Palm Pulls the Plug On Palm OS

BobB-nw writes to tell us that Palm has decided to kill their PalmOS operating system and is instead betting their future on a still mostly unknown Palm webOS. Very little is known about the new Palm webOS, but it will supposedly support HTML5 and enable a local data store so that applications can be used both online and off. All of this is rolled into a Linux framework with a message bus based on JSON. Will be interesting to see where they take it.

Re:amazing stupidity

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Um, their killing their old OS in favor of the one which runs on the Pre.

Re:Isn't JSON insecure?

[TheCycoONE]

JSON isn't inherently insecure, it's just a method of delimiting data. Running JSON through an eval is insecure, but there are drafts for safer implementations (stringify and parse, as well as a native JSON type in JavaScript iirc). That said, always verify your data.

Re:Palm keeps falling flat?

[xoundmind]

Not sure if it is true in 2009, but 4 years ago: Many, many medical and nursing students were required to have a Palm for running some handy med-apps.

Re:About damn time

[Major Blud]

Don't forget that Palm is still going to produce devices running Windows Mobile alongside WebOS. Having spent much time with Windows Mobile, Symbian, and a Palm VII, none of those come close to an iPhone (I haven't used the new BlackBerry Storm so I can't comment). But, you are definitely correct in that that Windows Mobile has the best SDK and development tools available, bar none. There is something said about being able to write your own apps and distribute them freely.

Re:Isn't JSON insecure?

[LDoggg_]

Depends on if you're including json as a script tag with the source to a host different than the one that loaded the original document or if you're retrieving json from an XMLHTTPRequest. The latter is sandboxed to the original document's host.

Re:What happened to BeOS?

[steeleye_brad]

Palm did acquire Be Inc in 2001. After this, it get's really fucking goofy and confusing, so I'll just quote Wikipeida (article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm,_Inc. [wikipedia.org])

In January 2002, Palm set up a wholly owned subsidiary to develop and license Palm OS[4], which was named PalmSource in February[5]. PalmSource was then spun off from Palm as an independent company. In August 2003, the hardware division of the company merged with Handspring, was renamed to palmOne, Inc. and traded under the ticker symbol PLMO. The Palm trademark was held by a jointly owned holding company.

In April 2005, palmOne purchased PalmSource's share in the 'Palm' trademark for US$30 million.[6] In July 2005, palmOne launched its new name and brand reverting back to Palm, Inc. and trading under the ticker symbol PALM once again.

In late 2005 ACCESS, which specializes in mobile and embedded web browser technologies, acquired PalmSource for US$324 million.

Who knows where Be's intellectual property ended up. Nothing ever came of the Be acquisition, and most likely nothing ever will. Palm's WebOS is entirely new, developed in-house, and has nothing to do with PalmSource/ACCESS.

Re:amazing stupidity

[tlhIngan]

Dude, the Palm Pre does not use Palm OS.

How did you get modded insightful?

Probably because of confusion? Palm and PalmOS have gone together (and make sense together). Now they introduce a new device running a new OS. Next Palm announces the death of PalmOS. Unless you're techie enough to know that the Pre runs "WebOS" and not "PalmOS", it would appear that Palm is abandoning their OS.

Anyhow, I think it realy means Palm is abandoning PalmOS. PalmOS is maintained by Access and is part of the Access Linux Platform nowadays... and Access has a nice VM to run PalmOS on the Nokia tablets. Great for those of us stuck with some irreplacable PalmOS apps. (And while there's probably a billion replacements for them, they lack stuff like the speed or other things...).

This is old news

[metamatic]

You're half there.

Access owned PalmOS, and in fact PalmOS was killed in late 2005 [ath0.com] when Access ceased development and moved to the Linux-based ALP (Access Linux Platform).

This announcement is actually just Palm admitting that they can't afford to release any more hardware that uses an OS that's been dead for nearly 4 years.

Misleading story

[metamatic]

First off, Palm don't own PalmOS. It's owned by Access, who bought PalmSource.

Secondly, PalmOS's plug was pulled back in 2005, when Access announced no further development work would be done on it.

Thirdly, Palm didn't *decide* to pull the plug; their license from Access to ship new PalmOS devices expired, so they have no choice.

I wrote about all this back in 2005 [ath0.com] when the news went around. I guess everyone's forgotten.

Re:Who or what is the target for WebOS?

[Baricom]

Apple's so-called "API" consisted of a keynote where they recommend making web pages that looked like native iPhone apps, but ran over the Internet in Mobile Safari. Palm's API is web-based, but the HTML/CSS/JavaScript will be stored and executed on the device, and JavaScript will be extended with hooks into phone-specific functionality. The difference is apples (no pun intended) to oranges.

Re:I've bought my last Palm product anyway

[uglyduckling]

Actually that button stopped working on my TX. I took it to bits, resoldered the dry joint and glued the switch to the PCB which is what Palm should have done in the first place rather than relying on the solder joint for a button that is pressed 20 times a day.

Re:Who or what is the target for WebOS?

[blahbooboo]

Apple initially proposed something similar for the iPhone in lieu of a true SDK. Most people here on slashdot said it wouldn't be enough, and they were right. I don't know if Apple proposed it as a temporary stopgap while they worked on a true SDK or if they got enough feedback and changed their minds. History repeating itself.

Wrong.

WebOs apps run on the actual device and are native to the device (the apps just use Javascript and HTML as their "language"). Apple originally proposed "apps" that were actually web pages formatted to look nicely (and have a bit more functionality) when viewed on the iPhone. However, they were still web sites that had no real access to the hardware of the viewer. WebOs apps will have access to the hardware layer, run locally, etc...

