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I asked the same question 4 years ago, and a friend told me about Code Warrior. But you have to pay for it. Still, I hope Eclipse CDT upgrades soon.

You might want to head over to http://www.warioworld.com/ to get an idea for the process you have to go through in order to get your hands on previous dev kits. I believe metrowerks makes tools for game dev http://www.metrowerks.com/.

Now, things may be different for the rev since it looks like they might let indy devs get their hands on these relatively easily, but in the past I think you needed a dev license just to obtain the kits.

I'm in the same boat as you, I'd really like to work on this system as well.

Metrowerks was bought by Freescale (aka Motorola) and sold off its x86 technology, presumably to focus on embedded applications of moto's 68K/PPC. The other half of their business is game development systems, where 2 of those systems are PPC (although IBM-sourced, not Moto) and the other two (PS2 & PSP) are RISC.

I still don't know why they dropped out of the OSX market - maybe competing against Apple's "free" tools was too tough. They currently aren't competing with MS, either.

Metrowerks was bought by Freescale (aka Motorola) and sold off its x86 technology, presumably to focus on embedded applications of moto's 68K/PPC. The other half of their business is game development systems, where 2 of those systems are PPC (although IBM-sourced, not Moto) and the other two (PS2 & PSP) are RISC.

I still don't know why they dropped out of the OSX market - maybe competing against Apple's "free" tools was too tough. They currently aren't competing with MS, either.

Metrowerks' About Page

Nope. Metrowerks was spun off with, and belongs to, Freescale. Which you would know, had you done something so simple as go to their home page and read the words: "Metrowerks - A Freescale Semiconductor Company".

Metrowerks no longer produces an x86 compiler toolchain:

http://www.metrowerks.com/MW/Develop/Desktop/defau lt.htm

"Metrowerks recently sold its Intel x86 compiler and debugger technology to a third party. As a result, Metrowerks will no longer create and sell products that include this technology. Metrowerks will offer support for these products by hosting on-line discussions on newsgroups and on our web site.

This sale does not affect the right to use CodeWarrior or create x86 code by customers currently licensed to use CodeWarrior x86 compilers."

Don't forget Metrowerks.

True. Essentially what Apple is saying that you need to be on GCC.

Technically speaking, Metrowerks could incorporate an x86 compiler into Codewarrior... however, seeing as how they sold off all their x86 compiler IP, that seems very unlikely, and Codewarrior has been slowly transitioning from *the* way to code Mac OS apps to more of an embedded/console development platform anyway, that is, when they haven't been running the company into the ground...

This MacSlash thread goes into some rather sobering details.

Were you thinking of Codewarrior maybe?

> Has anyone else noticed any direct > consequences of this move by apple?

http://www.metrowerks.com/MW/Develop/Desktop/defau lt.htm

An alternative C, C++, and Obj-C environment (IDE) hosted on Mac OS X for development of C, C++, and Objective-C applications for Mac OS X as well as Mac OS 9 (a.k.a. Classic) platforms:

http://www.metrowerks.com/MW/Develop/Desktop/Macin tosh/Default.htm

It's $499.00 in Metrowerks' online shop.

"ds language"? I presume you mean ARM assembly language? Do you really think they write these games from the ground up in assembler (as nice as ARM asm is)? Have a look at the MetroWerks site. DS, PSP, PS2, GC and GBA are listed currently. I beleive they also supplied kits for the N64.

http://www.metrowerks.com/MW/Develop/Games/Default .htm
http://www.warioworld.com/

"linux commands"? I don't remember many blockbuster games based on sed or grep.

Why would you want to hijack another DS for anything other than nefarious purposes? If you own another DS (lucky you) then it can be actively shared. No hijack required.

Does it come supplied with Windows? You sound suspiciously like some kid who downloaded a Red Hat ISO once just to join the in-crowd. You couldn't get ALSA working on your laptop so you went back to gaming on XP. If you're going to bash a platform, bash it with authority. Some people know why they prefer one OS over another .

Also, this software is usualy VERY expensive. When the manufacturers offer a non-windows version, you usualy have to buy again, rather than ask for the Mac/BSD copy.

