Comments on: Access Linux Platform SDK Released

Well, unfortunately, baring any huge announcements that I'm not yet privy to, you are going to see a Android handset quite a while before either of the other two. Which is very sad. Someone really needs to knock Palm upside the head and get them to fly right. They seem to have *no* issue giving Microsoft cash for an OS, yet the greed kicks in with ACCESS?? Drop ALP on the GSM Centro (no hardware mods, just flash the OS) and SHIP THE DAMN THING see how it does.

Can't be a bigger flop than the Folio. Or wait until Google is releasing a FREE phone OS that all of the carriers are shipping on their self branded phones that *blow* Palm's fantasy Linux away (and for half the price.... with Palm 6 months to a year too late to the market)

On the ACCESS front. The focus seems to be Asia and I which them well. I'm still a bit confused about how all these MVNOs seem to get phones made/brought into the US and they haven't managed it in how many revs, but perhaps that hasn't been a push.

Because Palm(source) has never seen the need for Flash before - let alone be prepared to shell out for any license or bundle it, make it a standard that can be developed for. They've had ARM processors since the original Tungsten T and never worked with Macromedia, so forgive me, but this time its Adobe and Linux and I bet they still don't do a thing.
Anyway, what's all this 'we' are you in the know or actually Mr Big himself?

Let's be honest... We all love Palm, but Android is going to be a serious competitor, hands down. That said, there are definitely some chinks in Google's armor though. First, they say the phone's going to be free, but they haven't released any details on that business model yet. Chances are it will get a lot of attention, but who knows if the average business user (which still comprises the lions share of the "smartphone" market) will want to buy into that business model. Yes, it is true that the smartphone market is still a small percentage of the overall handheld market, but I think those are two separate issues. Palm's just in the beginning stages at marketing to the broader handheld market with the Centro, and that seems to be going well, even with PalmOS (which is another point I'll make at the end-users).

Second, Android looks cool so far, but as shown with Windows Mobile, who knows if the market will like it. Look at how much money Microsoft has thrown into Windows Mobile over the years, and they're still just a small percentage of the market. WM6 is a great product, but a lot of people still just don't "like" the WM experience. I'm sure Google will learn from Microsoft's mistakes in that area, but there's no denying that smartphone users are loyal and downright picky about their phone OS.(completely opposite of normal handheld users, which I'll talk more about below).

So why doesn't Palm just go with ALP or Android on their handhelds? Someone mentioned earlier that is was greed... I don't think it has anything to do with that. I think the root of the decision probably came out of analyzing what's been "core" to the company over the years, and there's no two ways about it, a "Palm OS" is core to a Palm. People seem to like the WM versions of the Treo, but that business line isn't taking Palm anywhere except down the road of a competing on thin margins with some major competitors. As far as the smartphone market goes, I think making their own custom OS and device that really feels like a "Palm" is the only route they have right now. It they just re-brand WM and/or ALP and/or Android devices, they're going to get their guts stomped out my all the other cell phone companies doing the exact same thing.

As for the handheld (non smartphone) market? It's tough to say if their own OS will buy them much. I don't know enough about what makes consumers in that market tick... The main drivers I see are price, ease of use, and stability (roughly in that order). Can a new Palm OS really aid in those goals? Maybe, since using your own OS is a little cheaper (in the long run), and if it's true to the original "Palm", is should be pretty easy to use. Aside from that, my experience has been that the standard handheld market doesn't seem to care at all about what OS the phone uses. I think that partly explains the success of the Centro. Palm gave the handheld market something cute, fast, cheap (relatively), and with a richer set of features than the average handheld. I really doubt the average handheld user will trample the OS like Palm power users do, and as such, the Centro will be a stable device for the average user.

All things considered, I'm not saying that another "wheel" will be enough to make Palm a major competitor again, but I am saying that it's their best bet for survival right now.

- Jeff

Tungsten T --> Palm TX --> Foleo-mini??(like an LD-II with a small attached keyboard??)

