New PalmSource Licensees Expected Soon
PalmSource CEO David Nagel mentioned the company will announce two new Palm OS licensees. The announcement will more than likely happen during the PalmSource Developer Conference, which begins Tuesday. Nagel also mentions a new secure client OS architecture and that he expects PalmSource to become profitable by June.
An eetimes article highlighted some of Nagel's comments during his appearance at the Wireless Ventures conference in California. He talks about how he feels that PDA designers need to create more imaginative, focused and low-cost designs to spark the slowing handheld market and goes on to say "My belief is there will be a number of successful form factors and some of them have not been developed yet."
New Licensees
The article mentions that two new vertical market licensees are close to being announced. According to an anonymous tip, one of the new licensees to be announced may be TapWave Inc. Tapwave is a new company founded by Peng Lim (ex VP of Engineering for Palm) and Byron Connell (ex VP of Products for Palm). The company is also a member of the Bluetooth SIG. Nothing else is known at this time.
Update: More information on the TapWave device has been published.
Secure client OS architecture
In addition, Nagel said PalmSource is working with RSA security to open the Palm OS up to RC4 encryption via a security API. The API is part of a new robust security framework to make the OS more secure.
The security API is likely a new feature of Palm OS 6, which developers will be given a preview of at the PalmSource conference. Palm OS 6 will focus on new universal frameworks and programming API's for existing and upcoming technologies that will be built into the Palm OS platform. Specifically, scalable communications, more robust security features, a new multimedia framework, interchangeable I/O features (such as the ability to incorporate many diffent methods of data input) a new messaging framework and support for web services.
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RE: Don't you just love the internet?
http://www.tapwave.com/leadership.htm
The leadership team all worked at Palm. Is this another Handspring situation where someone had a great idea and pulled some folks with him or do you think Palm itself may have encouraged some folks to split off and start this? Here's another crazy thought: Could this company have been that secret investor a while back? Of course, they don't seem to produce anything yet, so I don't see how they'd be able to spend that kind of money.
Be sure and click on the "Advisors" tab as well. Good stuff there.
Scott
RE: Don't you just love the internet?
Steve Crane is a veteran of the video game industry, having spent the last ten years working for Electronic Arts, Knowledge Adventure, Activision, and, most recently, Midway. At Electronic Arts, he was the manager of The Sims franchise, the best-selling PC game of all time. At Activision, he built the company's console game division and created such top franchises as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Spiderman. He currently runs Midway's San Diego production studio as well as the company's third-party development division.
Steve has a doctorate in oceanography from U.C. San Diego, and he spent the early part of his career designing computer graphics systems for professional video production and animation. A real-time video special effects system he worked on was awarded an Emmy for technical achievement in 1990.""[/i]
I like that this guy has a Doctorate in Oceanography, of all things, lol.
Otherwise, pretty interesting background for that crew & advisors
RE: Don't you just love the internet?
"Go" could mean portable, or even wireless.
"Do" sounds like traditional PIM functions.
"Play" sounds like more entertainment focused functions.
My guess would be a (wireless) PDA focused on gaming. Maybe a real joytick and useable buttons for gaming! Let's throw in MP3/audio too.
Speculation is fun!
_____
Fammy
RE: Don't you just love the internet?
The deal did not exactly say that someone gave Palm or lent Palm $50 million. What I believe happened is that TI extended to Palm a $50 million line of credit that they could use only to buy TI processors. Perhaps TI was given stock options or something as part of the deal. But, that is what I think the "loan" was. It mostly let Palm take $50 million off the debt side of the ledger while they were assembling the parts for the new OS 5 models. Otherwise they would have had to pay Intel cash on delivery for ARM processors.
Just my idea and as time goes on I see nothing contradicting it, but I would have thought by now it would have been confirmed publicly. I expect that TI's other customers would have demanded the same sweetheart deal if they found out, so it had to be kept secret.
I guess this is not germain to the case at hand, but I never miss a chance to bring it up since I get predictions right so rarely.
