Comments on: mOcean 3 Review

I'm pleased to report that the trial version now allows you to play back your music, so you can now test out its audio quality before you pony up the money.

Unfortunately, the skipping issue is still present on the 680, and is absolutely hideous in conjunction with Softick Audio Gateway 1.12. Hopefully MotionApps are working on it.

No other major changes I could see.

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680

Navigation in mOcean is fine BUT On music playback view where you see the song, artist, album, it would be nice to also include the genre, and while on this view why dont you make the center button more functional by adding more to the menu i.e
Pressing the center button on d-pad opens a menu with following selections:
- Volume (adjust volume when this is selected) >
- Ratings (view ratings when this is selected) >
- Add to playlist > (add currently playing song to on-the-go playlist)
- Play All >
> This Album
> This Artist
> This Genre

Scenario; suppose you are flipping through songs and come across an old favorite and suddenly you get the urge to listen to all of the artist's songs or the genre or the album, you could do so by selecting 'Play All' > 'This Album' or 'This Artist' or 'This Genre'. while still on music playing view how about making the d-pad work just like the ipod : left and right buttons: flip through 'Next', 'Previous' tracks, Up button: Back (go back to menu scroll mode like ipod), down button:Play/Pause.

* Wouldn't it be great to be able to flip through tracks without ever touching the screen (using any palm with a d-pad button, not just the treos)

LV_Gee, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say that mOcean has handicapped itself with the iPod's limitations. Because MotionApps have cloned it so completely, there's very little customization to take advantage of the fact that Palms have two different input methods: touchscreen and the 5-way nav. Treos throw an exposed keyboard into the mix too. The find-as-you-type feature is an excellent use of the keyboard for navigating the menus, but why not use it for the various playback functions from the Now Playing screen? The 5-way could be put to better use as well, as you point out.

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680

I generally respect your comments but this, although probably true is what is killing the Palm platform. How many palm devices have been sold through the years and yet developers abandon them? Sorry I don't own a Treo, I don't know a single person who owns a Treo and I have no desire to have a Treo. I do know many people who own Tungstens, M500 series and even III series Palms, most of whom I convinced over the years to buy one in the first place and now they have fewer and fewer choices of software. Most of these devices will shortly just be put in a box and forgotten. My Tungsten TX which is still being sold by Palm is no longer good enough to make software for? Guess I don't understand why developers would turn away potential customers. From this point forward I plan to make a developer black list which I will never buy software from again. First on the list is the makers of mOcean.

PDA's Past and Present:
Palm - IIIxe, Vx, M500, M505, Tungsten T
Handspring - Edge, Platinum
Sony - SJ22
Apple - MP2000, MP2100

Answer: matt_laughs

I do figure on a good bit of that happening, especially the Apple iPhone killing the market entirely for $100+ "luxury" MP3 players, but I'd replace "March" with "May/June" with Voice's +/- 1 month wiggle room for most of those predictions.

I think that Palm's most pressing issue now is WHAT will follow the 750 once it's properly rolled out in the US and additional markets. We've not heard a peep out of new PDAs or any new Treos other than a few posts on TreoCentral about a possible 700p replacement. I think the ONE thing Palm might have learned lately, based on the response to the TreoCentral petition/letter, is that they are going to start taking Bluetooth a lot more seriously in 2007. For me, '06 was the year that Bluetooth finally began breaking out of the doldrums (not for POS, I mean on an industry-wide basis). It'll be interesting to see if Palm ever adopts BT 2.0, A2DP etc. in their 2007 products.

Also, is Palm rallying the troops and keeping quiet to muster up a big launch of the STB? I still wouldn't be surprised if Palm attempts to resurrect the "mobile manager" moniker for Hawkins' STB. If the device ends up having Audrey or WebTV-style uselessness without a wireless connection and/or a pricey Palm service subscription, it'll be doomed before it even hits store shelves. Remember, despite the LifeDrive's crippling flaws, even without Wi-Fi or Bluetooth it's still a servicable portable HD,a passable mp3 player and a laggy PDA with a color 320*480 screen. If the STB isn't at least all of this--and tons of local storage (~40gb of hard drive or 8gb of flash at minimum) is a huge key--then it'll be over before it even begun.

# 8/9 are pretty much a given anyway.

As for #10...it's too early to call that. A LOT depends on who ends up gobbling up Palm, right? Right?

Voice, are you going to ever reveal who you THINK is the leading candidate when you say "Palm will be bought out by ******" ??

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

Thanks. A lot is about to happen over the next few months. 2006 was a year of treading water, serving leftovers and cautious gameplans. 2007 is going to belong to the BOLD.

