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Palm Changing OS Strategy
profet writes "CNET.com is reporting that PalmSource plans to change its OS plans and simultaneously develop/release OS 6 and continue development on OS 5. The names shall be changed to reflect that they are both current. The plan is to have OS 5 for low end devices ($100 price point is a goal), and OS 6 for high end devices. This is a drastic change from their current practice of having one current OS drastically customized (read: hacked) to suit the manufacturer's needs. It looks like PalmSource is aiming directly at Symbian's success with Nokia's series 60 platform."
Is that under the plan, the company will simultaneously develop multiple versions of its OS and aim them at different parts of the cell phone market. With OS 5, PalmSource was focused primarily on making a hardware transition.
Nope. That's for the whole device, like the 79 dollar Zire.
The ______ Agenda
I migrated from Palm OS3 to the Zaurus platform. ...But for everything else, the Zaurus feels (to me anyway) to be a far superior device. I migrated away from palm OS because I felt "limited" by the capabilities of OS3. I understand that Palm OS has improved since then. ...but now I'm pretty content with my Zaurus, so I haven't felt the need to switch back.
I must say that as a PIM, palm OS was better.
In short, if ALL you need is a PIM, then you should be looking at a cheap Palm OS device. Otherwise, I believe the Zaurus is worth a serious look.
I have owned a Zaurus and a Sony Clie (Palm OS 4). They are two different beasts. The Clie is a great address book, calendar, etc. and has good desktop software that I like since i refuse to use Outlook for calendaring. It is a small device and great at the traditional PDA functions. Synching is very refined and works well with XP and OS X 10.3 using iSync. I can sync right to Address Book and iCal.
The Zaurus was excellent at web browsing, hacking, running Java, running a real pop3 mail client, etc. Plug in a cheap WiFi CF card and you are good to go. But here is the thing. It is horrible at calendaring, synching, etc. The desktop software is pathetic. You almost certainly have to consider the Zaurus a very small linux based PC that stands by itself and forget about the desktop integration part.
All that being said, I sold the Zaurus on E-Bay recently and kept the Clie. The Zaurus is by far the best "toy". However, having a handheld Internet connected device wasn't that useful (for me, anway) especially since I own a 12 inch iBook. Having a list of important phone numbers and my calendar with me at all times and available instantly is important though and Palm devices do that very well.
Depending on what you want and need, the Zaurus might be a great choice. I had no complaints. It was stable and overall really cool. There is just something cool about using a handheld as a web server. (but then you inevitably end up asking "WHY"!)
Yellow Tab has a version of BeOS called "Zeta".
I think the story is that they could licence everything but the name. There's an awesome preview up on Zeta Journal.
And there are also the two open clones in the works: Blue-Eyed OS (by building BeOS-workalike bits on top of Linux) and OpenBeOS (a from-the-ground-up reimplementation of BeOS)..
The difference between PalmOS 5 vs. 6 is similar to Windows 95 vs. NT and MacOS 9 vs. X. Basically it's the transition to a real protected-memory OS, requiring a new underlying system architecture. So, similar to the Windows and MacOS transitions, PalmOS 6 is a completely new operating system, with a compatibility layer to provide the same APIs as on previous versions of the OS and maintain application compatibility.
Remember, they bought the tech...I doubt any actual BeOS code would be in Palm6...but I'd bet it "looks" like BeOS under the hood!
Boy are you guys gonna hate me for even suggesting Microsoft....
A lot of people are asking for alternatives to PalmOS... well, how about it's #1 competator: PocketPC?
I have been playing with the HP iPAQs recently, and am trying to find one at a reasonable price, and lemme tell you I am in love.
I owned a Visor Delux back when they came out, and it just sucked after a while. Handwriting was a pain in the ass; the software worked, but was limited; there was no good solution for document editing/viewing; audio, video and networking functions were nonexistant at the time. Even then, the top of the line HP Journadas could play mp3s and had a color screen.
If you want something to replace your pocket pad of paper, go with a palm I guess. If you want a *computer* in your pocket, go with a PocketPC... I personally am drooling over the HP h1945, h2215, and h4155's.
no comment
You have absolutely no idea what a palm device is used for. On a palm device, you *do not* load Windows XP on it. These are items with around 400MHz Intel XScale and around 32-64MB of memory.
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PalmOS is for palm-sized devices (e.g. ORGANIZERS) that have very little flexibility as far as data loss, convenience, and user-friendliness. No user wants to open up a console and mess with XF86 settings to try and get their organizer working right in the middle of a meeting.
Part of the reason Palm is still popular is because of the fundamental design decisions made with the OS. Which is to be, above all, a damn good organizer. Part of what Palm realized (and what Apple hadn't yet with the Newton) is that user requirements for an organizer is significantly different from a computer. Users expect it to work just as well as their wristwatch. A great article to read on this is the "Zen of Palm" (http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/zenofpalm
In the handheld market, Palm is competing with PocketPC (or as it's less affectionately known, Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC) and to a very much lesser extent, Linux on the Zaurus.
