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PalmOS 5 Turns Gold

Posted by timothy on from the rumplepalmskin dept.

Stalke writes: "On sunday, PalmSource (the spinoff from Palm responsible for the development of the PalmOS) announced that PalmOS 5 has gone gold. This latest version of the operating system includes support for ARM processors, Bluetooth and 802.11b, high-res displays (320x320; although Sony already uses even high res displays in its NR70) and more. Products with PalmOS 5 should start shipping in just over a months' time!"

3 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Is evolution inevitable? by CaptainZapp · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Call me a ludite, but as an avid Palm user (Vx) this might well be a step backwards.

    The thing I love most about the Palm and the PalmOs is that it works, that it's extremely simple and that it's extremely reliable.

    I didn't like when they introduced colour and I care even less for all the fancy features promised with PalmOS 5.

    Frankly, if the only direction is more colours, better resolution, more MP3, full feature video and other such assorted crap, then I guess it's time to ditch the Palm and go for a Symbian smart phone.

    At least then, when the good old b&w simplicity of the V series is no more supported.

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  2. Not that revolutionary... by pstreck · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a Palm OS developer by trade I've been using the OS 5 development kits for about 4 months now since they were released at palm souce, and I must say that the end users really aren't going to get that much out of this latest release. Reasons being are that the ARM enhancements are designed as what are being called "armlets", small peices of code within the m68k code that is accellerated for an ARM proccessor. Palm isn't pushing native ARM applications which has pluses and minuses, new apps will still run on the older devices minus any armlet functionality, but the new ARM devices are going to have apps that are running slower than they should be do to the m68k -> arm translation. The other thing about this release new API, they've cleaned up a lot of the garbage and added a lot of new functionality so as a developer you got lots of more toys to place with, but as an end user don't expect this to be some holy grail of pda os's. Another downfall of Palms current plan for OS 5 is that they are targetting a handheld unit with a 66mhz arm proccessor, yes a 66mhz proc.. It's rediculous because the new xscale arcitechure which has 400mhz+ cpus has dropped the ARM prices dramatically. But anywho, I am excited to see a unit running OS 5.

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  3. What worries me ... by Mr_Silver · · Score: 4, Interesting
    We are taking full advantage of the technological advancements in Palm OS 5," said C. E. Steuart Dewar, president of Pimlico Software.

    Pimlico software make DateBk, which is a diary replacement because Palms own version is ... well, crap. It's just too limited when you compare it to Outlook.

    As much as I don't like a company going down the pan, if Palm have done it right, Pimlico would find that they won't be able to sell DateBk on the new OS. Because Palm's own diary book should be so good, that people would have no reason to update.

    I've said it many times, if Palm can get their new Datebook/Memo/ToDo/Address book to sync 100% with Outlook, then they're onto an instant winner. Just because the population of /. would avoid Outlook like the plague, doesn't mean the rest of the world does. If they can take an *exact* copy of their PC stuff on their new Palm, then they'll be a happy bunch.

    (I'm led to believe that even PPC doesn't sync over everything - but at least it's more than Palm)

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