RE: Don't you just love the internet?
RE: Don't you just love the internet?
"Ex-Palm Officials Offer Portable Video Game System
By Ben Berkowitz
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A company started by former senior executives from handheld computer maker Palm Inc. (PALM) on Monday unveiled a handheld product code-named "Helix" that combines video gaming, music and the organizer from the Palm operating system.
The company, named Tapwave, was founded two years ago by former Palm vice president of worldwide product development Peng Lim and vice president of product management Byron Connell.
It plans to enter a marketplace -- portable video gaming -- that in the last few months has ballooned.
Lim serves as president and chief executive of Tapwave, while Connell is senior vice president of marketing. Other top executives are Marian Cauwet, the vice president of engineering who held the same role at Palm; and sales head David Wenning, also a Palm veteran.
Pricing and availability details for the Helix have not yet been made public, but what is known is that the company boasts a high-profile lineup of hardware and software partners.
Among the hardware companies contributing products and engineering to Helix are ATI Technologies Inc. (ATY), Sony Corp. (6758), Motorola Inc. (MOT) and Yamaha Corp. (7951)
Games publishers who have already agreed to license some of their top titles for the platform include Activision Inc. (ATVI), Infogrames Inc. (IFGM) and Midway Games Inc. (MWY).
The company has also licensed the PalmOS operating system from Palm subsidiary PalmSource and game development tools from Fathammer.
Market research firms have pegged total video game hardware and software sales at $10.4 billion in 2002 in the United States alone, and global hardware and software sales in 2003 are expected to top $30 billion.
'MORE SOPHISTICATED GAMER'
"Nobody was addressing the need of the more sophisticated gamer in a mobile sense," Connell told Reuters recently.
Connell and Lim said the target audience for the Helix consists of people 18 years to 34 years old who have largely "graduated" from Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s (7974) Game Boy Advance portable gaming unit.
The Game Boy platform has had a stranglehold on the portable gaming market for well over a decade, handily defeating any and all comers, including long-gone devices with names like GameGear, TurboDuo and Lynx.
But the portable market has become increasingly crowded again. Nintendo is selling two Game Boys, the Advance and the Advance SP, and Finnish cell phone maker Nokia
The Tapwave executives hope to compete with those two units on the basis of superior technology.
The Helix boasts twice the color palate of the Game Boy and nearly 16 times that of the N-Gage. It offers a screen resolution well sharper than either one and a much larger screen size.
Connell said the device will play full-motion video in a number of formats, as well as music in the MP3 format. It will also ship with a photo viewer and all the productivity applications that are part of the Palm OS.
? Reuters 2003. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world."
RE: Don't you just love the internet?
I think the game is over before it even starts for 2 reasons:
1.GBA. (good luck playing on the same playing field with Ninetendo)
2.freebies emulators. (Assuming they plan to offer something more advance then GAB, that mean their hardware will go at least for $150-180. And they will crash head on against PDA models like $199 Dell X5 with such gaming title like SImcity2k, Age of empire, and all other big franchise)
well that was quick.
RE: Don't you just love the internet?
The biggest problem with the Dell unit is that it is running Pocket PC. That immedately removes them from 70% of the mobile market to start. Also, most companies like Nintendo and Dell are so damn cheap, they keep out that $5 of components that makes a great gaming system.
In my opinion, TapWave has a good start and just needs to work on the right publishing deals for titles. I can see them doing real well in the Christmas market for the Gen-Y yuppies.
RE: Don't you just love the internet?
Taking on the GBA will be a hard task. The GBA does what it does well: play games. This unit tries to blur the line: do I play games or am I a PIM? (obviously both). As long as it does all well (unlike the N-Gage, which looks terrible) I think it will work.
Here's hoping for Bluetooth for some fun multiplayer gaming!
_____
Fammy
RE: Don't you just love the internet?
_____
Fammy
RE: Don't you just love the internet?
RE: Don't you just love the internet?
