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Actually, the poster is dramatically under reporting the Palm OS developer base. The official number from PalmSource is 400,000 registered developers. Yes, you read that right, 0.4 million. And 40 million units sold, and 20,000 applications on the market (plus an unspecified number of internally developed apps).

You may scoff and bluster all you like, but PalmSource didn't just make those numbers up. It may be obvious to you that not every member of the Palm OS developer program is active and some are duplicates, but you cannot deny that so many memberships exist. (Well, you could, but you would be wrong.)

Palm is still selling a couple million Palm OS-based devices a year, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of the number of Macs that Apple sells. They have a big enough base of loyal customers to keep the party going as long as they want. You might want to reconsider your pessimism.

PalmSource was made into a subsidiary of Palm in early 2002. PalmSource became its own company in 2003, at the same time that Palm bought Handspring. Access bought PalmSource in 2005.

Whether investors made money in PalmSource depends on when they bought. PalmSource opened at around $30 per share, quickly shot up to $40, and was sold to Access at $18.50. Palm went public in a crazy dot-com market, and after a 20:1 reverse split in 2002 and a 2:1 in 2006 left people holding shares they had bought for as much $800. Palm is currently trading at about $14. People who got their PalmSource shares either as a result of the spinoff from Palm or from buying directly may still be writing off their capital losses.

PalmSource was made into a subsidiary of Palm in early 2002. PalmSource became its own company in 2003, at the same time that Palm bought Handspring. Access bought PalmSource in 2005.

Whether investors made money in PalmSource depends on when they bought. PalmSource opened at around $30 per share, quickly shot up to $40, and was sold to Access at $18.50. Palm went public in a crazy dot-com market, and after a 20:1 reverse split in 2002 and a 2:1 in 2006 left people holding shares they had bought for as much $800. Palm is currently trading at about $14. People who got their PalmSource shares either as a result of the spinoff from Palm or from buying directly may still be writing off their capital losses.

PalmSource was made into a subsidiary of Palm in early 2002. PalmSource became its own company in 2003, at the same time that Palm bought Handspring. Access bought PalmSource in 2005.

Whether investors made money in PalmSource depends on when they bought. PalmSource opened at around $30 per share, quickly shot up to $40, and was sold to Access at $18.50. Palm went public in a crazy dot-com market, and after a 20:1 reverse split in 2002 and a 2:1 in 2006 left people holding shares they had bought for as much $800. Palm is currently trading at about $14. People who got their PalmSource shares either as a result of the spinoff from Palm or from buying directly may still be writing off their capital losses.

PalmOS developers tend to be amongst the most loyal out there -- not quite fanatical about the platform, but very pragmatically into it. I guess something has to come out of the fact that applications written for Palm IIIx devices are still running, even on the latest devices, without any rework.

It has a lot to do with the fact that "the latest devices" are almost identical to the originals. The programming model hasn't changed appreciably in 10 years (excepting Cobalt, which nobody bought).

If Dell were still selling boxes loaded with Windows 95, you'd be pretty happy about programming the Win32 API too.

Hate me for pointing out a MS product

I used frotz then frobnitz for a while. I would say that frobnitz has more features than frotz but I would recommend clifrotz.

It is built on the ruins of frotz but has cool stuff like support for external cards (also means no need for messing about with pdb converters), quetzal file support (you can share the save files with other z-machines) and support for larger screens (used with graffiti anywhere means you can play the games in widescreen - very nice!) It also has v6 graphics support if you have any of those.

There is a useful page here which lists the different interpreters for palm.

The only real issue I have with Clifrotz, is that the up and down arrows give you a command history, which is cool and very useful, but this means that you have to drag the screen to get the game history which only gives you about 2 screen's worth of history to backtrack with. The code is being worked on tho so I'm sure we could ask the author to give it a better history viewer.

Yes, PalmOS was bought by a company called ACCESS; they've announced the new Linux-based OS version.

You can read about it here: Access Linux Platform.

ACCESS. See the PalmSource site.

According to this, looks like its not a rumor.

When can I license the Access PalmOS/Linux that Palm has morphed into?

Now that Palm is releasing a MS Smartphone, will "Palm" become just a brand name, and not a specific technology? Will Palm wind up licensing the Linux/PalmOS software back from PalmSource, or even reacquiring PalmSource combined with its Access, its new Japanese owner?

Now that Palm is releasing a MS Smartphone, will "Palm" become just a brand name, and not a specific technology? Will Palm wind up licensing the Linux/PalmOS software back from PalmSource, or even reacquiring PalmSource combined with its Access, its new Japanese owner?

