Slashdot Mirror

There is support for Vista here: http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/32859_en.html

I think Apple started bundling a sync conduit for PalmOS in 10.3... I don't know exactly why Apple isn't shipping this conduit now, but they aren't blocking anything... has anyone actually tried installing Palm's Palm Desktop on Snow Leopard? http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/33219_en.html . It would be hillarious if this was actually a move to FIX PalmOS syncing... I don't have an old Palm or I'd try it.

From what I've heard, the built-in Palm syncing always sucked(which is why there were third party solutions).

But if he did want to modify the FOSS software on the Pre, he could just download them from here: http://opensource.palm.com/

I read the privacy policy and it doesn't really seem like it's built to cover this kind of snooping.

And then there's this:

You may choose whether or not to provide your personal information to us. If you choose not to do so, you can continue to interact with Palm, but you may not be able to take advantage of certain products, services, offers, or options that depend on personal information.

So is there a website or a setting on the Pre to disable this thing. TFA seems to say there isn't.

I mean, there's utility in understanding how people are using your device. But not letting your users know you're uploading daily usage stats and not giving them a way to turn it off?

Truly Uncool.

how open the Android system is. Did I mention it was open? open, open, open

So's my Pre

OK, so where can I download the Pre's source code, and under which Open Source license is it released?

I found open source apps they use, but their own code is strangely absent.

Srsly, I have an old Palm Tungsten E (the first one, uses a standard mini-usb port before they did their universal dock connector shit). It's perfect for reading ebooks (Mobipocket Reader) and PDFs (Adobe has a Palm reader), and isn't bad for pictures as well (the screen is only 256 colours though). I use it an average of 2h per day (long commute, and I read paper books at home) and I only have to charge it maybe twice a week. The only thing it doesn't have on your list is internet. I personally don't care, I don't want internet on mine. If it is a big issue though, the Palm T|X, still sold new, has both wifi and bluetooth: http://www.palm.com/ca/products/handhelds/tx/ You may think of trying an SDIO Wireless card on the E or E2. It won't work at all on the E and I've heard very mixed things about using it on the E2, including impossible-to-find drivers and incredibly short battery life when using it.

What, AT&T doesn't support MMS? Wow, the US truly have fallen behind!

No, it's just the iPhone that has fallen behind.

The Palm Pre supported MMS from day 1.

"Just as the old AT&T stifled landline innovation in the 20th century, the new AT&T is stifling wireless innovation in the 21st."

My Palm Pre and I haven't noticed AT&T stifling much of anything... ;) What's an iPhone, again?

@RegularFry, thanks for the other email address -- Palm just got back to me:

From: Opensourcequestions
To: Qubit
Subject: RE: FOSS used in the Pre?

Hello [Qubit],

Many thanks for the email.

We are in the process of preparing the packages and our modifications
to upload them to our open source web site - http://opensource.palm.com./

The specific page where the packages will be posted is:
http://opensource.palm.com/packages.html. For now, the page says
"Coming soon" but we expect to have the packages ready and uploaded
in about 2 weeks.

All the best,
Palm Open Source Team

It sounds like they're acting in good faith here. One could theoretically be a stickler and say that they aren't providing the sources now, but considering how long it could take to send them snail-mail and then get back a printout or CD of code via media mail, I think that 2 weeks isn't half bad.

If they haven't posted anything on the site in 2 weeks I'll post something on my blog and then try emailing them back again.

@RegularFry, thanks for the other email address -- Palm just got back to me:

From: Opensourcequestions
To: Qubit
Subject: RE: FOSS used in the Pre?

Hello [Qubit],

Many thanks for the email.

We are in the process of preparing the packages and our modifications
to upload them to our open source web site - http://opensource.palm.com./

The specific page where the packages will be posted is:
http://opensource.palm.com/packages.html. For now, the page says
"Coming soon" but we expect to have the packages ready and uploaded
in about 2 weeks.

All the best,
Palm Open Source Team

It sounds like they're acting in good faith here. One could theoretically be a stickler and say that they aren't providing the sources now, but considering how long it could take to send them snail-mail and then get back a printout or CD of code via media mail, I think that 2 weeks isn't half bad.

