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Palm Talks About New OS
SeattleDave writes "CNET's News.com is carrying a story about Palm's new OS, version 4.0. To quote their article: "The new version 4.0 of the Palm OS, which chief executive Carl Yankowski detailed at the PalmSource developer conference here, supports 16-bit color, Bluetooth wireless connectivity, universal serial bus (USB) connections for easier PC synchronization, and support for wireless telephony."
Read the original article as well. "
Actually - on a side note, you can pick up the Palm IIIxe for only $149 right now from amazon.com. I won't get into the specifics of it, but let's just say that the palm forum at www.palmblvd.com will tell you all you need - if you're truly interested.
What the hell's with that Claudia Schiffer edition anyway? Who the heck came up with that idea?
The Aqua metallic blue is a limited edition color that was selected by Claudia herself.
Because she wasn't capable of any more input because she's never thought to organize anything - someone else does it all for her?
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
Even a Palm V could a year ago. I had our CEO's Palm V syncing to his (crappy) Sony Vaio USB-only piece of trash around January 2000 via a USB.
I think what they added was native USB support, not serial-via-USB like Handspring and Palm had previously used.
At least, I hope that's what they mean.
WinCE has had 16 bit color and USB support for over a year now.
Well, USB-syncing is cool but 16-bit colors in a PDA is the most stupid idea I've ever heard of.
--Bud
Nope, because Palm used to be owned by US Robotics, if memory serves. Nice try tho. :) I actually met one of the original designers of the Palm OS some time ago but it came up so fast that I didn't have time to think of anything smart to say. I more or less just dissed the memory management in the OS. :)
Not exactly. The 3.1H used on the Visor Solo and Deluxe is basically PalmOS 3.0 with a few improvements, most of it to support springboard modules and the USB hotsync. There's also some differences in the basic software package.
The new Visor Prism and Visor Platinum both come with a modified version of PalmOS 3.5. So, all they're really doing is taking the basic PalmOS and adding a few things here and there. So far it hasn't been a problem with them for 3.x, but it might become a little more difficult when 4.0 finally comes out. We'll see.
Also, I'm not sure about this, but for most wireless modules to work perfectly with old Visors, they have to be sent back to Handspring and replaced with upgrades that reduce RF interference. I believe that these upgraded Visors also come with a modified PalmOS 3.3 or 3.5, but I'm really not all that sure about it.
In any event, Visors are stuck with the OS they come with, unless you can do what you want with software patches or you want to go in and physically change the chips. The ROM on the Palms is flashable, and can be upgraded to a new OS. But it's still up in the air whether 4.0 will work on the Dragonball devices.
Motorola has said that the new ARMs will work just fine with backwards compatability. All old Palm apps should run without a significant (if any) performance hit.
Size probably isn't an issue when it comes to the processor, although both the Palm IIIc and the Visor Prism are larger than their B&W counterparts, so color is probably more of a size affecting factor than that. Power requirements will most definitely increase. If they're moving to full color, then there's no way they'll be running these of AAAs like the old Palms and Visors. The color devices that are out now are all (that I know of) running off internal NiMH with chargers built into the cradle. It works well enough as long as you can access a cradle on a regular basis. Again, the color screen is more of a determinant than the processor.
has a slot for a bluetooth card
and the Visor Prism supports 65536 colors
I hope this new version also addresses some of the other design limits of
the current Palm OS such as:
the 4k Memo limit
the lack of a standard interface to link data points from the basic apps together
(such as linking the note fields from datebook and todo lists with the notebook app)
I really like my Palm device, and I admire its simplicity, but even without
comparing against other PDAs I think Palm Inc is overdue on making the underlying
OS a little more powerful and flexible. Particularly in light of the remaining
challenges of PocketPC and PSION, and the new designs of Linux-based PDAs.
Tech aimed at the adult Barbie Doll! It's (ooh, aah) Aqua Metallic Blue! What? No red? No sleek anodiezed black (the color internationally recognized as the color of real style). "It can hold 10,000 address and" nice english, der. Probably to track all her stalkers...
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I dunno if that's in the next generation cards, as it were.
If you want a music device that takes dictation... get yerself a minidisc player/recorder.
For $150 you can get 74 mintue talk times, play mp3 comparable quality songs, and buy $3 data discs. It's not nearly as neat as having a iPaq handheld, but hey, it plays for 6 or so hours.
