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A Palm for Every Purpose
fm6 writes "We can look forward to a round of niche devices running PalmOS. According to the Forbes article, we're looking at PalmOS in: a game device called Helix , a platform for developing 'customized handheld instruments' called the Meazura, and of course, the usual round of PalmOS cell phones. On the other hand, fewer manufacturers seem to show any interest in making general-purpose PalmOS PDAs. Food for thought."
I bought one recently.
They rock! At least once you update to 2.4.20
The watches, already mentioned on slashdot.
Amongst other places: here
graspee
On top of that, the button layout is just idiotic for gaming. It looks like four buttons are arranged for use as a D-pad, with three more buttons positioned at the D-pad's center, left, and right, respectively.
That'll be clunky as hell for any game that involves using more than the D-pad plus one other button - you'll have to use both hands for action buttons, or even both hands for both directions and actions. Which is exactly why action games like Dreadling (a 3D shooter) haven't taken off on PalmOS devices.
You'd think if they were designing a handheld for gaming, they'd take the time to give it an interface that's actually usable for gaming.
All that needs to change is software/hardware on the back-end in cellular providers' switching centers to provide a POTS-to-SMS gateway just like there are already e-mail-to-SMS gateways.
There are any number of reasons why this hasn't happened:
- Paging companies are too entrenched and defend their markets against cellular companies.
- There's not enough of a return-on-investment for cellular companies to get into the market.
- Companies can probably make more money keeping them separate. For example, they can charge at least $35/mo for cell service and probably as much for pager service (athough I actually have no idea what pager service rates are). If they offered paging as an add-on service to cell service, they couldn't get away with more than $5/mo additional (probably).
Note: the above are educated guesses only. If somebody knows the real reasons, I'd like to hear them.If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Low level micro-coding will pretty much always have a purpose. Especially for micro-controllers.
I know that there are a lot of people who will point out that today's optimizing compilers can often produce tighter code than an average programer writing in Assembly. I won't even contest that, because I am pretty sure that the few of us that are completly incompetent at writing code in assembly are affecting the "average" in question. Of course that means that just about any competent Assembly programmer can write tighter code than an optimizing compiler can. (Today.)
Personally I think that if ASICs continue as they are, Coding at the bare metel is going to continue to be important as the ASIC will present an API to the system it is installed in. The ASIC itself may be running a higher level OS, but for the near future will not itself need to multi-task. As a result the OS involved will be very limited in capability, and may itself be written in Assembly. I would expect it to be an interupt driven OS that responds either to environmental or api interupts, which ammount to the same thing.
Yes memory is getting physically smaller with higher capacity, and these ASIC processors are getting faster. As a result it is possible to run more bloated softare with no appreciable impact to performance. At the same time there will always be instances where a 1/100" delay will be the difference between the user's life, and death. You may not be interested in working on a project where such is the requirement, but someone will. Provide them with the information they need to succeed.
Then again, I could be wrong. Expert Systems may be able to take arbitrary instructions and produce machine code up to the requirements. I just don't see that happening within the next couple of years. I may have tunnel vision.
-Rusty
You never know...
Actually, check out the video at the following URL:
http://www.godoplay.com/tapwave2.html
They show a brief glimpse of a guy using the hardware itself. He's holding it so that the screen is landscape... Looks like a layout similar to the origninal GBA, with Dpad and action buttons on either side of the screen. Plus there are clips from a couple of games. They look like they're in 3d. There is a Spy Hunter and a Tony Hawk game... Graphics appear to be as good as a Gamecube. Beats the hell out of the GBA's Super Nintendo-style graphics.
If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.
I am fed up with PalmOS. It takes too much efforts to develop anything for it. As for buying - the market of software for PalmOS is very limited (even less then Linux's one) and has very few of really good programs (less than a dozen). Besides, my eyes are crying after watching to palm screen longer than 5 minutes, while my fingers a sick of drawing text on it.
Laptop doesn't exceed the size of palmtop too much. I bring my Powerbook almost always with me in my backpack, which is usually with me, while its accessories are in my car, which is my usual transportation mean. Sure its a bit heavier than PalmVx, although I am not exactly a weak person, physically. But as a benefit - it's a real general-purpose computer, with dual-boot between MacOS and Linux, with virtually unlimited ability of easily writing my own applications, with local web server and database, with various multimedia tools, various content and document authoring tools. I use it for presentations, for demonstrations, for diagnostic, for training, for learning, for surfing, for data gathering and even for some AI-based data processing. And it's big enough to save my eyes and my fingers from any potential health problems typical for Palm users.
So, that's a general-purpose computer device.
Less is more !