If there is no OS X version of CodeWarrior, what is this, and why does Apple use Codewarrior as a benchmark for speed against XCode (with Apple even admitting that Codewarrior is still faster)? And yes, Motorola created CodeWarrior. Metrowerks might even still be owned by them.

We don't think we are missing out on much at all. I'm sorry but it is not at all likely that there will ever be a MAC version of Rhino. We do our software development in Microsoft Developer Studio. There is no MAC based equivalent for this product and it's resources. This is the first problem. Secondly, it is nearly impossible to find MAC programmers with the PhD level math skills needed for this kind of programming at any price. Thirdly, there are not enough potential sales of a MAC based product to keep it affordable. At present projections, assuming we could find the programmers and they could co-develop a product similar enough to the Windows based product to make it viable, each copy would have to be priced over $20,000 per seat. At that price, a $1,000 Windows computer running Windows based Rhino makes a lot more sense. Don't you think?

Reply to Point #1
Xcode and Codewarrior

Reply to point #2
Need I mention products like Mathworks [Matlab] and Wolfram [Mathematica] ?
Our department, the Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering department graduates several PhDs specializing in surfacing math, several of whom I have worked with. They eventually get hired into the automotive and marine industries. Several of them now work for companies like Dassault [Catia], EAI (now Unigraphics), Imageware Surfacer (now Unigraphics) all doing work on CAD and advanced surfacing, based on their PhD work. PhD's with programming knowledge are platform agnostic. Equations and algorithms that work on a Windows PC can be ported to a Mac, or any other platform for that matter.

I don't believe that any programmer can't pick up a Mac OSX development environment, especially when academic institutions teach on platform neutral environments. C, C++, OpenGL, Java, ...etc.

Reply to point #3
Apparently, companies like Alias [Maya], NewTek [Lightwave], Microsoft [Office], Mathworks [Matlab], Adobe....don't concur with your hypothesis. Nor do they charge 20 time more per seat for their Mac OSX ports.

The $20,000 per seat cost using the percentage of total sales of PC vs Macs is clearly a red herring. A much better example would be the fact that Alias' sales of Maya make up over %25 of their total revenue stream, even though Macs sales are less than 5% of total computer sales. The reason for Maya's success on Mac OSX, as well as other similar software, is because Macs are used in the computer graphics, video, scientific and engineering community. Applications that cater to 3D modeling, 2D imaging, video are used to a greater proportion on Macs than that found in the Windows community. Hence, sales of the Mac OSX Rhino 3D port would not be 19 to 1 (Windows vs Macs), a more realistic ratio would be 3 to 1 ( Windows vs Macs, based on the Alias Maya example).

The question is would McNeel & Associates want to keep trying to growing in just a PC market, or experience the potential of increasing sales (as Alias did when they made their Mac OSX port) another 30% - 25% ?

Do you mean MontaVista, LynuxWorks, Metroworks, or some other company?

Each company should be in charge of auditing, testing and validating its products. It should also be noted that embedded realtime Linux distributions are much smaller than regular desktop/server distributions. Most DOD systems aren't accessible over a network, so that type of vulnerability is largely not a problem.

BTW, this complaint from Dowd is old news - it first surfaced this spring. Not many are buying his argument, from what I can tell.

Except that Microsoft's tools are easily accessed and digested. All you need to know is on msdn.microsoft.com. The IDE is widely available (cheap for academic versions, free for upcoming Express versions), and the SDK is free. A person can learn DirectX on his/her own, rather easily, and that knowledge is directly applicable to the production of an XBox game.

No other gaming platform (except the PC) has anything at all like that. I googled for "sony playstation 2 sdk" and the only SDK-like tool I found was this link. You must become licensed as a PlayStation developer to even purchase the product. Metroworks didn't list any prices, but I'd be surprised if it was less than $5000.

I have both editions, and I have to say that the second edition content and writing are better.

He has incorporated 2 years worth of experiences from the teaching of the first edition at Big Nerd Ranch into this book... so it is little wonder that the second edition is better. He approached the book with the idea that "it'll be released when it is ready", and it shows. He didn't rush this out the door. You cannot find a better resource for Mac OS X programming than this author. I suggest reading anything he writes, if you are serious about programming the Mac.

