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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."
There seems to be a battle growing between integration and segration in the Computer Industry.
First it was the internet appliances, with the thinking that people would eventually want seperate "computers" for web browsing, typing, etc.
Now we have the idea of tablets as alternatives to laptops, and a camears being integrated into phones and PDAs.
It seems that people can't decide how many devices they want on them at any givem time. Will we ever see a balance between integration and segragation of digital devices?
Modular Redundancy--Because 4 out of 5 Nodes agree
Were not all these concepts intended for the Palm platform originally? Mobile computing has come a long way in the past 5 years, with more and more powerful processors leading to smaller and better things. Where is the PalmOS headed? The place it's always been going- to provide a comprehensive interface to perform certain computing functions on an ultra-portable level. The introduction of more/enhanced features/functions/uses is only following the initial path set by mobile computing.
The watches, already mentioned on slashdot.
Amongst other places: here
graspee
where have you been? palm OS supports transflective color screens now. and palmOS 6 will be BeIA reincarnate.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I just bought a Nokia 3650 which has enough average person pda functionality to satisfy me: calendar, todo, phonebook...christ. it runs symbian and java midlets so there are a whole lot of apps out for it, including doom ;)
point is...ive always been interested in a pda to use as an organizer, but theres no way in hell im carrying that bulk in addition to my phone.
now that problem is solved. I'm usually against multipurpose devices ie : vhs/dvd players...but space is a concern with things you carry.
Basically my phone is a phone, a digital camera (640x480),a gameboy(has emulator), a pda...and more (mp3...) and of course it has internet connectivity.
I am helping with a computer science course involved with microcontrollers. We basicly teach ARM and controlling IO. I was just wondering if teaching assembly is old hat now days where handhelds come with OS's capable of doing all that for you, and where handlelds are today washing machines and tosters will be tommorow.
So is there a point in teaching low level coding or should microcontrollers be programmed in higher level languages?
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
but we've already got an excellent solution for games on the go with the gameboy advanced. It seems to make more sense to me that instead of tooling a new pda centered towards games, which will need to be designed for the OS and probably won't compare to the nintendo games, they should contact nintendo and add some OS capabilities to the gameboy or something. I just don't see marketing a PDA as a gaming alternative is really worthwhile and seems sort of pathetic...unless they have some really new angle on the games...
The anti-salmon
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.
The $99 Zire is an example of the non-general purpose PDA concept. Zire is only for scheduling, to-do lists, and an address book. It seems many were buying loaded PDAs and ended up using it as an organiser...
i am still going to hold off until microsoft comes out with a collar-based PDA with GPS capabilities. if they were cheap (or simply mandatory) i think everyone would grow to love them.
XP collar edition does not sound that far away, i am going to embrace the "freedom to innovate" and hope i don't catch anything.
Summary of this article...
Hey - you can get all different kinds of Palm devices! There's one for playing games and there's another one for doing science stuff! Palm and Sony make Palm devices for use as organisers! Cool!
Tune in next week for "There's these things called peripherals that you can plug into your computer to make it do stuff!"
What? You mean I'm actually getting paid for this?! This is like, so cool!
All things in moderation; including moderation
When the PDA really took fire three years ago, we all began to speculate that everyone would have a handheld and would go everywhere with it. My how times have changed and not necessarily for the worse. I have a Palm IIIxe and find myself not taking it to all the places I used too. It got to the point that is was very bulky and I found I didn't take it out as much so I left it at home. However, when I was in school I used all the time. Hooked up with one of the Palm keyboards I could take all my notes in class and not have to worry about lugging a laptop.
The simple fact of the matter is, handhelds are starting to go back into their niche and take the place of paper where it makes sense. Currently, we have an internally produced application that interfaces with our system of record to update inspections for home sites. It makes a lot of sense because the inspector no longer has to use a pen and pad and we can process draws for borrowers at any point in the week instead of waiting for the inspectors to come back in on Thursday.
I predict you will see more and more of this as time progresses. The time for everyone having a PDA with 20 applications has passed. Its now Blackberrys (wireless email, calendar, contact info) and/or hardened PDAs for every day, one to two applications use.