Good point and it helps to show the flaw in BlueAnon's logic above. It's all about the zen, baby. ;) Specs don't win out, you need the whole package. A Dell Axim may very well do a little bit more and do it at a better price than this device, but it certainly sounds like this device will have a better form-factor for gaming. This has been my biggest complaint about the whole "gaming" concept of both PPCs and Palms. No licensee for either platform has offered a device that is comfortable to hold/use for gaming. This simple (and painfully obvious, IMO) "feature" could make all the difference in the world.
On a separate note, when the rumors of the sub-$100 Palm were coming out, I predicted that if Palm was smart it would still have an SD slot because this is an extra source of revenue for them (a lot of people would buy Palm-branded SD games, software, and even blank cards because they don't know any better). Well, they didn't know any better apparently. This device here looks to follow this idea using what every game system company already knows to be true: You make money on the razorblades, not the razors. This could be good news for us consumers, too, because I anticipate that this device could be priced nicely.
Scott
more memory
RE: more memory
RE: more memory
typical. palm gives 64Mb of memory in the Tungsten|C, and, someone wants more. isn't that typical? :)
// az
aaron@ardiri.com
http://www.ardiri.com/
http://www.mobilewizardry.com/
RE: more memory
_____________________
m100 ==> m500 ==> T|T
RE: more memory
RE: more memory
~ "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DV ~
RE: more memory
Let's have a model with a multiGB hard drive built-in. Now *that* would be something. Hmmmm... the iPalm (copyright by and trademark of Mike Cane -- heh heh).
RE: more memory
RE: more memory
RE: more memory
For someone who doesn't know the internal workings of Palms, would naturally assume a 64 meg device is better than a 16 meg device.
It's become a hardware game and that is a game that Sony plays very well. This next year is going to be fun!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eagles may soar but at least weasles don't get sucked into jet engines.
RE: more memory
Hello! How frigging long does the drive spin to dump a multi-MB song from itself to the iPod's RAM? This is not read-off-the-Microdrive-and-kill-the-batteries PPC-like stuff I'm talking about. It's spin-up, read, dump, spin down. It CAN be done -- especially with the 1500 mAh batteries Palm SG is using. Or the ones Sony is using in the NZ.
RE: more memory
With larger storage space comes more bloatware and less-efficent code. One of the reasons that Palm applications have remain so small is there has been relatively little processing power/space to work with. As I said before I am being totally hypocritical. I just ordered a Tungsten T to replace my flashed N710C, (I wanted a Tungsten C but don't have enough $$$) I think that I am going to fill those 16, well, 11 megs pretty quickly.
Peace,
-Bartman007
P.S. I will probably be submitting my N710C to the Palm Graveyard soon. I have had serial port trouble for a while, but discovered I could fix it by taking the case apart and repositioning the serial port. I was doing it at school and was bumped by someone. It ripped the connector on the PCB off. To make a long story short the repairation totally screwed it up. Once my TT arrives I will take my Clie off life support by disconnecting the battery.
P.P.S. If anyone wants to send condolences to my Clie, I will supply you with an appropriate paypal address. =)
RE: more memory
Sorry, kid, but PalmSource has a completely different license policy. Instead of using the Microsoft approach (get as many manufactures as possible and let Darwin get its way), PalmSource actually chooses its licensees. Such is so that PalmSource turn Toshiba down (yes, you read it right: friggin' TOSHIBA!!) fearing that would cannibalize the sales of the other licensees and PalmSG itself.
There is a very interesting (abeit short) article on Brighthand. Check it out:
http://www.brighthand.com/article/Licensing
It makes you wonder, thought, a Toshiba PalmOS device. The latest Genio without MS bloated OS: 128MB, Xscale PXA255, WiFi, Bluetooth, SD and CF external media, etc. One thing for sure: it would be king among corporate handhelds!!