As far as the content goes -- everything development (CodeWarrior aside...) in Panther is Xcode, not Project Builder -- and the second book reflects this. I had a terrible time implementing the first edition's projects in Xcode, because all of the screen shots were different -- even Interface Builder has changed quite a lot. If you are looking at both editions and do not have the first one, you won't regret getting the second one. If you have the first one, but have not started learning from it yet, you will want to skip it and get the second one. If you've already gone through the first one, the second one might help you dig more into Xcode, but the Xcode website might be all you need for that.

I hope this helps.

Huh? Metrowerks produces apple development tools, and they dabble in linux/embedded development tools. I'm pretty sure that Metrowerks is not a freescale subsidary. See for example this PR.

I say go for the PowerBook. You'll be getting a great all-around system that you'll love using. I just got a 1.25GHz 15" PowerBook, and it is by far the best computer I've ever owned.

QTopia is QT for embedded devices. It contains all of qt, but can be run in cut-down profiles. The main difference between QTopia and "regular" QT is that it bypasses X and writes directly to framebuffer devices.

Well then somebody clear this up for me, because I just don't understand. My impression was that the software stack was this:

• Qtopia - analagous to a window manger, apps, user-level graphical stuff.
• Qt/Embedded - approximately analagous to the X Window system with QT built in.
• Embedix - the Linux kernel and (maybe?) non-gui user apps.

  It just seems to me that if Qtopia was the widget set, Opie wouldn't exist, because (AFAICT) Opie is about open PIM apps and synchronization, not replacing QT widgets.

  I'd love to be pointed in the correct direction, because I'd love to be able to get GNUton in a useable state.

Metrowerks Codewarrior

I've been working woth the Palm OS for several year and I very much enjoy working with it. Metrowerks has a professional quality C/C++ environment for it and Palm has released a free (as in beer )simulator that allows for source level debugging. There are several frameworks and other tools that make the Palm OS specific issues a snap. It really is a joy to work wehere thing just work - No driver issues, no incompatabilities, etc. Palm programming does require a very different mindset from the desktop. The Palm OS is very lean, but that is how it should be. Bloated palms are an ugly thing indeed.

1. Compatible with C++/Java/Some scripting languages

2. Intagrated editor/debugger

3. Works well with compiler

4. Multi-platform (or at least Linux for god's sake!)


CodeWarrior is what you're looking for, but standard Unix tools are what you want.

Have a look at DrScheme, too. It has a simple IDE and a lot of tutorials for learning scheme. Don't waste your tens (hundreds?) of thousands of tuition dollars learning C++ when you can do that from a book. You're there to learn concepts and theory which you can apply to any language.

Funny you should ask that... codewarrior for Sharp Zaurus

Metrowerks CodeWarrior used to support the Yaroze. I can't find any current support for it (but they do support the PS2)

You might be able to find an older version of CodeWarrior for Playstation floating around somewhere like ebay...

Most likely, though, I will use Mac OS X for my 922 development. I'd prefer using Linux to Windows, but if I can use Mac OS X, I'd prefer that to Linux, if for no other reason than the fact that the clipboard works correctly, as well as that I could use CodeWarrior to edit my source.

You'd like the clipboard to work correctly? The issues with one-program-can't-copy-to-another are gone -- I haven't run into one for years. The old days, where Qt 2.x and below broke the X clipboard rules (and caused all kinds of mayhem) are also gone. Qt 3 has been out for ages, and uses the clipboard in the same way that all the other X11 software out there does. If you use Control-C and Control-V to do your copying and pasting, you get operating just as you do on the MacOS, and if you use a multi-clipboard program (klipper is pretty standard on KDE...I don't believe there's an equivalent included in GNOME, though there are a couple of WindowMaker-dock style programs) you don't lose clipboard contents when the original source program closes.

As for using CodeWarrior to do your embedded development, let me introduce you to Linux Solutions@Metrowerks.

One reason nowadays that most embedded developers host their development on Windows is that most embedded tools publishers only make their tools available to run on Windows. Often these tools, like compilers for arcane chips, are quite specialized, so the developer is left with no choice.