Because Palm(source) has never seen the need for Flash before...

I don't know anything about what Palm or (source) do, but ACCESS has supported Flash in NetFront for a good while now.

Adobe does insist that device manufacturers execute a license with them for such support. Go figure, huh?

...this time its Adobe and Linux and I bet they still don't do a thing.

Oh, yeah? How much are you willing to put on that proposition?

Oh, yeah? How much are you willing to put on that proposition?

Like everybody else, surprise surprise, the price of a new device.
But I just heard that Flash is coming to the iPhone. For the average user here in the UK, the iPhone remains ridiculously expensive with the device costing the user £269 plus at least £35 per month for eighteen months contract.
If they bring that down and it has Flash combined with Safari which is a much better browser than NetFront I can't see much competition.
They're even talking about fixing the Exchange Server support for the iPhone so really what has Palm got that the iPhone doesn't? Oh true, I give you the interface is very different.
So regrettably, I can't see myself really willing to put that much into 'the proposition' unless, of course, as an insider, you know something more...

>>>Apple's cut production substantially for the next quarter, and there are evidently somewhere between a half million and three times that many iPhones languishing in various carriers' inventory...

Christ, ACCESS must *really* be desperate to promulgate *that* total BS.

http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/02/08/what-if-the-iphonetouch-sdk-is-delayed/

Let's see how you spin next month.

And I expect you'll have a nice pink slip for Xmas as ACCESS throws in the towel.

By the way, Mike, I left a comment on your blog, but it's worth pointing out here that your theory (that Apple has dramatically cut its orders for parts for the iPhone and iPod Touch in the coming quarter to address the expected "self-cannibalization" of those devices when Apple introduces the vaporous iBook tablet, which you're referring to as the "iPod Air") doesn't really make a lick of sense.

To constitute a tablet iBook, the device in question would have to run real OS X, I'd think. This would place a pretty good lower limit on screen size at, say, no less than nine inches. An ARM processor is going to seem pretty pokey running full-blown OS X, so it'd presumably have to be an Intel-based device. That's going to place lower limits on battery size and upper limits on active usage time, particularly for a WiFi-enabled (and GSM-enabled...?) device.

Now, how's a device like this going to "cannibalize" the iPhone? Can you hold it up to your face to make a phone call? Or do you only use the Bluetooth ear bud and carry the thing around under your arm...? That'll be a hit at parties and on dates. Unless you've got really big pockets, it's not going to replace your extremely portable iPod Touch, either.

Now, maybe it's smaller. Just based on screen costs--do you have any actual sense what a capacitive touchscreen costs and how fast those costs go up as the size increases...?--it'd have to be a whole lot smaller to hit a price point anything near that of an iPod Touch. Like...about the size of an iPod Touch. So what's it offer beyond what the Touch does that it would cannibalize it?

Now, even assuming that it's more or less the size of a Touch or an iPhone, if it's going to cannibalize the iPhone, it's gotta to be phone, I'd think. And if it's going to cannibalize the iPod Touch, it's gotta have a flash-based "disk", yes?

So, if Apple's trimming all their orders way back, what exactly is it that they're going to be building this device out of...? Gossamer?

"iPod Air", indeed.

Nine to one, huh?

Okay, sport. I've got fifty bucks that says you're wrong. I'm still here by Gift-mas, you're into me for four Benjamins and a Ulysses S. Grant. And I'll give you a side-bet of twenty dollars at even odds that both you lose and welsh.

Whaddaya say?

Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?

—Clint Eastwood as "Lt. 'Dirty' Harry Callahan" in Dirty Harry

^^ Why would ACCESS even give a damn about the iPhone? They sell an OS, not hardware. But more importantly, given that the iPhone still has a less-than-one-percent share of the handset market, why should anybody care?

(Anybody except Palm, that is, 'cause it seems that's the first place their disaffected customers are going...)