I'm hoping for a next gen PDA device that takes CF+ and a 1gb microDrive, headphone jack, Palm OS, and costs $400... but, unless there's a Visor module to take CF+ and does MP3 decoding, I don't think that's going to happen in the near future
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
On any given sunday i would agree with you but i have to say that my iPAQ pocket PC with WinCE is kinda neat. It has 16megs of FLASH and 32megs of ram. It retails for $499 and does everything i could ever need. It comes with USB for Active Sync but i ordered a rs232 cable so i could put linux on it. WinCE lets me view multimedia files in very good color. The 206Mhz strongARM cpu lets it play MP3's with easy. And the built in microphone lets my take audionotes with a push of the switch on the side. It comes with pocket IE, word, exel,etc... which would be neat if i used them. I could use normal PCMCIA cards with the expander thing that slides on the back. But the bigest thing that stands out and what made me get this over a palm is how clear and bright the screen it. The palm devices just seem old next to this thing. And its a Open Handheld. Compaq is supporting other OS's on it and open standards. See htttp://www.handhelds.org
And if you fsck up your iPAQ by putting another OS on it compaq will fix it for you.
I have to return some videotapes...
The most important questions to me are:
Did Handspring fork off their version from the Palm OS code tree by moving to their 3.1H3 for the module support?
If so, is Palm OS 4 going to reincorporate the code for modules to work with the Handspring? Springboard developers like Xircom are already working on modular Bluetooth solutions. It would seem silly to not consider that.
--
Rob Carlson
I really don't understand. I don't use USB that much (due to a Linux based computer) but I do own a USB camera (yes that is only supported by Windows at this time). When I ordered a handheld did I care if it had USB? No. I can plug in serial just as easily, and it is supported by all OS's.
Bluetooth -- do I really need wireless connectivity other than REAL, true, wireless Internet? No.
Color, yeah, that's a plus, but not a necessity.
Show me ethernet, fast wireless Internet (REAL Internet) and I will be impressed.
A bigger deal would be voice activation support working well. THAT'S something that has a pre-made niche in the handheld market.
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Microsoft is not the answer, Microsoft is the question. The answer is "no".
This is to be expected, given the talent from Newton division that moved in mass to Palm. (32 resigned all on a friday, and went to palm after getting Steved)
.0 release.
Those Ex-Newton engineers are going to work VERY hard to produce a product that they can point to and say "See Steve? Computers *CAN* exist without a keyboard" Perhaps while inserting said palm into an orfice of Mr. Jobs. Therefore out of the gate, the product should have more stability and code quality than the average
Hopefully that drive on their part will work to deliver a product better than the palm, and better than a Newton 2100.
Expect the new Palm to be more Newton-like, with a re-written Rosetta handwritting engine. (Translation - built in printed handwriting)
(Why would the founders leave and do handspring? Simple. Their baby, graffitti was going to be replaced. The graffitti was on the wall for them.)
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Article in today's San Jose Mercury Times said they're also working with somebody to use organic LED's for the displays in a few years. I forget what the benefits of that were.
Palm has completed the initial effort to port its operating system from today's Motorola Dragonball chip, which is at the heart of current Palm handhelds, to chips based on designs from England's ARM.
That's new to me. This is pretty interesting because it means a departure from PALM's traditional market. As some already have pointed out it could be dangerous to compete directly with the PocketPC devices here, which have matured a lot lately.
A lot of people have been complaining about the fact that PALM has used the relatively slow Dragonball CPU's. I guess it will be hard to compete against the others in the market when in an comparison for CPU's 16/32 to 200 sticks out.
I still like Palms philosophy but handspring has made a pretty big impact with their devices just because they offer some kind of "upgradeability"
"Mommy, mommy! The garbage man is here!" "Well, tell him we don't want any!" -- Groucho Marx
Anyway, going ARM doesn't mean that Palm is going to beef up the platform's complexity to compete with WinCE devices. They intend to keep it simple and for good reason. The reason Palm is so popular is because it is so simple. I've seen people that are scared of computers (both PC and Macs) because of their complexity take to a Palm like a fish in water. This isn't exactly new either. Rumors of the transition to ARM have been floating around since early last spring.
have a day,
-l
It was a show with outtakes from various shows/films.
Brian Blessed (from the BlackAdder series, the Flash Gordon film and about 1000 other things) was trying to open a Palm Pilot which he was giving to a contestant as a prize. He got more and more annoyed, and came up with the priceless :
"Pilm Pilot? Sounds like a fucking wanking machine!"
So quit smoking; that knocks you down by two. Then, eliminate the phone because talking to people is usually a waste of time anyway, and you're on your way to a reasonable loadd
The fonts on the PalmOS can be horribly inelligble. The best way to increase distinguishability of letters on these screens is to increase the number of pixels each letter is rendered with. That can be accomplished with bigger fonts (leading to less information that can fit on the screen) or by increasing resolution of the fonts. I'd rather have the latter.
Certainly it is impressive what has been done with 160x160. And I think what you said about developers acknowleding the small space and designing for it is important. But I also think that seeing the distinct square shape of each pixel from 3 feet away is poor.
I think the same design philosophy used at 160x160 could be used at, say, 320x320. I only hope that if the resolution is increased that the philosophy is adhered to in practice.