That said, I think whoever wrote the report is on crack if they think Windows is a better development environment than Linux. I have been doing embedded for a year now, and one of the main things I still dislike about it is that I have to do most of my development on Windows.

It is quite common for each compiler vendor to write their own integrated development environment, with an editor and integrated build system. But the market for these products are not as great as the market for IDEs for the development of desktop or server software, which means they can't invest in developing a more refined GUI for their IDEs, so their basic usability and quality is quite poor.

If you think Visual Studio is a lousy environment for development, you should try the ARM IDE or TI's Code Composer Studio. Using them is like pounding nails with your fists.

However, the situation is slowly starting to look up. GCC targets many embedded CPUs and is starting to become widely used for embedded development. The other GNU tools also form a more or less complete set of what you would need to develop embedded products, with GDB acting as both a debugger and simulator, LD able to function as an embedded linker, being able to do two-machine debugging with GDB and so on. Also there's GNU make, CVS and so on.

The result is that while I had to use the proprietary (and expensive) ARM compiler to develop for the Oxford Semiconductor ARM7TDMI-based 911 FireWire/IDE bridge chip (which allows you to hook up inexpensive IDE disk drives as firewire storage), they switched over to building their firmware with GCC for the 922 USB/FireWire/IDE 922 bridge chip.

I've been using GCC under Cygwin for my 922 development, but a CD with a new SDK on it is expected to arrive in the mail any day now. When it does, I will have a choice of Cygwin, Linux or Mac OS X development environments, all running the same version of GCC. And I'm very happy about that.

Most likely, though, I will use Mac OS X for my 922 development. I'd prefer using Linux to Windows, but if I can use Mac OS X, I'd prefer that to Linux, if for no other reason than the fact that the clipboard works correctly, as well as that I could use CodeWarrior to edit my source.

Maybe if I get real ambitious, I might write a CodeWarrior plugin so I can use the CodeWarrior IDE to compile my code with arm-elf-gcc.

(And don't give me crap about not using Emacs. I was an expert at Emacs when most of you were still in diapers. I still have my .emacs file which I first created in 1987. But I vastly prefer CodeWarrior's GUI text editor unless I have some reason to run a bunch of Emacs lisp code on my source file.)

Have you used Metrowerks Codewarrior? Now there's an IDE. It's a joy to use. Runs on Mac and Windows. I think there is a Linux version that uses gcc, but I haven't tried it.

(I admit I haven't tried Eclipse yet, but I would be very surprised if it were better than CodeWarrior.)

Everything Just Works in CodeWarrior. I've even got my wife, a web designer who prefers to hand-code her HTML, to use it to write her web pages.

CodeWarrior supports C, C++, Java and inline assembly. If you prefer makefiles, there are command line tools that provide the same compiler. Old versions of CodeWarrior also supported Pascal, but I don't think they do anymore.

The ISO compliance of CodeWarrior's C++ is far superior to Visual C++'s, and has been quite compliant for a very long time. I've been happily using the Standard Template Library in very complex ways, as well as writing my own fancy templates, for several years.

Alexei Alexandrescu used CodeWarrior to develop the heavily templated source code for Modern C++ Design. Visual C++ can't compile it because of its poor compliance to the standard.

It is also available for many embedded systems. Metrowerks was acquired by Motorola a while back, who makes the ColdFire and PowerPC processors that are important in the embedded world.

Apple is also IBM's partner in the development of the PPC970. Gcc is the developer optimized compiler for the chip in many ways and is more comparable to Intel's compiler in this respect.
then why is Metroworks 10% faster? For those of you not familiar with Apple/metroworks, their the guys that pulled apples but out of the fire when IBM & others left them hanging during their transition to PPC. Ever since Metroworks has maintained its undisputed leadership in PPC (not POWER-thats a code superset) speed and efficency. Apple admitted as much when they introduced their own programing environment xCode at the keynote (thats where the 10% comes from). Yes they have been improving GCC for PPC use, but that in no way proves that it has been fully "optimized."

