Comments on: New ALP Details and Screenshots

Q.E.D.

Giggle.

Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

MS did the same thing when the developed the UMPC: use off-the-shelf components to drive down the cost. Unfortunately, theory met reality and those $500-$900 UMPCs became $1,000+!

I'd like to see at least *one* ALP device released in the US just so I can fondle, if not thoroughly molest, it!

It's complete in one sense, but from a developer standpoint it looks like a really nice platform to innovate on, too.

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

I keep wondering, has anyone heard of Asia? It was "discovered" quite a few years ago, so I would have thought Americans would have heard of it by now. It's a "decent" sized market for mobile devices.


Thinking about Vista? Think again: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

While I'm of the opinion that ALP will not be the only successor to the Palm OS out there, I do think it holds promise as the successor that could do the most to bring the Palm OS experience (broadly speaking) to a global audience. As a developer I'm looking forward to working with ALP.

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

Also, if Palm had an interest in ALP don't you think they would have wanted to throw ACCESS a bone with a little PR buzz when there have been ALP press releases? Sure would have been a nice way for Palm to respond to questions about the future of Palm OS if they considered ALP to be their future. Instead, they've been dead quiet.

It's disappointing in one respect, but there is a potential silver lining. Notice how ACCESS is using the term "Garnet VM" ("Virtual Machine") to refer to their Palm OS emulator now? Just like the "Java VM" that is on practically every phone made? The idea that they are trying to convey, I think, is that Garnet is becoming an application execution environment that can run on multiple platforms, as opposed to being an OS unto itself. It can be part of ALP, but it can be part of other Linux platforms, or even WinCE or Symbian with some work. Compared to Java, Garnet is extremely powerful, though, with lots of access to low-level system APIs (possibly more than ever before, now that it's running on Linux). While I don't by any stretch of the imagination think Garnet is going to be taking over the world like Java ME has, even having it run on two major platforms (ALP and a next-generation OS from Palm) may be a good thing for a lot of users and developers. Giving the Palm OS ecosystem a shot in the arm will benefit both platforms in their initial adoption. Eventually the Garnet VM will become less and less important, but it has the potential of being a more powerful transitional force when it is seen as a multi-platform, multi-vendor environment than as being unique to just one vendor.

Will this strategy succeed? I'm not sure, but it's certainly an interesting development (assuming I'm right about this being what is developing!)

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

Which "PalmOS" do you mean? What ACCESS has isn't "PalmOS" as we've known it, other than the Garnet emulation. And won't "their" Garnet have the same irritating limitations as "our" Garnet? And will "their" Garnet be able to take advantage of things like FontSmoother, et al, that add/change things?

http://www.limofoundation.org

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

1. The two current OS's (FrankenGarnet and WinMoB) are enough and "good enough".
2. The PalmSource braintrust has proven their incompetence more than once and Colligan will not/can not afford to be fooled again.

Why should PALM waste their limited resources on a dubious OS called ALP?

Access: "You first"

Guesses on who the first to drop will be?

I'm guessing the one not moving forward.

Perhaps this is an opportune moment to remind folks that the ACCESS Linux Platform is an Orange-approved platform and that we're actively working with Orange on the creation of the "Orange Applications Suite" to run on ACCESS Linux Platform-enabled phones. Orange has close to 90 million mobile customers, worldwide.

"Orange is committed to developing innovative and exciting mobile applications," said Yves Maitre, vice president, devices, Orange. "This is part of our wider Signature strategy, which delivers a consistent customer experience across a variety of devices and applications. Having ALP as an Orange approved platform and working with ACCESS to develop and deliver the Orange Application Package for ALP, will enable us to foster the growth of the mobile Linux market."

The full press release (from last August) is at http://www.access-company.com/news/press/PalmSource/2006/081306_alporange.html

It appears that Orange isn't at all committed to Palm; Orange Switzerland is the only European Orange division to actually offer any Treo to its customers, mercifully it's the Treo 680.

Is this further evidence of Palm not using ALP?

I've been a very good Orange customer for the past ten years and I've had plenty of opportunity to view their press releases and I can reflect on how things subsequently turned out, who remembers Orange's first attempt at a pre 3G videophone? Believe me, Orange will prefer to forget!

As for the press release, yes, it's a statement of intention and some groundwork but it could still all be for nothing until the moment handsets are in subscribers' hands.

Well congratulations on the ACCESS work with Orange. This close an association suggests at least Orange partnering with a ODM (HTC?) to make an Orange branded ALP smartphone.

It's a fair point that Orange currently doesn't show much interest in the Treo; it neither offers the 680 nor 750 in its significant European divisions yet both can now be purchased SIM free from European Palm online shops.

