What Is the Timetable for OS 5?
One of the most frequently asked questions among Palm users is, "When will OS 5 be out?" In a recent interview with the SD Times, David Nagel, who is in charge of its development, shed some light on this. "We’ll have a broad range of platforms in mid-2002 that licensees can choose from depending on their specific design goals." This seems to indicate that while Palm's Platform Solutions group will be finished with OS 5 in mid-2002, how much longer consumers will have wait to actually see any handhelds running OS 5 will depend on the licensees.
Update: According to Palm's chairman and interim CEO Eric Benhamou, a beta of OS 5 will be available during the company's March to May financial quarter.
By that time Palm's split into hardware and software divisions will have been completed long before, so Palm's hardware division shouldn't be getting any special access to the new OS. This leads to the interesting possibility that the first handhelds running Palm OS 5 might not be made by Palm.
Mr. Nagel went on to explain more of the reasoning behind Palm's purchase of Be Inc. According to him, Palm wanted Be's experience in creating software platforms well suited for licencing. "The Be guys have been in the licensing and platform business longer than we have, and had developed more sophisticated bill and process tools that are suited better for licensees than tools we had." With Be's expertise, Mr. Nagel is hoping to greatly speed up Palm's development of the new OS.
OS 5, is being developed to run on ARM-based chips, rather than the Dragonball ones all current Palm OS models use. These will have much greater processing power than is currently available. Mr. Nagel mentioned that it will be able to run on chips with speeds ranging from 30MHz to 700MHz. The new OS will still be able to run the majority of current applications, though there will be some exceptions.
On Monday, Palm announced that it will be using Texas Instrument's OMAP processor platform in its next-generation wireless handhelds, expected out late next year. Palm's contract with TI isn't exclusive so it might use processors from other companies on its non-wireless models.
Thanks to AriB for the tip. -Ed
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RE: Chuckle
Dude, are you getting enough oxygen? That's just not the way the world works.
RE: Chuckle
RE: Chuckle
Palm doesn't innovate... Sony innovates too much and releases a new handheld every three months...Handspring innovates, but, not the way I like...blah blah blah.
Palm OS gives you all of the innovation choices you could want. You guys just don't know what you want. I mean, they even put it all in a Handera for you and you didn't buy it. Sheesh. No wonder Palm delivers their new handhelds to CompUSA first. You guys are a pain in the ass!
RE: Chuckle
They did all this, while also localizing the OS for Europe and Japan, launching a web initiative with Palm.net, and preparing their systems and developers for the ARM transition.
RE: Chuckle
Chuckle & get sober
You guys seem to be focused on self contemplation - the same fault as the gorgeous Psion followers and producers did - until they suddenly disappeared 2001...
RE: Chuckle
RE: Chuckle
RE: Chuckle
Emulator
RE: Chuckle
developers not - Palm hardware yes
RE: Chuckle
RE: Chuckle
RE: Chuckle
>colors...waah waah...I want to watch hi-def TV shows
>on it...waah waah...I want always-on wireless email
>with no cradle for $14.95 per month...waah waah...
Nope...$4.95/mo. ;)
RE: Chuckle
RE: Chuckle
RE: Chuckle
cool we got ourselves yet another ANALyst :)
Did you even study the history of any of those company you are writing about ?? Do you even realize what Sony is capable of ?? LoL Go back to your cave and continue to convince yourself that Clie is dead :)
RE: Chuckle
Seeing that it is more expensive than any of those ever were, it had better be. Unfortunately, the N760C isn't technologically impressive. A pixel-doubling screen and built-in MP3 play may have wow factor (for a Palm device) now, but those features are quickly becoming old hat. A great color screen would be worth a lot. Sony's screen is neither great (in some stand-out way), nor is it in a price range that 99% of people find worth it. A 10% market share over one quarter (where sales were low anyhow) is tiny in comparison to total devices sold over years. You sound like a Pocket PC pudit making statements like that. The handful of people who wanted to and had the money to buy a high-end device like the 760 have already done so, and its sales are already sagging. The rest are waiting for the next thing, and it won't be coming from Sony.