I really lost out when I bought my latest Palm a couple of years ago, an m130. It came with OS 4.1.2, whose whole claim to fame is that it "replaces Graffiti with Graffiti 2 on the same Palm OS 4.1 code base". Since the m130 is a ROM-based model, that also means I can't "backgrade" to Graffiti - I'm stuck with Jot forever. Yay.

I couldn't care less about Palm's Outlook integration or lack thereof. For me, it died whenever they destroyed the most important feature: its handwriting recognition. See ya, Palm. At least my DayRunner has a place to put a pen and pictures of the kids.

Now that Windows is on the Treo, it won't be long until PalmOS is completely phased out, I feel. I wonder what will happen to PalmSource (weren't they just bought back by Palm?).

Nope, that's what virtually everybody was assuming would happen. It seemed logical, once PalmSource had been spun off and once it had started to tank, for PalmOne to just let it slide for a little while until it lost a lot of its value and finally buy it back at the end for a bargain to get the intellectual property rights it needs (the license for Palm OS) for cheap. If PalmSource succeeds, then you can continue to license Palm OS from them. If not, then you get a bargain when buying them back.

In fact, my theory was that PalmOne bought back the rights to the name "Palm" specifically so that they could let this happen. If you're going to let the company tank, you want to take the valuable trade name "Palm" and dissociate it from the company that's failing so that the trade name's value isn't diminished. So, buying back the name "Palm" seemed like exactly the action you'd take if you were waiting for PalmSource to become a bargain.

Much to my surprise, as someone else has said, PalmOne let PalmSource get bought by a third party instead. Incidentally, that company is ACCESS Co., Ltd. of Japan, which makes application software including the NetFront web browser, which is used on Palm OS and other small platforms like mobile phones and embedded systems (including VxWorks).

I guess now that PalmOne is introducing a Windows-based machine, this all makes sense. Owning the valuable Palm name was a wise move regardless of whether they expected to buy back PalmSource. Since they didn't buy back PalmSource, perhaps they expect Windows to be a significant part of their future direction. Apparently they are thinking that a product which runs Windows can still benefit from the positive associations that many people have for the Palm brand name. Personally, to me the positive connotation of the word "Palm" automatically disappears when you combine it with "Windows", kind of like the positive connotation of the word "Cherry" automatically disappears when you combine it with "cough syrup". But others may not feel the same way, who knows.

Before we start rumors of Palm moving to Windows Mobile, remind yourself of the Apple migration from Classic to OS X.

Would Palm risk loosing customers trained in PalmOS with loads of applications to keep and migrate to Windows Mobile/CE?

I doubt it.

There was a post on some palm news blog recently (Palm Addict afaik) where Palm was trying to recruit Linux guys. Logically they would be going for the Palm Linux port, but who knows, does POSE come to mind? Loads of apps still run on OS 4 and even the original OS 3! (and maybe OS 3.3 since that was free)

PalmSource press release: http://www.palmsource.com/press/2005/090905_access .html.

In all fairness, palmOne has never claimed, anywhere, in even the slightest way, that Linux was involved in any way, shape or form with this product, so the inference that this was an attempt to somehow inveigle you into looking into the product seems unfair. The use of the word "Linux" in connection with this product seems to have been solely perpetrated by whoever posted the original story here.

PalmSource (separate company, but the supplier of "Palm OS" to palmOne and others) has announced that they are developing a version of Palm OS which uses Linux as a foundation; they will be providing more details at their developer conference next week--see http://www.palmsource.com/events/devcon2005/track_ technical.html...

The LifeDrive runs Garnet, the latest multimedia SDK of Palm OS 5.

The LifeDrive runs Garnet, the latest multimedia SDK of Palm OS 5.

http://palmsource.com/about/cms_linuxletter.html

Palm is going to Linux I can hardly wait to see how that works out.

I wish someone could port Linux to the Palm - waitaminnit - they are working on it! Here is the project: http://www.palmsource.com/about/cms_annc.html/

These assertions about the proportions of shrinkwrapped software titles written for MS Windows that are is entertainment, business plications, or other are based on pure speculation, not an accounting of available software.

Unfortunately, a quick search on Google did not reveal an obvious source for an answer to this question "what percentage of Windows software is entertainment, compared to business applications and personal productivity?"

A similar 2002 study for PDA software is cited here: http://www.palmsource.com/press/2002/041902.html In this study, games were the largest percentage of titles sold, at 38.7%. Obviously, this is not necessarily reflective of the PC software industry, but it is interesting.

Does anybody know of a study with actual answers to this for Windows software?