This does have the disadvantage that if you reset your PDA's memory, you have to reinstall the patch. But you'll have to restore your data and third-party apps, so I don't see what the big deal is.
Palm doesn't seem to be sacrificing simplicity in their interface for new functionality with the OS upgrade. It's not like they're adding the ability to import word documents and powerpoint presentations, like some other companies. I think they're doing the right thing to remain competitive and to add the functionality that users are going to be looking for, namely bluetooth and compatibility with other devices, like cell phones.Just because Palm is adding support for 16-bit color screens and an ARM processor doesn't mean that they're sacrificing simplicity.
My other computer is your Windows box
While I personally wouldn't touch a Microsoft-powered device with a ten foot pole, the one thing that I've noticed their users enjoy is multimedia support. People want to use their pocket computers to play MP3's, and even take dictation. This is something Palm OS needs in order to maintain its lead.
--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I looked at WinCE handhelds when I did my shopping (in '98). Their displays, while color, were hard to read (and also cluttered with Windows UI elements that didn't belong -- once you've crammed all the usual window trimmings onto a teensy screen, there's no room left to work on!). In contrast (pun intended), my Palm III's screen, although monochrome, is superbly sharp and clear. It also eats battery power at a fraction the rate of a color screen. To me, this is an appropriate compromise.
Geez, though, I thought. This WinCE machine comes with 8MB of RAM built in. How come the Palm only has 2? A quick trip to the WinCE PDA's system info panel made the reason clear: WinCE itself takes up the first few megs of this formerly vast-seeming space! In constrast, the Palm's use of memory is impressively efficient. Under PalmOS, 2MB goes a long way. I can easily go for a year without bothering to purge old datebook appointments, etc. and not run out of RAM. This despite the many games and other apps that I've downloaded to it, and a few AvantGo channels I keep around. The OS' design makes for very compact apps.
Another bonus: HotSync is a one-button operation, and almost never makes mistakes or requires further intervention on my part. This stands out in my mind as one of the best instances of smart software engineering I've had the pleasure to benefit from...
To conclude this rant: WinCE is an unwieldy hydra of feature-bloat designed to insure that we can experience the joys of Windows everywhere, even on our PDAs... PalmOS is an elegant piece of engineering, appropriate to its task. While it's probably good news that the PalmOS is continuing to be updated, let's not forget a hard-earned bit of folk wisdom: if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Actually this isn't so far-fetched. According to this article, cellphone/gun combos are showing up in Europe. The firing mechanism is controlled by the keypad.
I've long lectured this same thing. 160x160 doesn't quite cut it (though, they've done quite well with it.
There are things to consider when adding new scree functionality to PalmOS PDAs which may give some insight into the great delay.
Considering those things, I think Palm should still do it as long as they are wise about it. For example, this time, build generic hooks into the OS to support a wide range of color depths and reosolutions that they don't yet forsee. Of course, the downside to this is that there willbe more complicated data structures to handle such generic hooks. That will lead to slower programs and more memory consumption.
So, can they do it without becoming laden with backwards compatability baggage?
I was positively drooling over the upcoming Handspring Prism, which supports 16-bit color (never mind there aren't enough pixels to display them simultaneously). However, when I saw it in person, I was disappointed, as it doesn't look any better than the Palm IIIc. White areas look awful; you can see the gaps in between the pixels as a black grid all over the display. It's really ugly. They need to solve this problem before I'll get very excited about color on my handheld.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Well, I guess Palm is finally building devices using the ARM family of processors. This brings a number of questions to mind:
* How will these new devices run legacy Palm apps?
* Assuming they have a built-in 68k emulator, is it likely that legacy Palm apps will run as fast as on the native processor?
* Will an ARM-based Palm force the Palm devices to be any bigger, heavier or use power more quicky?
-Karl
Not if you're using Linux, you can't.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
I'm sure most ppl may (or may not) know that Handspring is comprised at the core of ex-Palm guru's. Ever since it's release, I have not heard one person speak bad about Handspring, I even see them being used on Junkyard Wars by all the guys with Phd's and such. It is about time Palm came forward and announced a new OS with support for all the latest features, however I am sitting here holding my breath that it will not be a fiasco like the 3.5 OS that was only available to a select few, or those that chose to purchase it. Palm's strength has always been an easy, straightforward way to upgrade the OS to take advantage of new developments, and I honestly hope this does not change as the company searches for ways to bring in more capital. just my 2 cents
3-Server OC-3 Linux Counter-Strike Cluster
www.rnp.ca
Well, there's much more to 'wireless connectivity' than Internet access, for one. Ricochet is a 'dial-up' means, but wireless includes Personal Area Networks - so you can dial your cell phone from your PDA without the two touching; so you could print from your Palm w/o first transferring files to a PC, or plugging it in to a printer; so you could synch with your PC from across the room or swap info Palm to Palm without routing your packets through the ISP's of the people involved. Such non-Internet uses are probably the biggest reason for Bluetooth - though there are alternatives to BT for these uses as well.
