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The Palm OS Ends With a Whimper
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon May 21, 2007 09:46 PM
from the hands-down dept.
from the hands-down dept.
PetManimal writes "Computerworld reviews the Palm Treo 755p, the last Palm device with the Palm OS, and concludes that the OS is going out not with a bang but with a whimper. The article says there are some useful improvements (better integration with Exchange and IM, limited speech recognition, etc.) but 'nothing that will make you sit back and say "wow."' Palm already has at least one device with Windows Mobile (the 700w) and soon will make a big push to Linux devices, maybe by the end of the year. But the Palm OS, which was top dog for a while back in the 1990s, and is still used by many people who own Palm Pilots or Treos, is going to quickly fade, it seems."
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Linux: Palm Unveils Foleo, Linux-Based "Mobile Companion" 301 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Contrary to recent rumors, it's not Palm's first Linux smartphone, and no, it's not a competitor to Nokia's Linux-based N800 Internet Tablet. Rather, Palm today unveiled the Foleo, which it's calling a 'new class' of mobile device. The device is designed to expand the email, Internet, and productivity application capabilities of mobile phones such as the Palm Treo, by adding a full-size keyboard and a larger screen. Company founder Jeff Hawkins predicts that the Foleo will be more successful than Palm's original Palm Pilot, which he designed, and more successful than its current Treo smartphones. He touts its simplicity: 'Press a button, it's on. Press it again, it's off. There are no other modes.'"
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palm interface on a linux kernel? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, but what will the interface for those Linux devices look like?
Re:palm interface on a linux kernel? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:palm interface on a linux kernel? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Re:palm interface on a linux kernel? (Score:5, Informative)
-The new Linux based system will be promoted as the next generation of Palm OS, as opposed to something completely different
-Full backward compatibility will be retained for legacy palm apps, which accounts for 90% of Palm's loyal userbase
-Multithreaded preemptive multitasking will fix the stability issues that arose from cramming phone and email push functionality into a single task 68k-based OS
One could suggest that this is similar to the Mac OS X upgrade from 9.x.
They are talking Intel for the platform, same as the latest generation of, well, everything. Processor should be in the 400mhz neighborhood.
The direct goal is to maintain classic Palm "look and feel" plus compatibility, but with... well, stability. And Power.
Once this platform rolls, Windows Mobile will, by my reckoning, be the only remaining platform NOT based on some flavor of *nix, unless you actually count Symbian and Blackberry as platforms...
(yes, at least in a distant, hypothetical, degrees of separation NT derived sorta way, even Vista has *nix roots)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:palm interface on a linux kernel? (Score:5, Informative)
It is open, i.e. it has a standard, public SDK. Hence it is a "platform" (as opposed to mobile Linux phones whose SDK are usually neither public nor standard).
So if you were talking specifically about mobile platforms, I could say that, once this platform rolls, by my reckoning, the new PalmOS will be the only major open platform based on some flavor of *nix, unless you count Linux feature-phones as platforms... (-:
-Smiley
Parent
Re:palm interface on a linux kernel? (Score:5, Informative)
symbian has recently announced the sale of 100 million series 60 devices.
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/5198_One
that does not count series 40 or series 80 devices which make up a huge market in them selves.
last year 2006, 80 million smart phones were sold. symbian had 38 million of those. they are the market.
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/4969_Eve
now if i could only learn python on my nokia e61.
Parent
Re:palm interface on a linux kernel? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
So (unless I have all the facts very wrong), the complete story seems to be hogwash. What this article is saying is akin to saying that Microsoft abandoned Windows when it moved from Windows 3.0 to 3.1 or from 3.1x to Windows 95.
Re:palm interface on a linux kernel? (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft never did a big kernel switch. They had two different kernels - the "classic" one that was in 3.x with win32s and 9x up to Windows Me and the NT that started back in the 3.1 days and went up to the 2000, in two different product lines. They co-existed in different products for many years. What MS did is that they kept more or less the same look and feel on two different kernels and they simply EOL-ed the older one when they came out with Windows XP.
They never did a kernel transition within the same OS.
They only discontinued the 9x line when they thought XP was good enough for playing games.
Which, by the way, is pretty much what XP is good for
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It will be the new Small Edition X server.
That's great but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Out with a bang? (Score:2, Funny)
Doesn't "bang" imply success, and therefore, not going out?
- RG>
Re:Out with a bang? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Think "24"...
"Jack! That Palm will explode in 20 seconds if you can't get Linux booted on it!"
