc and mem), to run QVGA apps, but there wouldn't be too much of an interest for devs to implement that. There are alot of hi-res devices out there, but too many of them have no more than 26 something MB of user RAM and <5MB of dyn heap mem

RE: emulator

wannitnow @ 4/29/2005 12:15:40 PM #

I've tried beaming from my Palm direct to my Axim and it work!

RE: emulator

wannitnow @ 4/29/2005 1:25:23 PM #

Don't want to encourage anyone to move over to the dark side though. I use my Dell but I am anxiously waiting for the day Palm releases some quality hardware so I can come back... it's a shame, those people running the show is killing it...

RE: Docs to Go - Native Office Files

InsGuy @ 4/29/2005 12:24:15 PM #

I put Docs to Go on and it worked fine for me. I had to go into the Palm folder, add on folder, and find the files that way, but I had 3 files in Docs to Go and put them on my X50v just fine.

Hope this helps.

All good things...

RE: Docs to Go - Native Office Files

LiveFaith @ 5/1/2005 3:31:55 PM #

WM2005 is suppoesed to give 1/2 decent Word support I hear. Other 3rd parties do it better on WinMob now. D2G is not the quickest app on earth on a fast Palm, so running thru this extra kludge running within the king of PDA kludge does not sound to krispy to me. I doubt it will be worthwhile for more than some specific edit?

I think this whole app is one of those "Look What It Can Do" apps that "Nobody Really Would Do It With". Kinda like photo and graphics editing on a PDA ... you CAN, but whyyyy?

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

RE: Styletap can do it, Why can't PalmSource?

AdamaDBrown @ 4/29/2005 7:29:33 PM #

You can say that again. To successfully adapt one platform to run on top of another in real time is staggering. If PalmSource had any sense, they'd hire these people at $100k.

RE: Great concept in general

twrock @ 4/30/2005 4:48:31 AM #

The next thing that concerns me is registering Palm apps. I installed PocketSat+ 1.5 and BankBook 4.33. Neither would let me register even though I have legitimate registration codes. On Palms, the device name (user) is used as part of the registration of apps. I cannot find any way to tell StyleTap to assign my Palm device name. No registration means no go for many apps after the trial period ends, and it means limited functionality for many apps during the trial period.

Is this really true? If no "user name" can be assigned and registrations codes will not work, the usable apps are reduced to freeware only. Can anyone confirm of refute this "problem"?

RE: UNBELIEVABLE concept.

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/30/2005 5:16:43 AM #

Try installing the app "UserName" and see if you can fake the string with software.

http://www.bitsnbolts.com/username.html

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Great concept in general

AdamaDBrown @ 4/30/2005 12:40:41 PM #

I wouldn't panic yet, this *is* still a beta.

RE: Great concept in general

JSwinden @ 4/30/2005 11:30:39 PM #

I tried using the User Name utility, but it states, "You must perform at least one normal hotsync before you can use this utility." Since you cannot perform a hotsync with StyleTap, User Name is not going to help.

Thanks,

Jack Swinden

See my PDA themes and skins at: www.JackSwinden.com

RE: Great concept in general

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 5/1/2005 1:40:00 AM #

Well try this one instead:

http://www.mulliner.org/palm/changename.php

Let us know if it works.

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Great concept in general

JSwinden @ 5/1/2005 2:46:39 PM #

ChangeName won't work either. User Name did accept the StyleTap method of installing files as a hotsync. But even though both ChangeName and UserName appeared to be working and changing the ID, I still couldn't register anything. I installed FileZ and it confirmed that neither ChangeName or UserName are able to change the User ID. StyleTap must be overriding any chage attempts. In my opinion, if I have to pay for new registration codes, I might as well purchase new PPC applications rather than use Palm ones. I've noticed that StyleTap runs extremely slow on my iPAQ 2215 (400mhz ARM). I don't have any clocking software, but it feels about as slow as my old m505 was. So I'm guessing that it runs at between 66mhz and 100mhz on a 400mhz processor. YUK!!!! I will wait until at least ST 2.0 before considering purchasing it.

Thanks,

Jack Swinden

See my PDA themes and skins at: www.JackSwinden.com

Register your apps in STP with MultiUserHack??? Maybe...

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 5/2/2005 7:21:41 AM #

ChangeName won't work either. User Name did accept the StyleTap method of installing files as a hotsync. But even though both ChangeName and UserName appeared to be working and changing the ID, I still couldn't register anything. I installed FileZ and it confirmed that neither ChangeName or UserName are able to change the User ID. StyleTap must be overriding any chage attempts.