I do figure on a good bit of that happening, especially the Apple iPhone killing the market entirely for $100+ "luxury" MP3 players, but I'd replace "March" with "May/June" with Voice's +/- 1 month wiggle room for most of those predictions.

The iPod Phone will be introduced in a few days and will send shockwaves through the industry. Only LG and Sony Ericsson seem to understand how to compete. Style sells™. Nokia STILL doesn't understand this and will pay the price in 2007. March is D-Day and will deliver a series on stunning chain reaction announcements leading to the meltdown of the status quo predicted above.

I think that Palm's most pressing issue now is WHAT will follow the 750 once it's properly rolled out in the US and additional markets. We've not heard a peep out of new PDAs or any new Treos other than a few posts on TreoCentral about a possible 700p replacement. I think the ONE thing Palm might have learned lately, based on the response to the TreoCentral petition/letter, is that they are going to start taking Bluetooth a lot more seriously in 2007. For me, '06 was the year that Bluetooth finally began breaking out of the doldrums (not for POS, I mean on an industry-wide basis). It'll be interesting to see if Palm ever adopts BT 2.0, A2DP etc. in their 2007 products.

Palm is only capable of incremental upgrades. Has any significant work been done with the Treo lineup since Handspring debuted the Treo 600 over 3 years ago? While it would be nice to see Palm fix the numerous deficiencies of its current devices, I would rather see Palm contract with LG or Sony Ericsson to produce a simple, SMALL cellphone that also happens to run PalmOS.

Also, is Palm rallying the troops and keeping quiet to muster up a big launch of the STB? I still wouldn't be surprised if Palm attempts to resurrect the "mobile manager" moniker for Hawkins' STB. If the device ends up having Audrey or WebTV-style uselessness without a wireless connection and/or a pricey Palm service subscription, it'll be doomed before it even hits store shelves. Remember, despite the LifeDrive's crippling flaws, even without Wi-Fi or Bluetooth it's still a servicable portable HD,a passable mp3 player and a laggy PDA with a color 320*480 screen. If the STB isn't at least all of this--and tons of local storage (~40gb of hard drive or 8gb of flash at minimum) is a huge key--then it'll be over before it even begun.

Palm already realizes the STB was a waste of time, but too much was put into it, so they'll try to make it work. As soon as it starts becoming a Palm VIIx/LifeDrive-sized albatross around the company's neck they will "do the right thing" and cut their losses.

# 8/9 are pretty much a given anyway.

You mean you don't believe PalmSource when they say, "Everything is going according to plan."??? Are you calling PalmSource's David Schlesinger a LIAR???

As for #10...it's too early to call that. A LOT depends on who ends up gobbling up Palm, right? Right?

A buyout by ****** means nearly-instantaneous, massive deployments. A buyout by either of the other 2 contenders would result in a fast upswing in Palm's fortunes, but not quite as dramatic

Voice, are you going to ever reveal who you THINK is the leading candidate when you say "Palm will be bought out by ******" ??

I've given some pretty big clues. ****** would have pulled the trgger by now had Palm not been so greedy and trying to artificially inflate the buyout price. The other 2 companies are/were logical suitors, but Palm may have scared them off for good.

#10 is silly.

The CEO of PALM outright said end-users couldn't give a rat's ass what OS is on their device. If HE says it, believe it.

Oh, so now you believe everything Palm's CEO says, hengeem? How sweet.

Read what was written again. Yes, most end users neither know nor care which OS their hardware runs. But the reason for the PalmOS resurgence will not be because of the choices of individual end users, but rather because of the effective marketing TO BUSINESSES of Treos paired with the assets of Palms's suitor. Palm's failure to win business customers over the past 3 years was due to lack of planning and execution rather than the lack of a good product. A better company - especially one with assets that integrate well with Treo hardware - wouldn't make the same amateurish blunders that Palm has made in recent years.

PalmOS is dead, Jim. It may still be kicking but it's dead.

PalmOS is still plugging away and kicking (a$$) despite 5 years of shameful, criminal neglect. Not many OSes could have survived that degree of abuse and lived to tell the tale. With a little TLC PalmOS can (and will) make a Rocky Balboa-style comeback. In PalmOS' favor are the facts that most end users are not very demanding of their software (simple + stable is paramount) and that the huge PalmOS app library permits rapid creation of a very solid suite of apps that can be easily customized for business clients.

TVoR

Silly person - belief is context-sensitive.

Nuff said.

Ahem...

We could GUESS a few reasons!