Nah, the stories you cited are unconvincing. The whole 1.4 million missing iPhone thing was hashed out in the press and responded to. Even the link you provide offers several possible theories, the one you fixated on being pure speculation. What speaks to me is Apple's astronomical profits last quarter.

Look, complaining about the iPhone's lack of features is missing the point. The iPhone isn't, "user interface aside," a mediocre phone. The iPhone is an successful phone because the designers treated the user interface as everything. Complaining about there only being a half an hour's worth of things to learn about the iPhone is a bit like picking up a book and complaining about the binding, the font face used, the choice of endpaper, and then admitting the novel is going to win the Nobel. That user interface you just jilted to the side is what most people buy phones for.

All of which makes this feature look a little strange doesn't it?
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/02/14/google_iphone_usage_shocks_search_giant.html
I suppose that's just Steve Jobs and Jonny Ives frantically searching Google all day trying to cover up that no one else has bought into their handheld disaster.
Looks as though they over did it a bit too.
To be fair, I don't think theiPhone is the last word in the business - yet.
Right now you can't use Flash on it, it doesn't yet work with MS Exchange Server (more important than most people would let on) and the Notes application doesn't do all that one would want - straightforwardly sync with a comupter so longish text can be made in a mobile situation and transfered for further editing etc.
However, it is a first generation device and it has made all the phone competitors think again - I dare you to admit that you have had to think of new ideas in the light of the iPhone - or just think about the leaked documens about the next generation of Windows Mobile, Microsoft internal planning documents that are obsessed with the iPhone, splattering mentions in nearly every paragraph...
but I digress, my original point was here is Plam, late to the game and doing a basic configuration tat only replicated what a lot of others are doing. Where is the new thinking? I would like to buy a new Palm device but why would I? Seriously I have a Treo 650. What new is there to have?
Once I gotPower Clip on it andfixed the 4k nonsense what else did I need?

^^ There you go with those facts, again. Who the hell do you think you are??!!

The new ThinkPad X300 makes the MacBook Air look positively sick. I expect more (read: cheaper) 'me too' wafer-thin subnotebooks w/ integrated optical drives in the coming year from the likes of Acer, Asus etc. If Lenovo doesn't hurry up and release a slightly cheaper version with a "regular" hard drive (80gb+) ASAP, they're gonna be left behind by the cheaper Asian manufacturers.

I went from a 1280x800 LCD to a 1440x900 in my new laptop and it makes a noticable difference. I'm really Apple didn't aim higher in the resolution department.

Now, if someone can just hurry up and release the equivalent of an X300 in the PMP/PDA market to blow the iPod Touch away...and then follow it up with an iPhone killer. In fact, I wish Acer, Lenovo, Asus or a similar entity would just go ahead and buy Palm and be done with it!

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

Also there is this about those fiendish commies at it again:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/02/15/report_400000_unlocked_iphones_loose_on_chinese_network.html

I don't want to appear as an unthinking, uncritical apologist for Apple and the iPhone but Palm doesn't do anything that competes in teh same way - nor would it have even considered doing so if it were not for the iPhone.
The iPhone is so uptodate, it makes you realise graphically, how old and stuck in the mud mindset the Palm platform is - Windows Mobile looks crappy too by comparison. That last fact is apparently not lost on Microsoft.
What we don't need from Palm or Access is another basic Linux variant which does te basics in a routine way (graphical interface and services) but doesn't re-think the whole use and driving purposes for a device in th way that the much despised iPhone already has.
We need everything current plus Flash, plus exchange and something more - maybe interoperability with documents and formats, something new to make it compelling as a purchase

It's easy to see why you are *ex*-Apple. You never fit in.

Tell me what I did in the course of my ten years at Apple, Mike.

No come on, you tell us what you did...