If they haven't posted anything on the site in 2 weeks I'll post something on my blog and then try emailing them back again.

You might also want to try opensourcequestions@palm.com as listed here.

The title and the summary of this article aren't in total agreement (one says Reset Doctor, other says root image).
The Reset Doctor wasn't leaked, its available on Palm's site: http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/32759_en.html
The WebOS root image is what I would consider being leaked.

But since this isn't a USB device

Explain? From Palm's website:

Connector: MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed

It's plugging into the computer and advertising itself to the USB mass storage driver somehow...

For clarification, since the NDA is the main thing being discussed on most posts on the web. We were very specific and direct with Aaron Hyde that we signed the NDA to cover the release date of the phone. Nothing else. The fact the the meeting was taking place or that we had an NDA was absolutely not part of the agreement. Second point, Paul Cousineau and Chuq Von Rospach at Palm had asked us on a previous call to make sure the community knew they were talking to us. They were held under some tight restrictions about what they could say to the public, for obvious reasons, and had asked us to be sure the developer community knew they were engaged. It appears that the two competing needs (communication to the community that Palm was talking to the independent developers via preDevCamp and secrecy) driven by separate camps clashed. This, coupled with our frustrations based upon some other issues in our relationship with Palm led to the decisions by whurley and myself to exit the scene. The worldwide movement we created under the preDevCamp banner is, by design, intact and all local groups, as far as I can tell, are still planning their individual events. Last point, Palm gets it now... Pam Deziel, VP of Developer Marketing, responded on the Palm Developer Network blog this morning about the situation: "We overreacted to the whole disclosure issue. Weâ(TM)ve been in stealth and super secret mode for so long now, we needed a real world conversation to see how we needed to work things so everybody can operate in their own environment." "Iâ(TM)m optimistic that we can find a good solution. And weâ(TM)re going to keep talking. Weâ(TM)d love to get your two cents, concerns, and suggestions â" feel free to join the conversation here, and be assured that even when we sometimes have to keep quiet, weâ(TM)re always listening to your ideas." Read the whole post here: http://pdnblog.palm.com/2009/05/a-predevcamp-update/ Whurley and I are here to serve the community, not the corporation. When it became obvious that we needed to make a bold move to get Palm's attention on behalf of preDevCamp, we moved. Whether you agree with our tactics or not, Palm is seriously paying attention to you now. Dan Rumney will insure that the movement has one single point of leadership to the extent that a large, worldwide movement needs it. The end result has been a more active, genuine, serious relationship between Palm and its independent developer community. Everyone wins. This is what we, as leaders of the preDevCamp movement, hoped to create in the beginning. It looks like we're here now. Anyone want to talk to me about it personally, feel free to catch me on twitter http://twitter.com/giovanni, email at predevcamp(@)gallucci(dot)net or leave a comment on my original post http://blog.gallucci.net/2009/05/palm-doesnt-get-it.html I'm thinking it's water under the bridge now. Nothing to see here. Go forth and develop. I'm going camping: http://dallas.wordcamp.org/ -giovanni http://twitter.com/giovanni

Palm released a blog post today saying that they are sorry they overreacted and are now working with preDevCamp. See it at http://pdnblog.palm.com/2009/05/a-predevcamp-update/

I created a small community site focused on webOS development and so far Palm has been pretty much hands off, as I expected they would be. Chuq, the Palm developer community manager, has posted in the forums a couple of times, but I believe it was primarily because I had asked people to discuss whether they had been accepted to the Mojo early access program and he was just letting people know that they were watching, in case anyone was thinking of breaking their NDA. But other than that they have been content to let us exist peacefully, promoting the webOS platform in the absence of real developer tools. I hope this whole preDevCamp debacle boils down to a simple misunderstanding that got blown out of proportion. It would be a shame for the platform to die when it has some genuinely innovative features. More competition pushing the envelope is always good.

Only those with access to the Mojo Early Access program can see this, but there's the link: https://prerelease.palm.com/clearspace_community/message/1833

And I stand corrected regarding which Palm employees are participating. Pam is Chuq's boss...Dave Weddle is just some bloke. ^_^

Palm's developer network forums are currently open only to those that have been accepted into the SDK early access program.