(1) He had a falling out with Colligan who said "Enough!". Now Colligan's gonna release something that isn't as great as Hawkins originally proposed because Colligan HAS to release SOMETHING ala that amusing PalmSource Cobalt "release" oh so many Decembers ago.

(2) The design of the Next Great Thing is done and has moved into the boring stage; Hawkins is trying to recover from his failed Brain Institute (**) and get his new company off the ground.

(3) Too many key PALM developers left. The Next Great Thing has temporarily been shelved. Hawkins, too.

More?

I really could see it shipping with something like a 480*480 or 640*480 screen and a stuff like a special pocket version of Wikipedia, MobiTV etc.

SV, if the STB is NOT a LifeDrive-style device like I describe above, then what hardware is its software going to run on?

P.S.
There's another possibility here:

Hawkins had this concept years ago and the LifeDrive was the half-baked, penny-pinching, half-hearted realization of that hardware side of that concept. The software was passed off like a hot potato from Hawkins to Palm (culminating, as SV said, in Hawkins becoming a "non-person") and it sat for over a year, being worked on here & there as budgets permitted before finally being released in a not-so-complete state in midyear 2007. It will be, of course, modified to run only on Treos releeased from 2007 onwards with no concessions made for existing device owners.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

Can Palm hack the FrankenGarnet memory architecture to have lots of "invisible to the user" RAM for running apps? That is, PC-style memory architecture where RAM is used for program executables but local storage is "something" else. I've yet to get a clear explanation of this but isn't that what the recent Treos (700w/wx/p, 680) have kinda/sorta been doing? 128mb of RAM with ~60mb available to the user? What's the rest of that RAM being allocated for?

Then Palm can say "Well, this Treo has only 60mb of "user storage" RAM available and we only "officially" support SD cards up to 2gb in size. But look, you can have GIGS of storage by signing up for a palmdrive.net (or whatever) account and you can store your LIFE on our server and call it up on your Treo at a moment's notice!"

I wonder if the long-delayed, long-rumored, hotly anticipated Palm OS SlingPlayer client software is being "sat" upon by Palm and will launch in tandem with the "Mercedes" Treo & TNGT mid-'07? The "launch" of Google Maps for Palm OS concurrently with the Treo 680 could have been a foreshadowing of this. Look how Palm's been so aggressive lately with "partner" content (Yahoo, Google, Audible etc).

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

Maybe.

;-O

TVoR

Cornell...Berkeley...they're all the same.

It's either ***, ****, *****, ******, *******, ********, *********, **********, ***********, or ************. I'm 99% sure of that.

Nice to see you haven't changed, twrock. People like you, RhinoSteve and Jeff Kirvin/Dr Opinion are truly "special" to us all.

And yes, hkklife: Palm will likely be bought by a company that has a 6 letter name.

My predictions are all here, in black and white and only TVoR has the guts to go on record with this many BOLD prognostications. No doubt if even one of them fails to come true, dumba$$es like twrock will be here biotching about it. Feel free to print this thread out and put it on your fridge door to check off the predictions as they are realized one by one in 2007. Nostradamus TVoR will leave you slackjawed with a 100% accuracy rate.

TVoR

If you think I take anything you say seriously, you're even dimmer than I thought you were. Seriously.

TVoR

I'm not going to make any predictions, because I'm almost certain they'll be laughably wrong. I just like to watch. Google seems like a logical suitor: they don't yet have a hardware business and with the way their coffers are bursting at the seams, Palm would be chump change at almost any price. Plus, they're very keen on mobile computing in the way that Palm are and have a very similar "simplicity is best" philosophy. It looks like a good fit.

mikecane:
Poor sad child still trying to gain some notice by invoking my name. Like who would ever invoke YOURS?

Was there a post deleted somewhere before this? Seems rude.

*It's MayTag. Keep your eyes peeled for the Palm Dishwasher.

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650 ---> Crimson Treo 680

In a purely platonic fashion of course...

I'm still curious to see if Mike will ultimately end up preferring the relatively "crude 'n low tech" LifeDrive over the 770.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

Back to the original topic of this thread, TVoR has bookmarked the thread and will be returning to it throughout the year to update it as each prediction comes true. It's fun to gloat and say "I told you so" when there are so many Doubting Thoma$$es infesting Palminfocenter, feebly trying to attack TVoR. Looks like the first "I told you so" will be arriving early next week when Svengali Steve Jobs introduces the iPod Phone™ as "Oh, just one more thing..."

Your my biotch, twrock. Don't EVER forget it.

TVoR

Lol. You can't claim that one as an original!

twrock:
Now, back to the question that you continue to sidestep. So, big guy, what's the name?

I second! Maybe it's Toyota.