I.M. Notorious
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along wheter it is a democracy, or a facist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be broughtto the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
Hermann Goëring. Hitler's Reich-Marshall
at the nuremberg Trials after WWII
RE: more memory
RE: more memory
Matsushita -- aka Panasonic -- hasn't entered the PDA market. And now probably never will because they have this:
Photos:
RE: more memory
>>Hello! How frigging long does the drive spin to dump a multi-MB song from itself to the iPod's RAM? This is not read-off-the-Microdrive-and-kill-the-batteries PPC-like stuff I'm talking about. It's spin-up, read, dump, spin down. It CAN be done -- especially with the 1500 mAh batteries Palm SG is using. Or the ones Sony is using in the NZ.
Great! Then my Palm turns into a PPC. No more execute-in-place. Say bye bye to Palm OS Efficiency.
RE: more memory
TobyG:
> FWIW, the T|T has 14MB avaialable to the user. It's the Sony OS5s that have only 11MB available.
WOOHOO!!! Three more megs =) That makes me quite happy. I just wish the stupid thing would arrive.
Peace,
-Bartman007
OS6 and file structure
RE: OS6 and file structure
-Bosco
Proud Member of the Top Non-Mods
Members: abosco and ImpReza M3
Now accepting new applications
RE: OS6 and file structure
--
Ben Combee, CodeWarrior for Palm OS technical lead
Programming help at www.palmoswerks.com
RE: OS6 and file structure
RE: OS6 and file structure
The once place where this doesn't neccesarily hold up is when dealing with cards. We already have the VFS Manager, and what I EXPECT to see is some of those VFS concepts abstracted into RAM. A single, unified layer for the programmer to deal with application data.From the user perspective I don't think you'll see a lot change, however. I think the realities of mobile computing really reward application centric computing..
It shouldn't be surprising that there a lot of people tha think this concept should be applied on the desktop as well. There are several companies wanting to replace your existing file system with one that puts your apps first, and makes them responsible for managing their own data... which should sound familiar.
RE: OS6 and file structure
> likes this idea of application managed data. One of the biggest problem
> tasks we have in the desktop world is that our interaction with
> the computer is driven by file management, as opposed to application management.
I think "rightly so" for some apps and "not so rightly so" for plenty of others. There are a lot of different ways one could offer both appropriately for many applications, but you are correct, PalmSource is not advocating that approach and essentially said as much in their most recent regular developer e-mail.
As card sizes and CPU power increases, I fully expect to dump most of my files to card and move that card or cards between PC and PDA (physically and/or through wired/wireless means). I expect not to have to worry about syncronizing or worrying about file formats and also being in full control on my PDA of where my files get put. I don't want my PDA wasting power searching through thousands of files just to figure out that only one or two actually go with the app I'm currently using, or conversely displaying a thousand to choose from when I know darn well where I put it. A one-dimensional set of "categories" only goes so far for organizing data as the volume of info increases.
PalmSource should be providing good examples of some of the main ways people might want to do things, instead of dumping everything into Palm databases on card and expecting people to be happy with it. Just saying that apps can magically manage their own data, especially once you get past a few dozen pieces of it, is a fallacy.
RE: OS6 and file structure
Yeah, but that's a stupid argument. Most desktop applications that need to are already using databases. But many other applications need files; Palm-style databases just won't do.
RE: OS6 and file structure
-- well, duh. They got this from APPLE.
And as for dealing with "thousands of files," so "let the app do it" -- hello! What happens when there are THOUSANDS OF FILES for just ONE APP. As in my case. I have over a thousand (approaching 2K) DOC files in SmartDOC. Do you know what an effing pain THAT is?! No subfolders, no subsubfolders? One LOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGG frigging list? (Yeah, yeah, so I have *15* categories -- which is NOTHING. And since the ENTIRE "DIR" is loaded when SmartDoc is launched, I get this nice WAIT! I'd rather have it pointing to *one* folder that just has the DOCs I need *now*.)
RE: OS6 and file structure
Why???
RE: OS6 and file structure
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Don't you just love the internet?
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