On the issue of bemusement, I was making two separate points in my prior post and I'm entertained that they may not be so separate after all...

A current smartphone in the making (i.e. with wifi and/or 3G) which can run Garnet OS on my present carrier! Good stuff! It doesn't even matter whether it's Palm or not just as long as it runs Garnet.

It does seem that the future's bright, the future's Orange!

Thank you!

Well, we enjoy working with 'em, and I believe the feeling's mutual.

The status bar in that shot shows the full laundry list of status icons and annunciators up there. Going from the left: the handset indicates a call in progress or an incoming call; the bang indicates a pending user alert, such as a call missed or an SMS or voicemail message received; the thing with the musical note indicates that the media player is playing something (or has been paused while playing something due to an incoming call, say); the arrow indicates a download in progress; the HotSync icon means the device is currently synchronizing its data to someplace; the Bluetooth icon means that the Bluetooth radio is on; the antenna means that the WiFi radio is on; the "AB" indicates the current input mode (in this case, "alphabetic", i.e. triple-tap, with caps lock on--other possibilities might be "Ab", "12", "t9", etc.); the speaker indicates that the sound is on and gives an idea of the volume; the magnifying glass allows you to access the "Find" application--that's actually the only non-status item there; the next two are straightforward: cell network status and signal strength and battery status.

Gone is the bottom bar we all know and love...

Keep in mind that this is not "the look" of the platform; it is "a theme", and potentially one of many. The platform is designed to facilitate the creation and use of such themes throughout the system, making customization by carriers much easier and allowing it to carry further through the system (e.g. into appropriately-written third-party apps, etc.) in a consistent way.

I am thinking of:

the thing with the musical note indicates that the media player is playing something (or has been paused while playing something due to an incoming call, say);
the arrow indicates a download in progress;

These are liable to cause confusion of third party apps are used who do not interface fully with the API

the Bluetooth icon means that the Bluetooth radio is on

This one seems unnecessary for an already cluttered status bar. The battery implications for bluetooth is not that high any more, and with many people using bluetooth headsets this will be a space that is permanently wasted on many devices.

Surur

They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...
Hey!! I made associate writer at PDA247. Come see my nattering over there!!
www.clieuk.co.uk/wm.shtml

Sorry, I thought that too obvious to bother to mention. No, this is not a realistic status bar. It's highly unlikely that it would get this crowded in any normal use case.

...unless David wants to enlighten us a little early regarding exactly how flexible it will be...

I'll actually need to check on to what degree, and to what level of detail, we discussed this publicly at 3GSM. Short of that, suffice it to say that the entire look of the interface, from the background "wallpaper", to the font used, to the shape and placement of the buttons, is easily configurable by a licensee, certainly.

someone looking for a soul for their LifeDrive? why not try Cobalt?

"Sometimes dead is better." - Stephen King

Rather than simply leave at Mike's proposed response ("NO!"), I can offer several reasons why you probably would not want to be holding your breath waiting for something along these lines.

1) It presupposes a level of total familiarity with insert-your-favorite-Garnet-OS-device-here's hardware that ACCESS does not necessarily possess, or if we do, may be precluded from using outside of specific contexts. We engage with different licensees (and with given licensees on different projects) in different ways, and to different degrees. Some projects simply involve our supplying a PDK to a licensee, at which point they take the ball and run with it, some entail greater involvement on our part. (And I won't be offering any commentary on the division of labor with respect to specific projects or licensees.)

Not only is detailed and intimate knowledge of the hardware required, but also complete understanding of the mechanisms used to reflash the device, which tend to be highly idiosyncratic.

2) It assumes that we'd figure that devoting the resources (engineering, testing, tech pubs, etc., etc., etc.) necessary to adapt the platform to insert-your-favorite-Garnet-OS-device-here was a good use of people's time, i.e., "What do you want us not to do instead?", which leads right into

3) That's not our business model. I can't see that providing such a version for free makes any sense for us, so presumably we'd need to charge for it in some form, and then we'd need to support end-purchasers, etc., etc. That's not the sort of business we're in with the ACCESS Linux Platform, really. It's difficult to scope out what kind of a price point we'd need to hit on something like that to have it make any sort of financial sense, but I can't imagine it'd really be attractive...

The ACCESS Linux Platform provides a path forward for curent Garnet users with Garnet VM, so their investment in applications, etc., is preserved. If a licensee were to ask us to provide a version which could do the sort of thing you suggest, and suggest a way to have it make some business sense for us, then it might happen, but I have a very difficult time seeing a percentage in our doing it unilaterally.

Trust me, we're not suffering from any lack of things with which to keep ourselves occupied.

After all, ALP is built on many OS components.

(Sorry for my crappy english)