What's worse...if you look up on Palm's career page and do a keyword search for "developer" jobs or "WebOS" jobs...

http://www.palm.com/us/company/careers.html

There are zero job openings anywhere in the US. Looks like they don't want/need any help developing their products, grassroots or in their company.

yes, a db that is under a quarter of a MB. It is vastly superior (with regards to interoperability, speed, flexibility, and scaling) to the poorly documented, brain-damaged Mork history format they where using, and it much more powerful and useful than flat html file that was used for bookmarks.

In fairness, the real utility of the database will be enabling client-side storage for web apps that utilize HTML 5 features (since the client-side storage stuff is mandated by HTML 5 -- this is the same API that Palm's new phone is going to use). In addition to basic key-value pair storage, there will be fully realized structured/relational data storage.

FYI, the Pre does have a keypad - the back of the device slides down to reveal it.

http://www.palm.com/us/assets/images/products/phones/detail/pre/gallery/pre_05.png

Am I going to be able to use the WebOS when there's no wireless data connectivity? I don't think so.

According to TFA:

According to Palm's website and some early development partners, webOS supports HTML5, enabling a local data store, so applications and data are available offline, and a file system.

And the palm developer site:

Leverage the local storage capabilities of HTML5 so that data is available even when users are offline

I'm sure Palm intends WebOS to still work when there is no connectivity. Whether or not they implement this properly is another question, of course. Can anyone comment on how well the "local storage capabilities of HTML5" work?

Damn dude, google. http://developer.palm.com/

Apparently, it's Linux underneath with all the apps written in web languages, like HTML, CSS, and Java.

Will existing PalmOS apps run on it? Hard to tell from their mangled wording, but probably not. However, it seems like their new WebOS SDK /might/ make it somewhat simple to recompile for the new platform.

See http://developer.palm.com/ -- "good news for Palm OS developers! There are a number of ways to migrate data from a an existing PDB file to your new WebOS app. Stay tuned for more information for developers with Palm OS applications who want to build WebOS applications."

Sounds like bad news. No Garnet VM/emulation, and their solution is some not-yet-available ("stay tuned") tool that converts PDB into something else -- JSON? Who knows. And is it enough to help developers convert data, and leave them on their own to rebuild the logic? Will Palm at least be smart enough to base the PDB converter on an easily & freely redistributable library so that developers can offer their customers relatively easy upgrade paths?

So, as a Palm addict, it seems like I still have a long time to try to keep my ailing TX working until I can find a suitable platform to upgrade to. (So far, the main contender for me is the Nokia N810, which runs Linux and actually has a Palm Garnet emulation environment available for it)

My TX digitizer is wearing out, so I'm in the same boat (no way am I going to buy another TX, or any wifi device that doesn't support 802.11g), though I'd wouldn't say I'm an addict. I've read that ALP is slow, but more importantly, Garnet is a dead end environment. At some point you'll need to ditch those Garnet apps, so why bother with emulation?

Developers can't even build 100% "Mojo" apps yet:
"Besides the Palm Mojo Application Framework, the SDK will include sample code, documentation, and development tools. An Eclipse-based IDE is included, and you will also be able to use your choice of tools to build WebOS applications. The Mojo SDK is currently in private prerelease, and will be available later this year as a free download [emphasis mine]"

The PDB converter looks pretty interesting to soon-to-be-former-Palm-users. It may be just the thing that ship-jumpers need to gain access to valuable data created by apps that have long since been abandoned.

I wonder how the established Palm developers feel about this. Hopefully they've got the SDK already, as I imagine it'll be tough to sell any new licenses for PalmOS apps.

Completely agreed. Clicked Palm's "learn more" link and just about fell over laughing when I got a pretty page that said "Thinking ahead is a beautiful thing. Coming soon." That smacks of a subtle revolt of marketing drones told to hype vaporware.

