Comments on: Access Linux Platform Shown at LinuxWorld

So the challenge becomes: can you do enough of what X does to support your aps without ending up just as bloated.

The handheld.org folk think you can't and they've tried to set up a small version of X. I've run that version on a handheld and it has had acceptable performance.

May You Live in Interesting Times

I'd be more worried about the use of Gtk; it is a desktop toolkit, developed with big desktop machines in mind and the features that people want on those machine (animation, theming, etc.).

The main thing that I think we'll see with ALP, based on what we know of the Rome interface and what's been repeated to me by Lefty, is that it's "task oriented." From the sound of it the system is not just aware of "applications" that are running it's aware of common tasks those applications register with it. So an taskbar icon that represents your MP3 player running in the background might present you with an "access panel" that would let you mute, pause, or resume your music without having to bring the whole application into view. If I have that right, it sounds like a nice innovation.

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

"PDA market" being a catch-all term used for both dedicated PDAs as well as smartphones?

Or "PDA market" specifically referring to only conventional PDAs?

Heck, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a true "conventional" PDA never shipped with ALP. I think we can all safely assume Palm is going to milk Garnet as long as possible and then drop PDAs entirely by next year. Either that or they will try to kickstart the market by capitalizing on their near monopoly of the remaining slivers of the "PDA" market, offering cellular & HD-equipped tablet style devices running whatever their own home-brewed Linux solution is.

Either way, I don't think Access are in Palm's plans any longer other than someone to buy the IP for Garnet & Cobalt for penies on the dollar (assuming this is needed if backwards compatability cannot legally be reverse engineered). After that it's Palm vs Access/PalmSource as competitors of sorts--with Access making a strong push into Asia & emerging markets (India etc) and Palm sticking to their usual mainstays of the USA and Western Europe.

Imagine a split kinda similar to how JVC & RCA used to be together then broke apart at the onset of WWII, their former ties being a distant memory during the furious VCR & camcorder wars of the 1980s ;-)
That'll be Palm & PalmSource down the road if both stay in business.

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

The latter.

Although you should still be a little careful in the assumption that Palm has no interest in ALP. There's not enough to see yet to know they're not interested, and if my guy is right about their Linux platform being more of a hedge than an actual product there are plenty of good reasons for them to have done it that have nothing to do with their opinion's of ACCESS's plans. For one thing, it makes a good bargaining chip. For another, if they think there's a reasonable chance their customers will examine the options and prefer an ALP-powered Treo to one with their own OS they still need to grow their in-house Linux expertise.

I'm sure Palm is approaching the prospect of licensing ALP with the utmost caution and a healthy dose of skepticism, but I doubt they've written it off. If Palm does license ALP, part of the deal might be that they get to put their tweaked-out Treo version of Garnet in the emulator--and ACCESS might sweeten their licensing deal a bit if Palm agreed to license that back to ACCESS as the standard ROM image for GHost. While I don't think the Palm OS part of ALP is a major focus for ACCESS, they may prefer to release it with a Palm-enhanced Garnet than the bare-bones and neglected version that PalmSource owns.

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

I think thats an easy yes, it appears on Access's diagrams.

Surur

They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...

MS if far from dead in the handheld space. Even if HP should happen to pull out (they haven't, their smartphone devices will still run MS software), there are still other licensees. Who's licensing PalmOS (and actually producing products outside the niche) other than Palm? This race is far from decided. Besides, two players means some form of competition, which is always better for the consumer (you and me).

_________________
Sean

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

have you fled of the euthanasia room? :)

Ivan

1. Those buttons in the "mock-up" screenshot are big relative to a very small phone screen. That doesn't mean that on a PDA-sized screen they would have to be very large at all. Besides, that mock-up looks more like an example of an operator-customized go-to-our-store launcher than a regular application.

2. While ACCESS and Palm *both* are likely to focus their energies on making a nice smartphone experience, ACCESS seems to have at least as broad a vision about the range of devices it wants to support as Palm does. The banner that PalmSource and ACCESS recently shared on the front page of their web sites read: "Together, ACCESS and PalmSource will deliver next generation software solutions for a variety of markets, including mobile devices and phones, home media, and automotive telematics." I'd suggest that some thought may be going into using ALP on screens that are even quite a bit bigger than a PDA.

3. A lot of the thinking that could improve the usability of a multitasking system on a small phone screen could also make the touchscreen-enabled PDA experience better. If ALP's "task-oriented" design turns out to be anything like what I described above, for example, it would be a big improvement over any multi-tasking PDA environment that exists today. Also, it wouldn't hurt PDA users at all to have a better one-handed experience for the times when their interest is in retrieving rather than entering data.

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

How is the 2nd LD faring build-quality wise? Any noticable hardware changes from the early production run model you originally had?

How's the 2.0 update doing for you?

While I wouldn't take a LD unless it was:
A. $200 or less
AND
B. Preloaded with 2.0 from the factory

I still like to keep tabs on users who I know had a rather touch and go experience the first time around with their LD. I mean, heck, my 2nd LD was a bit better than the first LD and I just bought them one month apart.

Personally my ideal solution would be a TX with a ROM update to address the heap issue and a 4gb SD Ultra + card (the one with the flip out USB port) once the spec is ratified and made official.

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

I use my Treo 650 as only since my laptop went some weeks ago. Outside of missing a few web dev contracts (sucky web browser cannot preview a site done in css correctly), I really havent missed a beat. And I really dont feel like getting a new computer yet either. Tis kinda nice to be bully unteathered.

mobileministrymagazine.com
antoinerjwright.com

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