I don't think it's a matter of STP "overriding" your changes. There probably is currently nowhere in the emulator to store a User Name + device name, since you're merely emulating the hardware. They probably would need to code something to present the User Name to all of your apps. Actually, I have one last suggestion that might work: download the latest version of MultiUserHack (search for it). Install the "non-Hack" version designed for PalmOS 5 and enable it, with your real User Name being listed for every app. Let me know if it works or if you can't find the app.

As a last resort, it would also probably be reasonable to use PW-P****er to patch software you already own so that they don't ask for registration codes. It's ironic that PalmOS warez tools may end up helping legitimate PalmOS software users avoid having to purchase PPC software!

In my opinion, if I have to pay for new registration codes, I might as well purchase new PPC applications rather than use Palm ones. I've noticed that StyleTap runs extremely slow on my iPAQ 2215 (400mhz ARM). I don't have any clocking software, but it feels about as slow as my old m505 was. So I'm guessing that it runs at between 66mhz and 100mhz on a 400mhz processor. YUK!!!! I will wait until at least ST 2.0 before considering purchasing it.

STP's speed will vary depending on which app's running due to the specifics in how the given app was coded. I think you might have somewhat unrealistic expectations about what STP can actually appomplish. This beta already achieves A LOT more than most experienced Palm users would ever have hoped was possible.

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Great concept in general

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 5/2/2005 9:28:28 AM #

"...what STP can actually aCComplish..."

- Don't use drugs, kids.

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: Great concept in general

ackmondual @ 5/5/2005 2:13:24 AM #

by VoR
I don't think it's a matter of STP "overriding" your changes. There probably is currently nowhere in the emulator to store a User Name + device name, since you're merely emulating the hardware.

Well, u would normally check the Hotsync app on a pOS device for your username. If it's just hardware emulation and not software (as in also the pOS), the only other way to check your username is install certain pOS games on there.... any Astraware title comes to mind since nearly all their games use hotsyncIDs in registering their games. Tap the menu, look for the entry to register, and it'll tell you your hotsync name.

Let us know what your hotsync name is if any either going through MultiUserHack or the other method

RE: Great concept in general

ackmondual @ 5/5/2005 2:21:08 AM #

AdamaDBrown @ 4/30/2005 12:40:41 PM

I wouldn't panic yet, this *is* still a beta.

Well, if they keep up the good work, then this can go potentially far.

Even so, there may be more improvements in an upgrade then a beta to first release app.

[signature0]the secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that's even worse[/signature0]
[signature1]My PDAs: Visor --> Visor Neo (blue) --> Zire 71 --> Tungsten T3[/signature1]

RE: Putting aside, for a second, the legal questions.

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/30/2005 3:43:07 AM #

I don't think it really matters. STP is out now and nothing Palm can do can change that fact. If Palm sues, some Really Bad People will hack simply STP into freeware and put it up on hundreds of download sites within a week. Pandora's Box has been opened.

The message to Palm is now crystal clear: Either Palm starts selling hardware that matches PPC in features, quality AND price or they can kiss it's ever-dwindling market share goodbye. Remember Netscape and Corel? The end ofter comes very quickly once the decline has started...

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: PIM Integration - not?

Surur @ 4/30/2005 4:34:18 AM #

Interestingly, if you copy over your databases to the pocketpc you can continue to use those, even though you can no longer sync them.

Surur

TVoR's PalmOS Conduit -> PPC workaround:

The_Voice_of_Reason @ 4/30/2005 4:58:43 AM #

This might work*:

1) Buy an old $10 Palm off eBay.

2) Buy a $9.95 copy of RecoX.

3) Sync whatever programs you have on the old Palm.

4) Use RecoX to sync the databases between the PPC and the Palm.

*I haven't tried this, so don't blame me if doing the above blows up your PDAs. If it does work, this kludge may solve the conduit problem for a lot of people and remove the final barrier to upgrading to better hardware (PPC).

Ryan: Can you do a quick review of STP? This thing is going to be HUGE!

TVoR

------------------------
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.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

RE: PIM Integration - not?

ackmondual @ 5/5/2005 2:18:24 AM #

^^

My guess is "NOT A CHANCE IN HELL". After all, this is PIC and STP is a PPC program.

RE: wake up call for Palm Licensees

fishtastic @ 5/2/2005 2:16:19 AM #

I've read many comments to various story on the site over the years, and this is indeed a wake up call for not only PalmOne but PalmSource too.

The significance of this app is that it reduces the barrier to switching platforms. Yes it doesn't do conduits, *yet*, but it may happen.