In the phone market, Palm is competing yet again with Windows and then Symbian. And this division of markets is why they're concurrently developing OS 5 and 6.
And, for your information, PalmSource owns Be. Part of the whole point of OS6 is that Be engineers are putting significant efforts into it.
You think $30 is bad for an OS? Gimme a break.
Most apps for either Palm OR PocketPC run $10-50.
PocketQuicken (which requires a desktop copy of quicken) costs $40.
AOL Instant Messenger for PPC costs $20!
Now... I don't concider $30 bad for an OS, but $20 for AIM?
no comment
I've had a Tungsten T for about a year now, and I've been very happy with it. For day to day things, I mostly use the standard aps, but I also use it occasionally as an mp3 player, HP48GX emulator (faster than my real version), and with my bluetooth phone I can check e-mail and look up stuff on the web, chat on ICQ, etc. I have a couple other random aps on there that are useful too.
I had a Treo 300 for a brief stint and it locked up like crazy, and I understand what you mean about that driving you nuts. But with the Tungsten T I think I had one hard lockup, and two sudden reboots, and I've never lost any data. Because of that, I only synch about once every two weeks, and the battery life has been good enough that I generally only remember to charge it about once a week.
I think Palm's problem is that almost every Palm-powered device has a different version of their OS, so there's a little bit of hit and miss. For example, the Treo300 had a version tweaked by Handspring specifically for that device. There seem to be more problems with the devices not sold by Palm, since most of those can't upgrade the OS. You might check their website for updates - they did have some for the Tungsten T to fix an audio level problem for mp3 playback.
And a mention for my problem with the other option - the pocket PC. I have yet to see one with a vibrating alarm, which just astounds me. I usually leave everything on vibrate to avoid having it be disruptive during meetings, movies, classes, etc.
This isn't news at all. This has been Palm's strategy for the past few years -- one OS for low-end devices, one for high end.
The only difference is the previously high-end OS is becoming the low-end. Which will happen again one day with Palm OS 6.
QUite a few Pocket PCs have a vibrating alarm. My XDA II does.
Look, Palm devices have gone from being about as fast as your wristwatch, up to today's being as powerful as laptops of a few years ago (400mhz, 32MB+ RAM, hundreds of megs in SD/MMC.) For a handheld computer that runs for days on battery power, that's quite a bit of power, and possibility.
They're powerful enough to play mp3s and movies, they do wifi, the pen interface has gotten simpler and more accurate. But it's all limited by the operating system. The problem with PalmOS is, it's built around a Windows 3.x-style event loop with no threading. "Cooperative multiprocessing," if you can call it that.
Word today from a developer at a biggish PalmOS app development company, is that Palm has gotten some of the BeOS blokes to develop a microkernel, threading, and device driver architecture; that'll be OS 6.0. It won't be open source, sadly, but it'll have Palm's usual level of documentation and support.
Look at the Zaurus for the example of a pocket computer that's reaching in the right direction: Linux with multitasking, device drivers... mad extensibility. Palm don't got that today.. although I think running KDE is a bit of overdevelopment. Who needs a terminal window, these things have enough power to process speech recognition? That's why the O/S needs to grow.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
Hard reset has been usually required when soft rest did not work, and that usuall happened when I used too many categories while too many primary records. The OS was 3.3 or something like that.
Less is more !
I've used Palms and PocketPC's since Palm OS 3.0 and Windows CE 3.0 (PocketPC 2000, that is). The WinCE is a real OS, yes, as many people have pointed out. However, I ask WHO NEEDS MULTITASKING? You can only fit one program at a time on that screen anyhow... Load times for Palm are next to nothing, so what's the point of multitasking when it's just as fast to open the app anew... You can't compare PocketPC to Palm. PosketPC is like Windows, with separate storage and execution memory, and with a footprint bigger than most Palms' RAM + ROM amounts. Palm is a handheld OS that does its job well.
Now if only ParaGraph would release Calligrapher for PalmOS, we'd be good...
My Systems
OS5 does seem to be a little different, and yes, it does seem that it's very easy to drift away from design principles.
:)
Nevertheless, I stand by my original comments. Visit the palminfocenter.com forums, and while there are some people experiencing problems like yours, most seem to be getting by fine. And Palm is commendable for even having design principles to begin with (keep in mind these were probably published with some of the very early palms)
I only brought up XF86 because the original poster did, who obviously had no idea of what we're talking about here. He seemed to think these were mini laptops or something.
Look around on the comments around here, and you'll notice most people are saying things like "it's cool I can do linux-y things on my Zaurus, but my palm still handles PIM functions better"
BTW, OS6 is supposed to fix some of those database problems, but I guess we'll see on Monday