I was taunting Mike, who seems to be implying that he knows something the rest of the world is unaware of regarding my tenure at Apple. Fact is, he doesn't know the first thing about it. But if you insist:

Among other things, I initially worked on most of the Ethernet and Token Ring drivers for NuBus-based Macs, went on to lead the team that maintained and improved the MacTCP and AppleTalk stacks, did some of the initial design on Open Transport, worked on "Enterprise Systems" when Apple thought they could make a business there, was a tech lead on the Common Hardware Reference Platform, went back to manage the Open Transport group (between v1.1 and v1.2, so when it started to get good, that's right about the time I took over the group)... For what it's worth, before I became responsible for open source-related issues at ACCESS, I was director of the department that did the kernel, driver and low-ish-level middleware engineering. Satisfied? My resume's up on LinkedIn, if your really interested.

What is it that Access/Palm can do that will outrun the iPhone/ Android platform let alone Nokia et al?

Versus iPhone: it's got a truly open development environment, and doesn't lock developers into the jail of Safari widgets. It also allows unsigned applications to run within a sandbox of allowed APIs. There'll be a lot more possibilities for writing software on ALP devices. We can do these things because, unlike the iPhone, ALP has an actual security model. I'm not going to go into specific user interface comparisons, but we're not too worried about how an ALP-based system can compare. As only AT&T can sell the iPhone in the States for several years yet (and similar situations exist with other carriers in other geographies) there could potentially be a lot more manufacturers offering phones running ALP, and from a lot more carriers. I've already discussed the deep functionality shortages of the iPhone.

Versus Android: it remains to be seen what Android will look like on actual hardware, and the consensus is that it won't be out before 2009, at least six months after the first ALP phones are supposed to come out. No carriers have made specific commitments to carry Android phones, so the availability of them and the timing of that availability is anybody's guess. Android poses some significant difficulties for programmers as well: Java-only, and a pretty arcane application model, which represents a significant learning curve in and of itself. The new UI is quite horrible, if you've taken a look at it. If it's representative of the look of Android phones, then there's little for us to worry about; Android's overall functionality doesn't compare especially favorably with ALP, either, particularly on the applications side.

ALP can support programming in virtually any commonly supported language--unlike either the iPhone or Android. ALP represents an open programming environment--unlike either the iPhone or Android. ALP is highly customizable by device manufacturers, carriers and end users, unlike the iPhone; Android's customizability is so far unimplemented and hence unknown (you can't change the wallpaper there yet, either.) ALP is based on the mainstream of open source development--unlike either the iPhone or Android. Because of this, it's already well-known how to develop for ALP; standard GTK+ x86 programs can be rebuilt for ARM and will run fine there.

For device manufacturers, Apple is a competitor. There's no possibility of Samsung or LG or Motorola ever putting out an iPhone themselves; they're not about to get out of the business. The iPhone has actually been quite helpful to us, in terms of business development.

For carriers, Google is a potential competitor. They're the 800 pound gorilla in online advertising, and they'd dearly love to sew up the mobile market, too. It's open to speculation how far the carriers are willing to go in order to assist them in that quest. Google could, indeed, sell unlocked phones on their own, as could device manufacturers. This approach has its own risks and issues--handset vendors don't typically make handsets that don't have some reasonable degree of carrier support...

ALP compares favorably with Symbian as well, and I think people will find the user experience is far superior. I'm quite confident that ALP will enable our customers to compete more effectively with Nokia--something they have to do in any case--and I'm extremely confident that the developer community that will get behind ALP (drawn from both Garnet and open source developers) will come up with a raft of additional applications that will blow people away.

Don't forget, the cell phone business is big: the analysts I talk to believe that up to 50% of the smartphones sold 3 years from now could be based on Linux; the estimates of smartphone shipments by that time are a quarter of a billion per year.

There's an article in the New York Times today about the missing 1.4 million iPhones. Not so many are sitting on AT&T's shelves apparently. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/business/worldbusiness/18iphone.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

If this article is right, it shows a great deal of pent up demand world wide--far from slowing down sales.

You're a dead man.

Lol!