Palm's banking on the goodwill that adheres to its name while signaling a complete change in direction. Typical. Palm had an identity crisis for nearly a decade, with dozens of hardware licensees and more than 100% turnover of its technical staff. Forget about your favorite PalmOS apps. They won't run on a modern OS and most were written by shops way too small to work with major carriers. Whether or not thinking forward is beautiful, time's run out for the Palm legacy.

Looking at the photos of this thing, it looks like the clock, signal strength and battery indicator are actually above the screen....are these just drawn in for a mock-up, or is the screen actually bigger than it looks?

It does have an accelerometer to switch the screen orientation. See the specs from Palm: http://investor.palm.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=358392

From http://developer.palm.com/
The Palm Mojo SDK

Besides the Palm Mojo Application Framework, the SDK will include sample code, documentation, and development tools. An Eclipse-based IDE is included, and you will also be able to use your choice of tools to build WebOS applications. The Mojo SDK is currently in private prerelease, and will be available later this year as a free download from the Palm Developer Network.

While Apple's iPhone may be the first device most people call to mind when they think of a touch interface mobile

that hasn't stopped them from thinking they aren't dumbasses.

You're confusing Palm with some other PDA. The platform is wide open -- here are the documents. The Internet is lousy with Palm software, some commercial and some free. My Treo has applications from ten different sources, including an excellent free HP-42 emulator.

Java doesn't run on Palm Pilots

Conversely, if fully-featured smartphones (i.e. pc-equivalent) come down in price, one could expect to see laptop sales dwindling.

Really? How do you intend to get a PC class keyboard and display into a smartphone?

I love my Centro. I love my Zaurus. And I love my little old Sony Vaio "ultraportable" notebook. They all hit different points in the tradeoff between keyboard and display size versus portability.

Why get an underpowered ultraportable when a normal laptop costs just as much?

Because it's ultraportable.

My real ultraportable is a Zaurus SLC3000. It will fit in my back pocket. I use it for writing, it can also be used for emergency SSH sessions and cramped web broswing. It's usually in my backpack, ready for when poetic inspiration strikes. That's ultraportable. (The only thing more portable is my Centro. The neat thing is, my Centro becomes a modem, my Zaurus runs a terminal, and bam! SSH or browsing from anywhere I can get a cell signal, with gear that fits in my pockets.)

My ultraportable-as-this-article-is-using-the-term is an old Sony Vaio SRX77 that I've fitted with a solid state harddrive, and installed Puppy Linux on. Good sized keyboard, adequate power, under three pounds and smaller than a standard looseleaf binder. I take it when I'm headed down to the cafe to sit and write or browse for a while. Not pocketsized, by easily portable.

My full sized laptop is heavy, big, and sucks battery. It's a full-featured beast that goes with me on long trips, to replace my desktop.

Several others have been mentioned, but I'll add that the Palm Treo phones are available without a camera:

http://www.palm.com/us/products/smartphones/treo680/multimedia.html

See footnote 3. However, they are somewhat difficult to get: cell service providers don't stock them (at least AT&T doesn't), and it requires a special order. The only ones I have seen were obtained through a corporate contract.

You have a few points that need to be corrected, I shall volunteer...

#1 - The Time Capsule. Haven't we had wireless NAS's since 802.11 became a standard? I've got a USB-2 external drive that does my backups now. This announcement does absolutely nothing for me.

Yes, the hardware is nothing new, but the excellent software and the sheer ease of use is going to be the key selling points with Time Capsule. So instead of farting around trying to get your back up software to work with your NAS, John Generic opens the box plugs it in and he/she is done. That's exciting for most people.

#2 - The iPhone/iPod touch updates.

I'll give you this one. Well done!

#3 - The AppleTV/Movie Rental Service. Exciting, if the XBox360 hasn't been serving this capacity for over TWO YEARS. Wow, all the major labels, eh? Are they suddenly going to cut ties with all their other distribution partners? I didn't think so. And the price cut on the AppleTV was okay, but they *really* couldn't go just a bit further to put it below the $200 mark? Really, they must want this device to fail.

Two problems. One, the XBox 360 costs more than the AppleTV and doesn't have the best (read: sad) compatibility with streaming video and other media in from Macs. Yeah you can play games with it also justifying the cost, blah blah blah, we're not talking games.