RE: Chuckle
Oh why is Handspring hardly ever mentioned? I think they are the best units with palm os to date... how many devices do you know the have an exspation to use an adpter that can use not only CF, Smart, and memory sticks? these units may be 50 dollarspeice but come on lets see your palm use a spring module or a sony memory stick or your sony use a spring module etc...smae goes for the other units. handspring knew what they were doing when they sold palm and came up with a better idea....Steve...ok now for you blah,blah,blah
RE: Chuckle
O really :)
"ony a few pluses on the devices them selves, if people would stop and think a minute....yes there is always improvment to be made in anything hardware and software, but i think a new Palm OS comes out before the other one can show true potental.....work on the software with the present color screen's and you shall see what you really have.."
Have you even looked at what Sony did with Palm OS ?? I think they are really unleashing the true power of color screen on Palm. Just face it Sony not only innovated alot Hardware-wise, but also on the software side, which Palm and Handspring stopped doing for quite some time already. Well of course all those Palm Software written by Sony will run on Clie, the same goes for software on Visor.
"why is Handspring hardly ever mentioned? I think they are the best units with palm os to date... how many devices do you know the have an exspation to use an adpter that can use not only CF, Smart, and memory sticks?"
Is there any Springboard modules that could use any memory stick modules !? ...... hmm .... let me search, I don't know ... seriously ..... find me some..... But I can tell you right now that Panasonic has released a Memory stick modules that could use SD Cards.
And I think that brings me back to "why Handspring dropped Springboard in Treo" Because it's too Freaking HUGE !!!!! that's why they can't fit that thing in Treo "Not a different product line it's also Running palm OS". They learnt from Visor Edge that if your device is slim, you can't really plug the Springboard module in it without using an adaptor, and ppl don't like crarying adaptor with them. That's why the design of Springboard modules are fundamentally flawed, and the size of it is only good for Nintendo gameboy.
RE: Chuckle
If Handera releases a good, QVGA (already a standard in PPC world, and it looks better than pixel doubling) color device with good audio and their current feature list, they can pull it off, and they won't need another product release in 3 months.
I really like the Clie, but I *hate* proprietary expansion like Memory Stick. I can pay less for a 128MB CF card than a 16MB Memory Stick. I might even buy a Clie now if they could give me the dual CF and MMC/SD expansion that the Handera 330 offers.
Palm should work with Sun
are very persuasive to developers because they cut
development times greatly and improve quality and
reliability.
With 32bit chips, Java could become the major development
tool for Palm. That means for Palm giving up some
control, but the alternative, a proprietary, non-standard,
C/C++-based API will simply not work. Besides, if Palm
doesn't do it, someone else will: the only thing that
has kept Java from being used widely on Palm is the
anemic processor.
RE: Palm should work with Sun
Palm should work with MSFT
RE: Palm should work with Sun
That kida upsets me. Sun did a lot for the world of computing and if you have any idea about Sun the it's business, you wouldn't have said that.
RE: Palm should work with Microsoft
There were even rumors back in October that Microsoft would even licence the Palm OS to make sure that .Net works on the Palm OS.
www.palminfocenter.com/view_Story.asp?ID=2537
---
News Editor
RE: Palm should work with MSFT
RE: Palm should work with Sun
When did Microsoft start following industry standards? Or are you defining an "industry standard" as "what Microsoft uses"?
RE: Palm should work with Sun
RE: Palm should work with Sun
I don't think the DragonBall is the reason that Java hasn't taken the Palm world by storm....modern PCs have a lot more powerful processors and neither Java nor C# have taken the world by storm there either (name one major retail application, game, etc. written in Java or C#). Java hasn't taken the world by storm for the same reason as C# won't - it's bloated and slow. This is a non-issue when the application is a corporate-type thing where you can just throw more hardware at the problem, but it's death in the retail space.
RE: Palm should work with Sun
RE: Palm should work with Sun
NAH...If I'm on an airplane, for instance, and I want to do some real work on my PDA/Notebook, I don't want to have to rely on the server to do the "dirty work" - because the server don't fit in the overhead bin! I like my computing power local, thank you. I don't want to be tied to/at the mercy of some server (of course that bastard McNealy would love it).
Last Chance
This is Palm's last chance at the market. If not, for sure PPC's are going to gain market. They need to get some REAL LIFE business hardware available, and I am NOT talking about 240x240 digital cameras, I am talking about Wireless LAN's, modems, etc. Palm has done great, but we must face it: Simplicity isn't a factor any more Palm. You cant brag about it. Not everyone are retards! Any general comments? Will Palm stay ahead?
RE: Last Chance
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Chuckle
Note: I have used a Palm for 5 years now. I love my Palm. The company that is Palm now is not the same who I first knew and loved.