We need more cell phones that run Palm OS like the SPH-i500 it's the size of a normal phone but with all the palm stuff built in
Of course the SPH-i600 would kick it's ass, but I don't think that will ever make it to market
I was not saying it was a good business idea, just that palm is not a B&W interface anymore.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
My palms have enough purpose as it is... Patty cake you sickos, not that, I swear.
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've had a few Palm devices. My favorite for gaming is the Handspring Visor Prism.
I play mostly old-school games like "Galaga", "Spy Hunter", "Defender" and "Frogger". For these games the Prism is great. It has a good, 8-bit color screen and a decent key layout. I know the operating system is on the old side and it doesn't have Bluetooth.
If the target audience is people in their thirties who like to play games, there is fair chance that the games they want to play are retro games like "Defender", which the Prism is totally sufficient for. It is a great PDA in many other respects too.
Handspring is selling refurbished Prisms at their web site for $169.
My Palm has been working it its own niche market since I was about 13...
There is, IMHO, a "holy grail" of handheld devices, and it would contain...
1. a cell-phone
2. 16-bit color Nintendo and/or Sega compatibility
(maybe emulated MAME-like?)
3. embedded Linux
4. 80G hard drive ala I-pod.
5. Can easily fit in my pocket...
6. 802.11g
Build it, and I will come...nothing else makes sense to me
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
but we've already got an excellent solution for games on the go with the gameboy advanced.
Sure, it's a great solution for games, but why not try to make a better solution? The GBA's resolution is only 240x160 while helix will have, according the forbes article, a resolution of 320x480. That's a BIG difference. In fact, it's 4 times as many pixels (double in each dimension). And according to the PCWORLD article, it will have a 3.8 inch, backlit screen, while the GBA SP, has a 2.9 inch, sidelit screen. (though, sidelit reflective is probably actually better since you can play it in the sun. With that in mind, I'm willing to bet that tapwave will NOT be backlit, but will be sidelit reflective too, to play in the sun, and that either PCWORLD has their info wrong, or simply said "backlit" to me "lit" as people do so often.)
Why would you be against a new player entering the market just because a device to play games already exists? I mean, this is slashdot, afterall, isn't this where people are interested in NEW, more advanced technology (not to mention competition)? To me, tapwave sounds really cool. Whether it will have good games or not isn't clear yet, but I'm happy to know that they're making it.
I just don't see marketing a PDA as a gaming alternative is really worthwhile and seems sort of pathetic...unless they have some really new angle on the games...
Well, I'm sure it won't have the regular palm pda form factor and shape. It just uses Palm OS. It will likely be held like any portable game system. Other than the shape, what's the distinction between a portable gamesystem and a PDA? They're making a gamesystem, plain and simple, and if they're smart it will look and feel like a gamesystem. If it looks like a pda, it won't be successful as a gamesystem, you're right. But like I said, besides the shape, I don't see the difference between a PDA and a gamesystem.
If an alternative portable game system becomes popular, we might actually see *competittion*. Remember, for nearly two years Nintendo didn't even make a GBA with a light, simply because they didn't have to. And with competition, we might see *CHEAPER* games. That doesn't sound like a bad deal to me.
Also, the wireless 8 player multiplayer gaming sounds really cool.
So, my point is that it doesn't sound like they're just duplicating the efforts of Nintendo. It really does sound like they're making a better gamesystem. And even if they *were* merely duplicating the efforts of Nintendo, I still think it would be cool to see some competition
I think that one of the things that may need to be specified is that there are two primary ways to use a PDA. You can use it as an application specific device (ASD), or you can use it as a general computing device (GCD).
What PalmOS is doing is expanding their sales into more ASD, as they discover that the market seems to be saturated for GCD type PDAs at the level that Palm, Sony and a couple of other companies have been selling.
In all honesty, WinCE (whatever version) and Embeded Linux (in a variety of forms) with appropriate hardware make better GCD based PDAs than PalmOS (in current implementations) does. That may change with PalmOS 6.0, depending upon how much of what was in BeIA that they stripped out and or replaced.
On the other hand, if you need a device for inventory management, or a phone list on a cell phone, or for package tracking, etc. the lower hardware costs associated with a PalmOS device can significantly reduce the cost of each device, making a device that you can sell more of to your customers, because you can pass the savings on, or draw more profit off of the ongoing service charges.