PalmSource already has a smart phone OS, but it believes CMS code will allow it to extend its reach further downmarket into more basic voice-oriented models. CMS has built a phone platform, mfone, on the back of a home-brewed, ARM- and MIPs-oriented embedded version of Linux, mLinux, and a selection of the usual comms and PIM apps. All these components will be the Palm OS look and feel - and, crucially, data compatibility - over time. What's planned is no mere GUI swap - more the replacement with PalmSource code of CMS' application and that part of the OS sitting above the Linux kernel. Some CMS technology, particularly in the telephony area, may well find its way into the Palm OS.

Linux is intensely popular among electronics companies, especially in Asia, which is becoming the center of mobile device manufacturing. We think providing a Palm OS® solution for Linux can help bring in more licensees.

* The rate of innovation in Linux is faster than anything a proprietary operating system company can do on its own; in the future, we think getting things like device drivers and support for new chips and components will be much easier. This change won't be directly visible to Palm OS users, but over time we think it should mean faster development of new types of devices.
* Providing solutions for Linux will allow our engineers to focus on improving the Palm OS interface, PalmSource(TM) PIM applications, and advanced software frameworks -- exactly the sort of user-visible innovation that many of you have been asking us for.
* Many corporations broadly deploy Linux on servers. Palm OS for Linux will let companies leverage that investment to support and deploy Palm Powered products to their employees.

Overall, by teaming up with the Linux community, we think we can build a mobile alliance with the scale and resources to compete globally against even the biggest mobile operating system companies.

Here is a link to what this guy is talking about.

Back to topic, there are a lot of programs out there that let you copy to your SD as if it were a disk on your computer (removable drive or simple usbfs)... I don't know if there is one for Tungsten, but I don't see why there wouldn't be.

And for the own thing, you are right and wrong: applications have to own this on the Palm FS (because of the inherent structure of the file system), but things are otherwise on the SD. Not all applications (and that's a shame) will see to the SD though... and back to the original problem.

Go shop at www.palmsource.com, I'm sure there is what you seek. In fact, there is everything one may need with a palm there.

I kicked our web guys and told them to make sure that they always post HTML versions in addition to PDF's.

They have updated our pages on the announcement:
http://www.palmsource.com/press/cms_announcement.h tml

Linux Letter:
http://www.palmsource.com/announcement/linuxletter .html

General FAQ:
http://www.palmsource.com/announcement/cmsfaq.html

Yes - I am a PalmSource employee....

I kicked our web guys and told them to make sure that they always post HTML versions in addition to PDF's.

They have updated our pages on the announcement:
http://www.palmsource.com/press/cms_announcement.h tml

Linux Letter:
http://www.palmsource.com/announcement/linuxletter .html

General FAQ:
http://www.palmsource.com/announcement/cmsfaq.html

Yes - I am a PalmSource employee....

I kicked our web guys and told them to make sure that they always post HTML versions in addition to PDF's.

They have updated our pages on the announcement:
http://www.palmsource.com/press/cms_announcement.h tml

Linux Letter:
http://www.palmsource.com/announcement/linuxletter .html

General FAQ:
http://www.palmsource.com/announcement/cmsfaq.html

Yes - I am a PalmSource employee....

Hence Cobalt.

Cobalt is already in version 6.1!!! (yes, even before the first release of the new version!). Palm announced this last week at DevCon in Munich. It is being speculated that Treo 650, the new version of Treo, will be running Palm OS 6.1 but I will believe it when I see it ;-)

- Jalil Vaidya

There's been a lot of competition in the PalmOS world as well, which no doubt caused new PalmOS devices to come out with new and improved features. Long, long lists of devices on Palmsource. Think Sony Clie, Handspring, Kyocera, PalmOne, Tapwave... to name a few.

Palm probably started designing their new system around .Net, activex, ms access/outlook, visual studio and other technologies that nail them to Microsoft.

Given that their developer tools appear to be migrating away from CodeWarrior and toward Eclipse/gcc/etc. (not Visual Studio), that doesn't seem likely. (Go here and scan down to "PalmSource Offers New Software Development Tools" for more info. They don't yet have it available for download, though, or I would've already snagged it.)

MultiSync is a free modular program to synchronize calendars, addressbooks and other PIM data between programs on your computer and other computers, mobile devices, PDAs or cell phones. MultiSync works on any Gnome platform, such as Linux.

Currently MultiSync has plugins for

• Ximian Evolution synchronization, supporting calendar, ToDos and contacts.
• IrMC Mobile Client synchronization (supported by e.g. SonyEricsson T68i/T610/Z600, Siemens S55 phones etc.) via Bluetooth or IR on Linux, or cable connection.
• Windows CE / Pocket PC synchronization. This plugin is part of the SynCE project, and can be downloaded there.
• Opie and Zaurus synchronization.
• SyncML support (supported by e.g. SonyEricsson P800/P900 and many other phones and devices, for example the SyncML server Sync4j). SyncML also allows you to do remote connection of two MultiSync programs via an encrypted connection over the net.
• Palm synchronization.
• LDAP synchronization.
• Backup of your PIM data.