"I'm on it! Quick open another port in the firewall so I can interface directly with the TCP!"
.....
BAAAANG!
Re:Out with a bang? (Score:4, Informative)
"How, exactly, does software go out with a bang? Doesn't "bang" imply success, and therefore, not going out?"
I think the editors may have been a bit too literary this time. It's from a T. S. Elliot poem called "The Hollow Men." The last two lines are:
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
The meaning of the poem is subject to interpretation, but it's clear that the bang/whimper comparison very much refers to an end to the world.
Parent
What's the status of handwritting recognition? (Score:5, Interesting)
Has that changed?
Re: (Score:2)
Handwriting recognition on real Windows (i.e., XP Tablet Edition and Vista) is excellent, so I'd expect it to be pretty good on Windows PDAs too (slower CPU notwithstanding).
Re:What's the status of handwritting recognition? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What's the status of handwritting recognition? (Score:5, Interesting)
Forget handwriting recognition. Fitaly [fitaly.com], a tap-optimized virtual keyboard, is much faster -- in my experience, at least twice the speed of pen and paper. And while it's neither as fast nor as accurate as touch-typing, it's plenty good enough to make it unnecessary to carry around one of those folding keyboards.
I've used Fitaly on a Tungsten T3 to take voluminous notes at multi-hour seminars. It's that good. I wouldn't even think of going back to Graffiti.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This site: http://www.fitaly.com/order/order.htm [fitaly.com]
takes you to this site when you click on palm: https://fitaly.securesites.com/order/palmorder.ht
They have released it as freeware
Developers, applications, and openness (Score:2)
It will, be backward compatible (Score:3, Interesting)
Why Does It Have to Go Out With A Bang? (Score:5, Insightful)
A simple to do list, contacts, calendar, a memo pad was the core of the experience, and allthat you needed a PDA to do.
Depressing (Score:2, Insightful)
I've been using Palm devices for over ten years, and while it's been pretty apparent for a while now that Windows Mobile (or Pocket PC) has quickly grown to include more features and better integration with computer software, I personally don't like it at all. I think it's sluggish and poorly laid out. It can take several seconds to open the simply calendar, or the media player (during which time parts of the screen update before
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I will mourn this unfortunate change.
Which one? The switch to Linux, or the splintering of the interfaces?
The title flamebait, and amazingly wrong. Palm will keep on selling devices with "Palm OS" until they go out of business, just as Microsoft will keep on selling "Windows", Apple will sell "Apples", and GM will sell "Chevrolets".
By this time next year, you'll be able to buy an imported phone running "Palm on Linux" from Access, a phone running "Linux Palm OS" from Palm, and (please oh please) a geniune PDA from Palm with Linux under the
Sad (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sad (Score:5, Funny)
No worries; just replace it with a Congo [wikipedia.org]!
Parent
The OS doesn't matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
OS's aren't like people or pets. They're tools. When you've outgrown them, you can either upgrade them or find a new one. Obviously Access has no interest in updating the PalmOS, so Palm has to go its own way. I personally hope that they deliver new capabilities on Linux while retaining the simplicity of the Palm interface.
Re:The OS doesn't matter... (Score:4, Insightful)
But it does matter to us geeks, because we care what's under the hood. That's why we're discussing it - so to answer your question, yes, we do care, the OS does matter!
Parent
Good. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have owned various PalmOS devices for over a decade, and still use my Treo 650 daily, but I'll be happy to see the old OS go. It's unstable (a null pointer access will reboot the whole device), has no OS-level support for multitasking (applications have to hook into timer interrupts to run in the background), the memory management system is a monstrosity to code for, it has no ability to launch apps directly from a removable memory card, and even its strong suit, the UI, has some serious problems (try replying to an SMS message when you're in the middle of doing something else; when you're done sending the message it will take you back to the app launcher rather than to what you were doing.)
A new Linux-based core will solve many of those problems inherently. Plus, one hopes, it will be even more hackable. So I say good riddance to the old OS.
Treo 700p was ok, for about 2 months (Score:3, Interesting)
Needless to say, I am done with Palm. I will not purchase another phone from them. Even if they solve the software issues, they have a very serious problem with their support that they need to tend to first.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Linux.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I love linux, but just running linux doesn't automatically make things perfect. (awesome, sure, but not perfect. this is slashdot afterall).