Then again, who knows what will happen with PalmOS 6.0. All the cost savings may be out the window.
-Rusty
You never know...
What bad experience did you have with Palm OS? they continue to be the market leader, continue to be the easiest to use for non-technical folks, continue to be easier to synch with a PC, and continue to offer less-expensive devices than WinCE.
I don't know where you're coming from -- certainly geeks love iPaqs because they have beefier hardware, but Palm's bread and butter is selling to business people and consumers who have no interest in running linux on a PDA. They want to push a button and have their schedule available with no hourglass on the screen. Sony develops almost exclusively consumer-entertainment Palm OS devices, most of which have nicer screens and better multimedia capabilities than any WinCE device available. Handspring is building communication devices on palm OS, all of which work much better (and longer) than the WinCE smartphones.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Flashy isn't necessarily better than functional.
What *do* you look for in a PDA's OS? Personally I look for small footprint and low power consumption. My Sony Clie SJ-20 fits that bill perfectly. I only need to recharge it once every couple of weeks, and it does everything I want a PDA to do, and it only cost me $200 CDN.
And it has a 320x320 display...
Palm is not perfect, but you're wrong in a couple respects. Palm still dominates the market. They are still the single largest manufacturer in the entire handheld space. Their platform, PalmOS, which they license, also has more than 50% of the market. The pocketPC platform collectively fights over something around 30 to 40%--the remainder occupied by Epoch and other platforms--despite the best efforts of Microsoft who has spent an inordinate amount of money trying to overcome them and has the advantage of controlling MS Outlook/Exchange Server on the desktop (that many people depend on on their PCs).
Palm's success was due largely to their narrow focus, they defined what the modern PDA is and then built it, not by trying to be everything to all people. What you call a failure is not a failure in this vision, but rather it was the result of a good understanding of precisely what a PDA is and what is practical. They didn't produce even more expensive gadgets to compete with PocketPC because the timing was questionable and because their utility was too. There have been dozens of competing platforms that have failed precisely because they tried to do too much while Palm stayed true to their course and continued to optimize their platform (which HAS improved over the years). Look at the early generation PocketPCs, that Palm supposedly lost market share to. Most of them were pretty mediocre devices--most of them were bought by early adopter types that have also bought numerous other PDAs. Yes, a good number of people bought them, but it's hardly been a proven money maker. These devices are still inferior to Palm as PDAs--the battery life still needs work, the usability is significantly worse than Palms, they're still bulkier, and so on.
This fancier concept of a PDA, really handheld computers, is only starting to become economically and technically viable--even if the market for the idea itself is still unproven. If you take a look at what Palm and their licensees have done lately, then you'll see that they're very competitive with PocketPC even in this emerging high end market. Have you tried the new "smart" phones? I have a Tungsten W--I love it--GSM phone, GPRS data, built in keyboard, marginally faster CPU (but generally fast enough for what it is), and a good form factor. How about the Tungsten C? It very very slick too (built in WiFi, fast processor, keyboard, sound, etc). How about the Zire 71? Built in camera (640x480), high res color screen, sound, etc--all priced at less than 300 bucks (with space to drop the price too I'm sure). I don't see anything that really competes, that isn't a total hack, from PocketPC or anything else. I predict that Palm is going to take "back" much of what you think they've lost in the handheld space and even from their PalmOS licensees with their latest generation of hardware, namely the new Zire and their integrated wireless concept.
Now try writing down a phone number while you're talking over it! :)
I can't help but feel that what makes a good palm-held computer makes a crappy phone, and what makes a good phone makes a crappy palm-held computer. Among other things, the physical profiles are incompatible; the Palm has to be wide enough to write on, and the phone has to be narrow enough to be comfortable.
Nope. I'll take the smallest phone I can that's comfortable, and a reasonably sized palm, and rely on them linking together to exchange data.
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 !
Having seen the Helix, I can assure you that it's definitely not a "black and white palm OS PDA." It has a screen that will best anything out on the handheld gaming market, and I think it will likely kick some major booty. The only real question is whether Tapwave can attract the game developers in sufficient quantity and quality. Based on the enthusiasm from the developers in attendance at Tapwave's launch, they have a good shot at it, IMO.