To look at it another way, GCC has been available for 10x as long on x86. Are you saying that Apple is more than 10x more efficient then the Gnu-team?

Don't be so sure.

I was really talking about current Mac support from a desk-top, integration, usability point of view. Palm and Apple have, for the time being, formed a business relationship to promote each others' tech.

How long this lasts is always open to interpretation, but is out of our hands anyway. Currently, core funcitionality works Good Enough for me. That is, I can sync to everything I need (on Windows at work, on the Mac at home), and can drag and drop files to the palm via Bluetooth. This is the kind of support I'm talking about.

As for developer support, Palm seems happy enough to provide documents and links to free prc-tools and emulators for all platforms, including Mac. Took me only a few hours to set up a gcc cross-compiler and prc creation system on OS X. I'd never have considered Code Warrior as a dev platform, but according to Metrowerks, they still sell and support Code Warrior for the Mac. Perhaps if I coded for money for a variety of embedded targets and wanted a one-stop solution, I'd consider Code Warrior.

Anyway, my point still stands: if you want a handheld that has good Mac OS X support (where "support" is defined as above), you have to buy a new Palm.

The largest hole in this support is lack of third-party conduits, as these are generally very platform-specific, and tend to be targeted to the most common platform (i.e., Windows). The Mac Plam conduit API still exists and is supported by Palm.

As far as pilot-link is concerned, I didn't see much in the Docs section that gave anything more than what I already have with a default Palm-iSync-Mac setup.

Don't be so sure.

I was really talking about current Mac support from a desk-top, integration, usability point of view. Palm and Apple have, for the time being, formed a business relationship to promote each others' tech.

How long this lasts is always open to interpretation, but is out of our hands anyway. Currently, core funcitionality works Good Enough for me. That is, I can sync to everything I need (on Windows at work, on the Mac at home), and can drag and drop files to the palm via Bluetooth. This is the kind of support I'm talking about.

As for developer support, Palm seems happy enough to provide documents and links to free prc-tools and emulators for all platforms, including Mac. Took me only a few hours to set up a gcc cross-compiler and prc creation system on OS X. I'd never have considered Code Warrior as a dev platform, but according to Metrowerks, they still sell and support Code Warrior for the Mac. Perhaps if I coded for money for a variety of embedded targets and wanted a one-stop solution, I'd consider Code Warrior.

Anyway, my point still stands: if you want a handheld that has good Mac OS X support (where "support" is defined as above), you have to buy a new Palm.

The largest hole in this support is lack of third-party conduits, as these are generally very platform-specific, and tend to be targeted to the most common platform (i.e., Windows). The Mac Plam conduit API still exists and is supported by Palm.

As far as pilot-link is concerned, I didn't see much in the Docs section that gave anything more than what I already have with a default Palm-iSync-Mac setup.

Have a look @ TI's WANDA platform for a cool reference design similar to this. I played with the platform at the CTIA show last month, and the company that put it together for TI, Accellent, had working prototypes in cases ready to go.

The best part about WANDA: it's $130 for the integrated board. Add a battery, display and a few controls, and you could have whatever kind of PDA you wanted.

Additionally, Metrowerks has been working to get their OpenPDA Linux distribution (formerly Lineo's) working on WANDA.

Symbol has a less than stellar track record of opening up their devices to alternative technologies, and their licensing relationship with Microsoft all but guarantees that you'll never see them shipping a Linux or Symbian device from them.

Motorola bought Metrowerks and for a limited time you can download a full version of Code Warrior wireless studio for free. All you have to do is sign up at Motocoders This is a full featured IDE that is all set-up for J2ME development

Read the GNU Emacs FAQ for Windows.

Heck, if they can make Emacs run on VMS, they sure can make it run on Windows.

It's easy to get started. You need the official devkits, which are mostly free. Nokia's developer support is great. Others include Motorola, Sony and of course, Microsoft.

You can use things like Handango to distribute, too.

/me - Symbian consultant

>

But why would Motorola want to license from Nokia when they have already invested a great deal of money in embedded linux (through the purchase of Embedix), and sell development products (which, I guess, technically also came from the purchase of Lineo...) for it?