Disgusting (Score:3, Interesting)
May It Rest in Agony! (Score:5, Informative)
There were so many problems with the OS design. I could not understand why you would build an OS that lacked any sort of filesystem. Instead, they had a very crappy database-esque system from which you could retrieve data. You couldn't simply load a file onto the system, it had to be loaded into the database and accessed using their bass-akwards method of database access. Be aware, we're not talking SQL here.
Another thing that was horrible was their lack of long-jumps. I had previously never had to specifically arrange the order of my object files in a link statement to avoid jumps further than 64k. There were times where I actually had to create functions that did nothing but call a later function so that I could make code jumps to functions further than 64k away. That made using the STL basically impossible (some would not consider this a loss, I do).
Then you add in the ridiculousness of having to define UUIDs for programs. So, anytime you wanted to write any sort of small application, you had to register a 32-bit number (less actually) with Palm. There are better ways to do this. We don't live in the 70s anymore.
Ugh! There are so many other problems. I just had to get this off my chest. Once they do this, maybe I'll go get a new Palm. I was never able to bring myself to buy a Windows CE device, but I have longed to have another PDA. Hopefully, these new Linux systems will be what I am looking for.
Of course, it has been years since I programmed anything on Palm OS (version 5, I believe). So, for all I know, they fixed all of these problems and I will be the recipient of a massive amount of flame.
Dear Palm: Want to go out with a bang? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They tried rewriting it (PalmOS 6), but it was an utter failure. Now they're trying to move to a Linux-based kernel.
dom
I'm one of those users... (Score:3, Insightful)
It was a good idea; branching out into hundreds of alternatives (and keeping their handwriting recognition sacred) limited the span. And just like SCO learned, charging $1,100 for a development system to create more software for your platform, there are worse things to lose than your money.
If they could just be talked into licensing their handwriting analysis code to other businesses, they just might save theirs...
Got my first (only) Palm III 1999 (Score:3, Interesting)
Palm always seemed to be progressing about half the speed the marketplace wanted them to. They split off hardware from software, bought BeOS and wandered around doing silly pointless things for years. Ultimately their vaunted stability and battery life over PocketPC just wasn't enough. Palm always remained a work in progress, a lab experiment really in search of a stable suite of business apps and a good business model. The idea that apps generally to be workable needed big chunks of RAM, that Palm never seemed to be able to deliver on the hardware in time, or, if they did it cost a fantastic amount of money was inane. Does anyone remember that the first 2MB -> 8MB customer RAM upgrades required you to take apart the motherboard and spend more than $200 for the chip?
Yeah so I not glad or angry Palm is dead. I gave up on it years ago. I think the next thing I''ll get is a Moto-Q or whatever is roughly a Moto-Q next year when Sprint gives me a discount. The idea of a standalone PDA is over. And the idea of a PDA/Phone without good enough data entry is over too. I have the first and the last version of T9 for Palm which was great until T9 decided they only wanted the phone market and abandoned Palm. I had a portable keyboard and found it clunky too. Better to have a small built in hardware keyboard on the device. In retrospect the commonsense product decisions that would have made the Palm platform a viable handheld communicator, PDA, Phone, computer, whatever always seemed to elude Palm executives.
Very sad (Score:3, Informative)
Palm is such a great OS for what it's designed to do. Plus it's always been programmer friendly (gcc m68k toolchain + the Palm SDK) which they distributed for free. Plus there was POSE for development and you could legally download roms for the different system from their development site for testing. Does MS do that?
So for me, this is a sad day. It was fun while it lasted and I just hope mine doesn't break anytime soon.
PalmOS "died" with the Dragonball (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, there's a Palm III emulator that's been ported all over the place, including handheld versions of Windows. There's no reason why it couldn't run on a Linux-based PDA. Maybe I should change my subject: "PalmOS will never die!"
Re: (Score:2)
Uhh (Score:2)
Oops, meant 320x320 (Score:3)
Windows Mobile would also have died... (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows CE/Windows Mobile was running at a huge loss, but has now broken even. Tactics like that do tend to allow you to destroy traditional competition in the long run. Linux-kerneled devices are growing faster than ever and MS does not have a recipe to destroy them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Does everything I want a PDA to accomplish.
and
2. Is one HECK of a lot more durable than the Visor, or the pitiful flimsy Tungsten E (which failed a few weeks out of warranty)
and
3. I have found Palm IIIs in almost new condition sell on eBay for under $10 at this point in time.
and
4. I have Code Warrior for PalmOS, so I can code up any practical PDA-scale