When I included that entire Yahoo financial board warning I thought to myself:

== "Now someone's gonna miss the whole point of that and focus on the 'Don't believe
== the identity of the person" part. Should I cut that out? Nah..."

Giggle.

>>>Tell me what I did in the course of my ten years at Apple, Mike.

Well, you just did and made my point. All your stuff was under the hood. When it comes to UIs, pffft. Thanks for confirming that, Uncle Milty.

Mike, are you somehow laboring under the impression that I'm personally responsible for the writing of ALP in its entirety...? 'Cause that'd seem to be the only context in which your comments make even marginal sense.

As you are in the same company as the NetFront team (of which I have always been a fan) can you please give them some feedback about 3.5?

The left soft-key needs to be a simple back button and nothing else.

They need an on-screen zoom control, maybe a semi-transparent zoom bar that can come up when you touch the screen.

They should make the address bar auto-hide, and also make it semi-transparent, basically to maximise small screen real estate.

They should include a 320x480 virtual canvas, so you can use iPhone web-apps (ack!) :)

Surur

Yes, it's the same company. I can pass those comments along.

Thanks for passing my suggestions on. The zoomed-out view is nice, but should be as large as possible, and should be the default view, just like the iPhone.

Also the zoom slider I was thinking of would take the place of the multi-touch zoom gesture of the iPhone. At the moment to zoom to 75% you need to do Menu> View> Zoom> C, which is obviously not going to be used much.

Here's a quick mock-up, with the back button, the screen at 25% zoom and a zoom slider on the screen. Maybe one could touch the screen to set the focus, then use the zoom slider to zoom that area. I think the zoom slider and other control elements should only come on (briefly) when the screen is touched.

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/4002/zoomll0.jpg

So basically the page should load like this, you could either double tap in a certain area to zoom in to that area on the page, or single tap and use the slider to zoom in a variable amount, or if the text is already big enough on the page (e.g. a mobile web page) just continue with your normal reading etc.

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

Just being able to pay for a good, user-friendly browser would be thanks enough.

Surur

For this to take off, it needs to be able to run all of the common third party Palm software. I'm sure what they mean is a "Garnet layer" will run the old software that so many people have on their older Palms.

>>>You can download a beta version of Garnet VM which will run on your Nokia web tablet, if you happen to have one, and run your Garnet applications on that...

Why don't you tweak that Garnet VM to run on a device people actually *have* or *want* -- like the iPhone? You know, something with a real *market share*?

Oh, the under-powered, over-priced, closed, 2.5G sub-feature-phone that Apple's apparently having increasing trouble unloading....?

ROFL. Careful, Lefty. Pointing out those inconvenient facts tend to result in apoplectic explosions of Apple Cultist anger. Like smacking a beehive with a stick.

That's not to say it isn't fun, though...

>>>Let's see. A maximum of 3 million devices sold out of a worldwide market of about a billion... That'd be, oh, less than a third of a percent. I guess it's "real" but that doesn't exactly make it "significant". Seems less than impactful to me, even if it were do-able...

Show me ACCESS's ALP market share. Oops.

(Darn. I had that screen open way too long before replying. That "good to have you back" was meant for Lefty.)


"twrock is infamous around these parts" (from my profile over at Brighthand due to my negative 62 rep points rating)

>>>Nokia sells as many units on a given weekend as Apple's sold iPhones in their entire existence.

Nokia sells crap. And the iPhone woke them up to the fact they sell crap.

And the only way they know how NOT to create crap, is to steal from Apple:

http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2007/08/29/quote-of-the-day-nokias-innate-ineptness/

Oh that's funny. Especially since you revealed you weren't David Beers as I thought and which you did NOT bother to correct at my blog.

I don't give a damn what market share Nokia has. GM was once #1 globally. Where are they now? Wake up.

An iPhone with a port of the Garnet VM on it would be sufficient. ALP isn't necessary.

The Android SDK has been released:

-- http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/13/google-releases-new-android-sdk/

I downloaded it right after making that post but haven't yet played with it.