You over looked Metrowerks CodeWarrior. It's a great compiler for both x86, PPC, Palm and irrc, Playstation.

> And it ain't the number of PS[1|2] sold, it is the number of games sold that is so staggering.
It's both actually. I'm amazed at the amount of hardware sold, and even more amazed at the number of games sold !

> What is the track to get into PS development?
The inexpensive way ($200), is the PS2 Linux Kit
The expensive way ($20k+), is the TOOL T10K, along with Metrowerks CodeWarrior PS2, or SN Systems ProDG.

You'll find this interview interesting.

> Is there a PC based emulator that you can use for design?
With 7 CPU's in the PS2, don't hold your breath waiting for an emulator anytime soon!

> Or is it something reserved for good sized software houses that requires you to learn on the Job?
Usually it will be on the job, unless you had prior experience with the PS1. (Mostly because you won't have access to all the docs and newsgroups, unless you are a professional licensed developer.)

Cheers

It just boggles the mind that they sold out.

If you're going to sell out, you could do a lot worse than selling out to Metrowerks. They are a very cool company. I used their flagship product CodeWarrior, a C/C++/Pascal editor/compiler/debugger/class library (later incorporating Java) almost exclusively for development for a few years, and it's superb. Also they were selling Geekware long before any of the Slashbots had even heard of ThinkGeek!

Still, that's $600 more than gcc and/or ProjectBuilder, and $600 more than I'm willing to spend to participate in an open-source project.

realinvalidname

The link didn't work right. so here it is again. Metrowerks

There are a great variety of cross-platform libraries and frameworks that you would find useful. For example, for a humble JPEG coded, the Independent JPEG Group's JPEG library works really well and runs on everything from DOS to a Cray. It is portable beyond belief. For a lossless graphics format there is libtiff. (I don't know what's available for cross-platform video format software, but I'm sure there is some.)

If you're going to write in in C++, my favorite framework for GUI, file API's, TCP networking, multithreading and database is ZooLib. (But note that presently the best code to use is what's in CVS because it hasn't had a release in a long time (Real Soon Now, really!).

I've started writing a book about ZooLib that is released under the GNU Free Documentation License.

But if you don't like ZooLib, it's important to use some cross-platform framework. There are many to choose from.

Another important framework is the Simple DirectMedia Layer. You will want this for your rendered scenes and for sound (ZooLib does 2-D graphics, it's not a 3-D API).

If you write in C++, do as much as you can with the Standard Template Library. There are some excellent books that teach how to use it.

For a long time, the STL has got a bad rap, in part because the template definitions in the header files are hard to read, and in part because of poor compiler implementations of the C++ ISO standard, or poor implementations of the library itself. But by now there are excellent implementations for every OS that is in common use. For example, on Windows, don't bother with Visual C++ - use Metrowerks CodeWarrior or Comeau C/C++.

Even if you choose to work with a broken compiler, the STLPort library provides a compliant standard library that will work almost anywhere.

I was rather intimidated by the STL when I first encountered it but once I got a good book and learned how to use it, I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.

Boost has many portable C++ libraries that are of excellent quality.

Finally, I am (slowly) building a website devoted to educating developers in cross-platform and portable programming called ByteSwap.net. Read my first article there Writing Cross-Platform Software - Getting Started. More articles will appear when I get more free time!

A big benefit for the publisher is that you get customers of the product right away, who are more likely to either buy it when they belong to a company or put in a word to switch to it from a competitors product. Why isn't this type of license used more often? I

This sort of licensing scheme is quite common, when I was a student I got MATLAB and CodeWarrior, in addition to MS Office under these terms. Unfortunately it did not result in more sales for those companies when I graduated, although if I'd gone into Engineering, it would have :-)

Does anyone have info on Metrowerks' debugger? They have an IDE for Linux. It hasn't been rev'd recently AFAIK, and I haven't used it since beta. It has integration with GDB and kin, but the the current release also promises "Beta copy of Native X86 integrated debugger in Thrill Seeker directory". Any thrill seekers used it?

I don't know what part of the OS X binary are actually compiled with gcc, probably a large majority. It seems that the Finder (OS X's graphical shell) is built using the powerplant framework, and therefore probably compiled using metrowerk's compiler.