Two, there WAS a price cut, so hush. Apple would have been justified in leaving the price point the same just as it tends to do with all it's systems, upgrade the hardware, leave the price point the same. Yes, loosing that last $30 to bring the price under 200 would have been nice, but not doing so is NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, wanting the device to fail.

#4 - The MacBook Air. It's really just a masturbation toy for the rich gadget hound -- it does nothing new besides be smaller, and it does it slower and more expensively to boot.

You're not the target audience. Stop talking.

It's a laptop for people who want something more portable, lighter and smaller than the MacBook, of which there are plenty. For most people you can't make a laptop small or light enough and as a bonus it does make an excellent status symbol. Guess what? ALL of Apples products are considered status symbols. Outstanding style, design and functionality at a premium price, thats what a large part of Apple's market demands, so Apple delivers. It doen't HAVE to be the end-all be-all of portable computing, there are two other perfectly capable models in the line up to do that.

Regarding the price, small cost money to MAKE so small costs money to BUY because people WANT small!!

As for the wireless CD sharing, I've been doing the same thing via Apples file sharing since '92, it's nothing new, they're just gonna make doing it easier and slicker so that John and Jane Generic can do it in their sleep.

What WOULD have been impressive:
- A new headless Mac Desktop that fits between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro.
No arguements here, been practically begging Apple for this for years.

- An iPhone Nano, about the size of the old iPod Nano with 1-2gb of memory for $99-$149.
You want a blow job from Steve with that too? Not happening. The iPhone is extremly sucessful at it's current size and price point. In 5 years maybe we'll see a Nano iPhone for around $200, until then go buy a Centro

- A Mac tablet running full Leopard with multitouch. Bonus points if it's under $1500.
The market is not demanding a tablet Mac, only frothing geeks that want a "masturbation toy" I believe you said.

- An iMac with a curved monitor like what's been shown at CES.
Shut up.

- Price drops on the iPhone, iPod Touch, or Mac Mini.
It took 4 or 5 years of CONSTANT UNRIVALED SUCESS for Apple to drop the price on the iPod... Ask again in a few years for

There are some great UI design tips in the Palm OS manuals. The gist is that because (older) Palm devices have screen and graphical capabitilities that are much more limited than the PC, you really have to think about how you are going to present your UI. The tips there provide a guide for what to focus on, and the concepts extend well into the PC realm.

Can't remember the exact book title but you can find it here (NOTE: free signup may be required).

I'm also a fan of the Palm Reader since it was called Peanut Reader (published along a faily good selection of ebooks by then Peanut Press, which has been acquired by Palm Inc and then received a suitably more "corporate" name).

I use it not only on books I bought from their website (have more than 200 in my "virtual shelf" there), but I also purchased their eBook Studio program, which can convert anything you can paste into it to the Palm Reader format.

The only other ebook program I use is Plucker, and mainly for HTML content (which it handles much better than Palm Reader).

Treo 650 with the standard Blazer browser.

I can't find a screenshot of the browser, except for this page, which looks like ass. The fact that they don't show a real web page in their advertisement makes me think that the pages don't look exactly like a desktop browser.

Never going to happen, not even with an iPhone, unless you're prepared to carry around a 12" monitor with you. [...] But I'm not going to do any serious browsing on anything with a screen size of the Treo or iPhone.

That's what I'm telling you. It *has* happened. I don't know if you've played with the iPhone for any length of time, but it has a virtual 1024 pixel-wide screen that scales the image to the phone screen. You see the whole page, then can zoom into the area that you want. Very rarely do you read an entire web page at once -- usually you focus in on one area to read. When you double tap on an area, the iPhone zooms the table dimensions to the phone. It's incredible well done.

Seriously -- I hate Apple. I'm not an Apple fanboy, just using his new toy rather than a laptop because I can. I use the iPhone for surfing ALL of my regular web sites and don't miss the laptop at all*. It's small, light and intuitive, and I can sit in any position while browsing. It works way, way better than you would think.