Re:What happened to BeOS?

[denis-The-menace]

Probably this:

    BeOS Lives: Haiku Impresses

http://osnews.com/story/20951/BeOS_Lives_Haiku_Impresses [osnews.com]

Re:amazing stupidity

[Evanisincontrol]

I used to get 5 mod points per "round". I typically 15 mod points at a time these days. I'm guessing my positive karma and semi-long (~5 years I think?) history on Slashdot is the reason for that. In any case, they definitely give out more than 3 mod points at a time to many people.

Re:What happened to BeOS?

[pavon]

It ended up with ACCESS. I don't think they have any plans for it whatsoever. It was bought to make the next PalmOS, Colbalt, which ACCESS canceled in favor of their ACCESS Linux Platform. The only action I have heard about is that ACCESS shutdown YellowTab (a proprietary fork of BeOS by ZETA software), while they have been accepting and minimally supporting of Haiku (an open source reimplementation of BeOS).

Re:Who or what is the target for WebOS?

[LDoggg_]

Android is open source.

The parts that cost money are the proprietary hardware drivers and media codecs and things like that, but that's not free for any platform.

Re:About damn time

[ckaminski]

God I hate the Storm even more than I hate the iPhone... that clicky screen gimick... blech. If only I could testdrive an N810 before spending the money on it... :-/ I NEED the smartphone keyboard like my Treo has.

Re:Isn't JSON insecure?

[rbanffy]

"Is that perception incorrect?"

Pretty much yes.

It all depends on you deciding to trust the JSON you get and eval-ing it.

If you can't trust the source, you should parse it using a safe parser.

Re:Palm keeps falling flat?

[ColdWetDog]

Or the Blackberry. Epocrates [epocrates.com] is the big one. There are a number of smaller companies that take medical books and format them for PDAs with Palm OS being the dominant base (still). Back in Ye Olden Days I thought they were a great idea, even if it was really, really hard to get much out of Harrison's Internal Medicine in 480 x 320 pixels. With the ubiquity of real computers and Internet access, I've used them less and less.

Most of the publishers had various and incompatible DRM strategies - you couldn't easily load the book on another PDA if yours got flushed down the toilet. Updates were sporadic and difficult. The search function in the Palm OS is pretty primitive. The Internet gave Palm a pretty good broadside. (They never could get a decent browser in the things). Palm managed to finish themselves off. While the Pre may be a marginal success in the increasingly crowded smartphone market, I don't see Palm regaining anything resembling the dominance in the field.

Re:Palm was once *the* PDA to use

[onefriedrice]

Palm failed because they performed poorly as a company, not because there is some weak market force that works to break up monopolies...

Re:This is awful

[quickOnTheUptake]

HTML 5 has a specification for allowing a site to use a local sql database [slashdot.org]. I believe safari now supports it (the user configures how big each site's db can grow), but I haven't used anything that uses it (or tried to write to it myself).

Re:This is awful

[quickOnTheUptake]

shit, here's the link: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#sql [w3.org]

Re:Too late

[iburrell]

They did write a new OS with the technology from BeOS. Palm OS 6, aka Cobalt, was a failure when released five years ago. No devices were ever released that used it. Part of the problem was the split between Palm and PalmSource. Palm went with Palm OS 5.4 for the Treo 650. And started using Windows Mobile about the same time. There were rumors that it was hard to write drivers for Cobalt.

Re:I've bought my last Palm product anyway

[dunkelfalke]

copy&paste?

Re:I've bought my last Palm product anyway

[soupforare]

Go for weeks without a charge. Graffiti.

Most importantly: Can be used without a contract.

Re:About damn time

[Darinbob]

The original Palm had very little memory (128KB!) and completely different design goals than the later Windows PDAs. The Palm was essentially an embedded device designed like most small embedded devices, and was very efficient with memory use and power. Whereas Windows handheld machines were designed to be a miniature version of Windows, and thus required a lot more memory and horsepower.

Of course the API wasn't standard. You should rename the functions if they don't conform exactly to the standard (Microsoft C libraries on the other hand have had plenty of non compliant functions that weren't renamed, which has confused some programmers).

Of course you couldn't use a Windows toolchain,
what self respecting embedded programmers would want to? Besides, what Windows toolchain supported M68K anyway? This was not a Windows machine, it was not designed to work like Windows or look like Windows, so why would the lack of a normal Microsoft toolchain matter in the slightest?

Re:Palm keeps falling flat?

[idiot900]

Phones are banned for patients and families. Clinical staff use them all the time. (I'm a medical student.)

Re:WebOs might change that...

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Despite the name, WebOS stores its apps locally on the Pre. The name comes from the fact that the apps are built with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and the like.

BeOS in PalmOS

[DrYak]

Who knows where Be's intellectual property ended up.

According to the few rumours I've read on the web, small bits of Be where used in the multimedia stack of Palm Garnet (the only component of the OS which was multitasking).

The rest remained unused.

Re:RIP My Friend

[Pascal Sartoretti]

I have used palm OS for almost ten years.

Rest in Peace my friend, you will be missed.

Same here. As much as I like my new iPhone, its PDA capabililities are still inferior to palm OS:

• no to do's
• notes don't sync
• entering a meeting in the calendar takes more time
• no custom conduits for 3rd party applications

On the other hand, the iPhone's browser makes you feel in the 21st century...