I also heard some rumors that parts of the kernel where compiled using metrowerk's compiler because it does a better job of optimising PPC code, then again this is a rumor.

Not this old hokum again. Computers are a tool, people. They exist to solve problems and help us with our jobs. Comparing Macs to PCs is pointless and trollish. What you need to do is ask what task you need solved.

For "old hokum" it seems that the article is making EXACTLY the same point as you are.

For instance, my mom needed a computer that she could use to check her email and maybe do a little web browsing. The iMac is perfect for her.

Sounds just like one of the conclusions of the author.

I need something that will let me run a quality office suite, a standard development environment and all the latest games but not cost me an arm and a leg. The only rational choice for any of those things is a PC running Windows XP.

Hmm, The ONLY rational choice for ANY of these things? Microsoft Office isn't the quality office suite you are looking for? ProjectBuilder & Interface Builder that come with the package aren't exactly standard I guess, you could always get CodeWarrior. And the BSD environment, GCC 3, Java 2 etc. etc. etc. seem pretty standard.

As for "an arm and a leg" I'll grant that Macs tend to sell at a premium but when you are considering the actual specs in detail they are not that much higher, and in some cases are actually lower than comperable PeeCee's.

There are many games available but for the hardcore gamer a PeeCee is still the way to go.

A computer is a tool and this particular tool may not meet your particular needs but of the four needs you mentioned you seem to be mistaken about the Macs ability to meet three of them. It is common misconceptions like yours which prompted the author to write this "old hokum".

There are two C/C++ development toolchains for Palm OS: Metrowerks CodeWarrior and what's called prc-tools, which is GCC, GDB, etc configured and patched as a cross-compiler for Palm OS. Some surveys suggest that each of them has about 50% of the market of Palm OS developers.

In the past, Palm OS SDKs have supported both toolchains: the 3.5 and 4.0 SDKs contained various linker (static) libraries in both CodeWarrior format and, for GCC, COFF format. The 4.0 SDK was even available from Palm as an RPM as well as a Unix tarball.

The 5.0 SDK's ReadMe has this to say about GCC:

This release of the SDK does not provide any support for the GCC development tools for Palm OS. GCC-specific components have not been updated for this release. SDK 4.0 Update 1 should be used for development under Linux and for using GCC on Windows.

I've also posted to palm-dev-forum about this.

In practice, it's not a show-stopper: the header files, which are all you really need to use the new 5.0 APIs (notably high density graphics and ARM subroutines), work fine with GCC. There's a bit of extra pain on Unix due to line termination issues and PalmSource's lack of familiarity with case-sensitive filesystems, but it's not too bad.

The GCC link libraries are entirely missing from the 5.0 SDK. This is unfortunate: while you can easily write an application without using them, the glue routines in one of the libraries makes compatibility with various versions of the OS easier, and PalmSource recommends their use.

Curiously, while the ReadMe says the SDK "does not provide any support for [GCC]", PalmSource were happy to fix showstopper GCC-usage-related bugs in the SDK's header files when they were pointed out to them during the SDK's beta period. Thus the note in the ReadMe is not really true.

All that's really missing is the GCC linker libraries and the Unix builds of the SDK. Because they were happy to fix those header bugs, because their Web pages still claim to "support prc-tools", and because of what various PalmSource employees have told me, I don't believe there's been any conscious decision (or conspiracy :-)) not to support GCC. I think the problem is that, even though the GCC library and Unix build scripts are still lying around from the 4.0 SDK, it's simply nobody's job to take responsibility for maintaining the scripts or for pressing the button that runs them.

It's all very disappointing: in all probability, there's no technical reason why the 5.0 SDK doesn't include GCC libraries or an easily installable Unix package, it's just that no-one cared enough to make them. It seems like it was always just Someone Else's Problem.

It's not too late to fix this. The company I work for and I know how to build these things (I wrote the scripts in a previous life :-)), and we've offered to help PalmSource build them several times. Hopefully they'll take us up on it, and make the users' lives easier.

Oh, disclaimer: I'm a prc-tools maintainer.