More detail about Multisync supported devices

The Gaim developers have done a fantastic job of splitting the Gaim core from the user interface, which has already resulted in a PDA client for the QTopia environment called QPE-Gaim. But porting Gaim to PalmOS I assume is a much bigger task.

But the real tragedy ... [is] about the millions of people who could have benefited from Be's amazing and innovative software ...

Those benefits may still be realized, albeit a bit indirectly. The innovations in BeOS weren't sent to Earth by aliens; the ideas came from brilliant people, and those people are still around -- thinking up even better ideas, and putting them into practice all over the place. Consider also the many developers and users who have been inspired over the years by their Be experiences. I'd be willing to bet that conceptual descendants of the designs and decisions that shaped BeOS and BeIA will probably have a non-trivial impact on computing for some time to come.

Fuuunnnnkkkyyyy.....

I own a Handera 330. I love it; jog-wheel, hi-res screen, switchable backlight, CF & SD card slots. It really was best of breed when I got it. I've been hoping for sometime that they would release an updated version (possibly color, OS5). But I just discovered that they are exiting the Palm handheld arena.

I don't want a phone/PDA. I would extremely miss my jog-wheel. Sony seems to be the only choice for a full featured PalmOS handheld now.

Is the Zaurus a real alternative?

Arabic PiLoc provides the localization of Palm OS to Arabic, Urdu and Farsi (Persian) languages and enables Arabic, Farsi, Urdu on-screen keyboards, Arabic text writing from right to left and text sorting operation functionality. It is compatible with Palm OS 3.0-3.3.

Well, have a look here and tell me how this thing is better? For Palm phones, you can already download thousands of applications and write your own ones. No waiting for the "future SDK". Some of them (Kyocera) are in the same price range. I mean, this is like opening a automotive magazine and seeing a Hyundai on the front page. Sure, some people might decide to buy it, but it's hardly what anyone would want with a free choice. For example, a grayscale LCD really sucks for reading your UNLIMITED data, no matter how good is your fantastic HTML parser.

In the first week in February, Palm is having it's annual developer's conference called PalmSource in San Jose. This year it looks like they are going to be releasing details about the new PalmOS v5.0 which is the next generation, 32-bit Palm OS incorporating bits of BeOS. (They started working on the OS before they bought Be.) Remember that Palm is also spinning off their operating systems division soon, so I assume that they are going to try to use this conference as some sort of launching pad. Here's a link to an InfoSync article about the new Palm OS.

-Russ

• Symbol Technologies licenses the Palm and creates several units which can do RF, 802.11, and include a barcode scanner (high-output LED)
• Handspring invents the Springboard slot and implements pseudo-USB support for connecting the devices.
• Sony mimics that with the MemoryStick, but adds VFS support, and takes Handspring's USB protocol, changes one function, and makes their own spin on it.
• Handera, formerly TRG builds upon that with a sliding graffiti area (thanks for incorporating my idea from #palmchat back in 1998 on that one), and adds CF and SD slot architectures (still serially connected storage though, can't "run apps" from each card concurrently)
• Palm comes out with the replacement to the Vx, called the m505, and includes the Sony VFS extensions, the Handspring hardware port design (internally) and the Handspring USB modifications, but changes it enough to make yet a third fork of this pseudo-USB protocol. They also make sure to make every single thing about this new device completely incompatible with every single other thing available for their devices, even down to a 2mm change in the stylus length (I have a more detailed enumeration of those changes found here).

Why does Palm think they're about to, in any way, create a new hardware device that they think will surpass these existing innovative devices? Palm is ALWAYS behind the curve on hardware advances in this area. We're not even talking about comparing them to the iPAQ, VTech Helio, Agenda, Yopy, and the other dozens of non-PalmOS, non-WinCE handheld PDA devices.

Currently, Palm's OEMs for the PalmOS® software include:

• Sony
• Handspring
• Handera (formerly TRG)
• Qualcomm (bought out by Kyocera)
• Kyocera
• Symbol Technologies
• ...and others.

They get licensing from each and every one of these OEMs. Their hardware is the last thing to ever be updated. It is without a doubt, the least innovative portion of their business.. and they're choosing to keep it?!

I don't quite understand the motive behind this decision on their part. I suppose I'll find out at Palmsource in February.