*Well, one caveat: you can't cut/paste on the iPhone, so it makes posting on Slashdot kind of a pain. :)

But what really makes the iPhone different is that for the first time it feels like a real computer that happens to have a phone, rather than the other way around. It's pretty damn cool to load on the BSD tools, bring up a shell and have a full Unix computer at my command.

Actually, here is the latest version: http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/windesk414e.html

For normal PIM the Palm desktop software is pretty good. It also used to race on slower PCs. It is still free for download:

http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/windesk414.html

And, if you feel like it you can get a cheap Pilot off of Ebay and sync it so you can carry all the data that you entered into your PIM with you at any time. Or even sometimes try and enter data on the road (I am kidding).

Oh yea, speaking of hard-to-push buttons, my TX eventually got to the point that the power button no longer worked. At first it was just getting to where I had to push it harder, but finally it stopped working.

See this note regarding Palm and the screen noise:

http://kb.palm.com/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,kb=PalmSupportKB,CASE=obj(31651),ts=Palm_External2001

So they know about it, claim it's a non-issue and won't fix for free. Or for any amount of money.

Defective from the manufacturer.

I have tinnitus in my left ear, and the device drives me up the wall.

• Treo 650 (Palm OS apps)
• Treo 700W (WindowsMobile ... or whatever it's called this week)
• All the Symbian stuff
• Linux phone I'm pretty sure you'll be able to customize the firmware without the FCC showing up

• Treo 650 (Palm OS apps)
• Treo 700W (WindowsMobile ... or whatever it's called this week)
• All the Symbian stuff
• Linux phone I'm pretty sure you'll be able to customize the firmware without the FCC showing up

I don't think it has a microphone, but bluetooth should make up for that. It's also a little bigger than the iPhone.

http://www.palm.com/us/products/handhelds/tx/tx_specs.html

I had no idea the Treo caused such damage. I'm never buying a smartphone again.

...to why it was cancelled is right here:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/21/dear-palm-its-t ime-for-an-intervention/

Palm actually listened as they mentioned in their reply:

http://blog.palm.com/palm/2007/08/thanks-engadget. html

Vista is failing in the marketplace because M$ continues to play their stupid monopoly tricks. Vista is the most restrictive and buggy version of Windoze yet. They are currently making life hard for anti-virus makers, Google, Firefox, iPod, Palm and OpenOffice, even Adobe. As usual, the M$ replacements are technically inferior. Between that and all of the MAFIAA friendly digital restrictions Vista is still a disaster that people are avoiding.

To compensate M$ is doing what it usually does, claiming everything good for themselves, sabotaging and lying about everyone else. They have been playing the blame game for a long time now, sabotaging the competition and them blaming them for the problems. In this case, they are desperate to claim all of the goodness of free software for themselves and cause confusion about real free software. OOXML, is that "Open Office XML"? No, it's M$'s confusing term for it's incomplete and patent encumbered new Office format. "Shared Source", is that something new from Debian? No, it's the usual "what's ours is ours and what's yours is ours" way of stealing your work. Free software is their main competitor, so they are going to try to say they are all the good things free software is and that free software has all the problems they do because "complex systems" just act that way.

This kind of thing would be laughable if it were not for the billions of dollars they have to spend pushing it all out. People want a new Office format, a new computer and a new GUI like they want a hole in their head. M$'s shoddy stuff has damaged the entire industry's reputation. It's finally come home to them in poor sales, but the same poor sales are going to hurt everyone else too.

Call bullshit all you want, but Palm no longer sells it on their site.

"The Treo 650 smartphone is no longer available at Palm.com."

http://www.palm.com/us/products/smartphones/treo65 0/

And defend your beloved smartphone, with all your über controllability all you like, but it simply cannot "do everything the iPhone can" no matter how you slice (I've already pointed out a couple in the few minutes it took me to look them up). Can it do things the iPhone can't? Certainly. Nobody is arguing that.

There are no gaps in my knowledge that I give a flying fuck about frankly, but even I, the lowly non-user of leet gear, can spot a crock of shit when I see one. So you can take your arrogant, smart ass condescension to your local geek club.

While you're at it, take a few lessons in how not to make unsupported generalizations and get called on them.