>>>(Oh, the "new Android UI" is a horror. Unless you really enjoy Scrabble.)

It's not just that. I don't think they can pull it off. As I said in more words elsewhere on PIC when it was announced, every phone manufacturer will use just whatever *pieces* of it they need for a variety of price points. Hence, there will not be a universal Android OS. Do you agree? Or have I missed something?

Sigh. Y'know, it's the weekend, Michael: I've been at the movies, had dinner, run errands. I'm going out again shortly, so if I don't respond to you instantaneously enough, try not to blow a head gear.

But as long as I'm here:

First, there isn't a "a *real* tech Q" in there, and if you think there is, that shows how shallow your understanding of such things is.

Second, I'm not obligated to respond to anything, and certainly not according to your (unstated) time frames.

Third, I actually wrote a response inspired by this (sort of) line of questioning on your part, but it's a) too long, and b) too good, to stuff into a comment here and leave it at that. I'm in the process of repurposing it for use elsewhere.

However, to provide a quick response to what the Short Attention Span Theater contingent seems to be attempting to wander toward, no, it's not that simple. While the Apache license is non-reciprocal, and will allow people to use code licensed under it in any way they like, there are significant issues:

Android uses a hitherto-unseen graphics and interaction architecture, apparently called SDL. That, I suppose, could be lifted wholesale as a replacement for, say, GTK+ if there were value in it (and with facilities like compiz and clutter, it's not clear that there are significant advantages there). It'd have to be rewired into some set of compatibility APIs on the top side, I'd imagine, unless you planned that people were going to rewrite every single application in existence to conform to whatever-it-turns-out-to-be.

Similarly, the "Dalvik" virtual machine could, I suppose, be lifted, but it'd need to be rewired into a different UX stack (unless you took both it, and SDL, and whatever tributary dependencies fell out of that.) Again, much rewiring needed to get it to "connect" correctly to the more standard components used in mainstream Linux-based systems.

The libc implementation could be used as a replacement for glibc if one really needed a reason to get around the LGPL, but I can't imagine why anyone would want to, really. It's not as though it couldn't have been lifted from BSD previously.

Most of Android is in the libraries and support components, which—like the rest of Android—are weird, arcane, and unlike anything anyone's ever seen or worked on. (Kinda: the whole object-oriented application framework thing has been tried a million times, from Smalltalk to MacApp, and it's never proven to be popular. Similarly, the "perimeter" security model on which Android relies is a proven failure.)

The question is, what's in there that anyone would really want? Or better, what's in there that would be worth the effort of taking?

(The other question is, how much of the preceding did you actually understand?)

Whether you can see 'em or not, there are already plenty of developers working with our SDK--many of them working under the Orange "Signature Accelerator Program"--and there have been for many months. We've shown native ALP versions of a number of third-party applications already.

Maybe it's where you're standing. Try moving a little to the right.

And no, we don't do things in response to rumors regarding Apple's "opening up" the iPhone for Safari-only non-standard web-widget development--and weren't they supposed to release that last month...? Our general release of the ALP SDK has been in the works for a good while now; we've been seeding it to selected developers through our "Fast Track" program for a year or more now to ensure that it'd be "ready for prime time" at this year's Mobile World Congress..

You might note that ACCESS is also spearheading the development of the LiMo Foundation's SDK. We didn't do that in response to Apple, either, but feel free to imagine differently, if you prefer.

Well, since Orange is the second-largest carrier in Europe, Mike, you can't.

However, I'm not aware of Orange's having an exclusive on the SGH i800, and--busy folks that they are--it seems not outside the bounds of reason that Samsung might make efforts to sell it into other carriers.

Maybe even some in America. Who knows? They might even sell 'em unlocked.

You have heard of "unlocked phones," I suppose.

Duh.

I'm guessing that's a "yes." Grunt again and scratch if I'm right.

You've always had class, Mike.

Remedial reading class, but nonetheless...