Palm hardware is far behind PPC hardware, not only cpu wise but with memory, bluetooth and wifi. Magneto will enable phone manufacturers to streamline the production of new phone platforms. Nokia and Symbian aren't sitting around either.

A favourite thing on this site is that PPC are bloatware and soccer moms want a cheap and easy to use pda. Well, I'm sorry guys but a cheap mobile phone will do what a low end pda does for a soccer mom. That low end pda market is going to phone manufacturers. The high end market is going to phones and so is the middle.

The MDA IV has a VGA screen, wifi and bluetooth. no need for a pda since it built into the phone. And I hear you scream but PalmOS is so much easier to use than windows on a phone, like I said magneto is coming.

Back to Palm and now PAlmSource. The Palm OS is not a modern usable product, after years of Palm saying it doesn't need a MMU etc and other crap, palmos5 was a cobbled together stopgap until Cobalt arrived and a proper OS that could do media properly and other things. We all know what happened their and now the saviour is linux, how long will that be? Two years more, less. Who knows.

Neither PalmSource or PalmOne are thinking about sensible future strategy. The Lifedrive or whatever, if you put a hard drive in a pda, what is it for? I tell you what it's for, Multimedia. What is the palm crap at, Multimedia. Why wait until PalmOS 6 is out and at 6.1 before deciding to go to Linux, are PalmSource high? Really, I mean it why spend millions buying Be if you wait until a product's out before scrapping it and going for an open source OS. Linux may be the way to go but if you wanted to go that way you should have done it years ago and saved the money instead of buying Be.

PalmOne at least can go over to PPC but they may struggle there, my veteran Treo 600 is coming up to it's 1 1/2 year birthday and it isn't going to be replaced by a 650 it simply doesn't do enough for an upgrade. I fancy either a MDAIV or maybe a Nokia N91 we will see when they are out.

Palm - listen to me when I say I would love to add some more Palm products to my collection of Palm PDAs and accs but you just aren't coming up with the goods. You phones are weak in too many areas to stand up well in Europe, for example, where expectation and telephonic experience is higher. Your PDAs are weak in hardware terms and not getting any better.

My 2 cents

Fish

Sorry for bad grammar etc. I've been up more than 24 hours and about to go to bed. Night, Night

RE: wake up call for Palm Licensees

wannitnow @ 5/4/2005 2:09:11 PM #

Don't think it's a "wake up call" for Palm but more for us - the diehard users... Well, I've given up on it actually since last Dec when I got an Axim... But I keep thinking it's just a phase and they'll come out with a hat trick... Just dug out my Zire 71 today for my wife to use after her TE couldn't recognise the graffiti anymore and it's a hell to install and mess around re-installing and transfering in/out of SD cards and stuff... The only thing good it's the stable interface, anything else it's just a pain!!! WAKE UP! They are WAY too late...

Comments on: Run Palm OS Applications on a Pocket PC

Article Comments

Haven't tried it myself, but...

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

RE: Haven't tried it myself, but...

It works great

RE: It works great

RE: It works great

RE: It works great

Save your money

RE: It works great

RE: It works great

Doomsayers rejoice

RE: Doomsayers rejoice

RE: Doomsayers rejoice - NOT

The end of palm os?

RE: The end of palm os?

RE: The end of palm os?

RE: The end of palm os?

RE: The end of palm os?

RE: The end of palm os?

RE: The end of palm os?

Imitation is the best form of flattery

RE: Imitation is the best form of flattery

RE: Imitation is the best form of flattery

Things Are Heating Up

RE: Things Are Heating Up

zire 72 "upgrade"?

RE: Things Are Heating Up

RE: Things Are Heating Up

RE: Things Are Heating Up

RE: Things Are Heating Up

Runs all Palm OS applications, eh?

RE: Runs all Palm OS applications, eh?

It crashes on my Tungsten 5 and Treo 650. ;-O

Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

DIE, Zombie! DIE!!!

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

Palm OS - The Universal Development Platform

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

Breathe, Palm! BREATHE!

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

RE: Oh C'mon Palm OS, don't die...

Lawsuit! Lawsuit!

RE: Lawsuit! Lawsuit!

RE: Lawsuit! Lawsuit!

Allah Akbar!

RE: Allah Akbar!

RE: Allah Akbar!

RE: Allah Akbar!

RE: Allah Akbar!

RE: Allah Akbar!

RE: Allah Akbar!

RE: Allah Akbar!

RE: Allah Akbar!

RE: Allah Akbar!

It's not a emulator, completely legal

IS it legal? We'll see...

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

Come on, people. This is un-FREAKIN-believable!

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal

RE: It's not a emulator, completely legal