Palm could use Ricochet for Internet access, but why? If a Ricochet device can be fitted with Bluetooth, then BT can serve an an effective way of getting a Palm to use Ricochet. PDA's live in a resource-scarce world, and the fewer features they have to provide the better - less storage for the programs, less hardware (marginally, but still, different types of transmission need different support), faster processing and less battery drain.
For purposes of Ricochet on a Palm, they're much more likely to arrive as a snap-on MODEM unit, or a Handspring Springboard module than native support.
Another reason very well may be that Ricochet is more strictly controlled by it's company than Bluetooth. BT isn't completely 'open' either, but it's less dependant on licensing, since it is a consortium standard instead of a product.
Yet another reason is the bit-rate and range - which do matter together as well as separately. Wireless is by definition a 'shared medium', and as such, the less time you use to send data, the less likely you are to have it corrupted by someone else. The faster you can pump out the data, the more data you can send per burst. This isn't really a big deal in a sparse area, but you also have to consider the effective range of the device.
Bluetooth is a short range transmission, where you'd likely hand off to a more potent (probably wire-bound) medium. Ricochet, IIRC, is longer distance and your sole link to a central location shared by other users.
Both technologies use collision avoidance, spread-spectrum transmission and other tricks to optimise their use of the medium, so in this they can be considered equal; and so it boils down to the number of users in your xmit area (the smaller the area, the fewer users) and the rate at which you move data (the faster, the better due to lower likelyhood of cut-off).
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Palm I think needs some kind of update badly. Lately, Visors have been touting more and better features on the hardware front, and Microsoft's PocketPC software seems to be liked by many.
There's a lot to like about Palms, and right now my Vx is by far the best handheld I've used. A new OS (with useful features) would go a long way to keeping Palm as the dominate figure in the PDA market.
The advantage of the Palm was that it did one thing and did it well. That made it more stable, reliable and efficient than WinCE^H^H^H^H^HPocketPC.
Once Palm starts trying to compete with microsoft on features, they are doomed. That's playing by Microsoft's rules on their home court. You can't win that way.
What most people want in a PDA is simplicity, reliability and long battery life.
You get that by only including essential features, not by adding them willy nilly.
Mark my words: Palm will die as a result of this.
--Shoeboy
Someone told me that Palm Pilots could be upgraded, but Visors couldn't. Just a question based upon the OS talk here.
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"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
In perhaps the best-coiffed event of the day, Claudia Schiffer took to the stage to announce that her Palm Vx Claudia Schiffer Edition is now available on her Web site.
Am I the only one who thinks there has to be a joke here somewhere, but can't quite put my palm^M^M^M^Mhand^M^M^M^Mfinger on it?
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
Uhhh... couldn't Handspring's devices do this a while ago?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
When there are models selling for $250 ( insert evil joke about Claudia Schiffer here as needed :-)), the transition will be there.
Until that occurs, they're not comparable, regardless of how Powerfully K001 they are.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
WinCE has had 16 bit color and USB support for over a year now.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, 3com finally understands exactly what's missing with the current PDAs, decent connectivity. Current Palms only have the slow and flaky serial port or the slow and flaky IR port to communicate with. The Serial port requires a cable attached to another device, and the IR port has a range of about 2" and can be tricky to get working in some environtments.
With Bluetooth Palms (and other PDAs) can automatically form piconets (small wireless networks only a few meters across) wherever they go. This is for more than just network games (as the article mentioned) but also for true collaboration in a mobile environment.
In case anyone is wondering, Bluetooth is IEEE 802.15, and can best be summarized as 802.11a and USB rolled into one. Transfer speeds are in the 1-2Mbit range, and the protocol supports a "Service Discovery Protocol" for determing what is available in the local network.
I read the internet for the articles.
I've borrowed a Palm a few times, and screen resolution is the biggest killer. If they can affordably (<$400) double the horizontal and vertical resolution, I'll be all over it.
Along with the 4.0 announcement was a demo of Samsung's upcoming Palm-based smartphone. It's supposed to be a bit smaller than the already announced Kyocera QCP-6035 (aka pdQ2) and contains a color display and dial buttons on the LCD screen. Should be available Q2 2001 for around $500. This should give the MS Stinger phone a serious run for its money.
In addition, anyone notice that Palm's software scheme is a little.. backwards? Every other technological advance starts with hardware first, OS and software support second (for example, new video card support in X). Palm starts with software support first, hardware second.
While this may seem forebearing, isn't this shooting themselves in the foot if their end hardware model becomes drastically different?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.