>>>Manufactured by Samsung, the phone will use ALP middleware and run applications adhering to Orange's OAP specifications.

*ALP middleware*

So for all intents and purposes to end-users, it won't look anything like what ACCESS is touting as ALPOS.

They've evicted your GUI.

YAWN.

FAIL!

Next.

Lefty - three questions:

*Will the i800 look like the ALP screenshots we've seen so far?
*ALP supports UMTS/HSDPA, right?
*Does ACCESS have any rough dates on when the first ALP phones will ship?

Given that a Palm OS Treo with UMTS won't be on the scene until at least 2009, a similar ALP phone w/ the Garnet VM might be just the ticket for me. Provided they come out before Palm gets their act together.

It's up to Orange whether or when to publicize the look and feel (and appearance, and specs, etc.) of their device.

Can I put it another way - in previous dealings with Orange, have they shown a tendency to prefer their own UI? I ask 'cause as it is the ALP UI looks like a true heir to Palm OS and it'd be a shame to see it tinkered with too much.

I'm not sure I get this "own user interface" controversy.

PALM sold (*) TREO 500s to Vodafone that have a Vodafone, not PALM, user interface.

And...you know...hasn't the Open Handset Alliance (or whatever that Android group's name is) specifically said the user interface is ultimately up to the device manufacturer?

No one seems to think anything of this. Why is it controversial for ACCESS to sell THEIR software to Orange with Orange having their own user interface?

=======

(*) Actually - the nonPALMness of the TREO 500 pretty much from A to Z generated remarkably little "controversy" discussion, IMHO!

Nah, not directed at anyone - just a general blunderbuss shot.

[btw - a previous post of mine had "(lie...none)" which, of course, should have been "(like...none)"]

Lefty;

Are you at liberty to discuss anything at all in regards to ALP's PC-based components---will anything similar to the old Palm Desktop be available and/or what about non-XP OSes (Mac, Linux, Vista etc)? Palm Inc. has had a horrendous time in regards to moving past the circa 2001 Win XP and even the current Access Palm Desktop for Vista leaves much to be desired from a functionality standpoint and integration with Palm's current product line. Is that an Access choice or a carrier choice? And should users expect carrier/customer customizations on the desktop software side as well? Please forgive me if this has been addressed earlier or elsewhere.

Also, what should current Palm OS users expect from ALP as far as a migration/PIM data importing process? Will it be a painless, easy transition? I'm not speaking about legacy apps under the Garnet emultion layer. My first and foremost concern is my 11+ years of PIM data.

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

>>>No, it's not controversial (or shouldn't be, certainly).

Oh sure it is! Imagine the poor customer seeing all these different phones with vastly different launchers and being told they're *ALL* "ACCESS-compatible."

People had enough trouble wrapping their heads around *CLIEs* running PalmOS.

Like I said: FAIL.

>>>Choice is a wonderful thing.

Yeah, let's see. ACCESS will give you a choice of one Orange phone or fall-apart cheapies from the Happy Lucky Dragon Phone Co of the PRC.

>>>I hadn't noticed this, myself. Which people are these, exactly, and what other cognitive issues are they suffering from...?

Of course YOU wouldn't. Were you ever out and about in *stores* watching sales reps trying to convince *real people* that CLIEs were also PalmOS devices. I don't think so.

> ...[we released a beta of Garnet]...It's possible we might issue another update...

That is to say, the bean counters are trying to decide if spending the funds to get the beta into Production shape is worth it.

Thanks for the reply. I cannot be the only person who would love, and would be willing to pay, to have some ACCESS/Palm goodness on a Nokia 810. I might finally get my Sony UX-50 successor!

On-line apps aren't good enough - I want my DTG and Agendus on a modern large screen PDA!

Keep up the good work - I have no preferences, loyalty, or hard feelings. I just want a great next gen PDA and smartphone platform. I don't care whether it says powered by [Palm] or powered by [ACCESS]- somebody just get something great out there!