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Psion May Look To Linux For The Next Big Thing
An anonymous reader points out this "interesting interview with Psion founder Dr David Potter. It explores the reasons why Psion sold their share in Symbian to Nokia and why Potter believes that there is good future for Linux on "compact" notebooks and the like. Guy Kewney is a very well respected commentator on technology, he's been doing for a long time and I've always found his insights to be pretty spot on.
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I hope SCO doesn't sue me if I buy one of these portables or a cell phone!
But seriously, this would be a really good thing for Linux, not just because it gives more exposure, but because it adds another element to SCO's already faltering legal practices. I mean... if Linux devices become very common, who will they sue? Everyone?
Psion blew it when they got out of the handheld market. And they blew it totally when they gave up Symbian.
Linux is often touted as the "next big thing" for handhelds, but it isn't, and it shouldn't be. For handhelds you want and need simplicity like the old Psion handhelds and the PalmOS based devices. You can dress Linux up all you want, but at the end of the day, you're running Linux.
I have both a Zaurus and a Revo Plus. When I got the Zaurus, I put the Revo into storage figuring the Zaurus would take over it's functions. I gave it a good go, but 6 months later I was forced to give up and switch back to the Revo.
Why? The revo can go weeks on a charge. The revo can go 12 hours or so without the battery draining. It has a great agenda appliction, a good address book, a good email program, it can do Word and Excel. It syncs. The Zaurus had a bunch of subpar applications (and I'm being generous there) and things never really improved. Sure it could play MP3s and had a great screen, but that doesn't mean anything when it loses appointments and your email program scrolls thru big emails at the rate of a line every 3 seconds.
Maybe if Psion starts using Linux they'll improve some of the PIM applications. It's a shame to reinvent the wheel when you had a really simple and robust OS in the first place.
Is it just me, or does the article jump from idea to disjoint idea assuming I know where they're coming from? I got half way through and just gave up. All I got out of it was that Psion wants Linux but Symbian too.. ?!
that it would run Linux on a Crusoe CPU.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I carry a Zaurus 5500 (which needs to be charged every 5 minutes). It runs linux. That was part of why I liked it. But more, Mom would never KNOW it runs linux. And that's good. Especially on handhelds, its about the apps. Whether it's on Palm or Psion or the Z, bad apps make the thing useless.
So how did Psion blow it?
Well, if you wanted to develop (beyond the scripting language), you had to give Psion lots of money for the devel package. It was defended on the boards: "They have a right to make money" blah blah blah.
The PALM came out and dev tools were RIGHT THERE. For free. Sure if you wanted an IDE, you'd blow <US$70 on the stuff to plug into your dev env. But you could right binaries for it without that, you could EMULATE the psion on Mac, PC and several *nix's.
That, combined with no brainer syncing helped the Palm take off. First, hundreds of useful utilities appeared for free. Harmful to 3com? Well ... no. They sell hardware. Hardware is more useful when more people have them and develop for them. Fancy apps don't generally come out of OpenSource, so there was a market. But handy util's (mileage trackers, shopping lists, etc) appeared instantly.
Contrast with Psion
Sure, I can sync it: how many extra software packages and cables (different for each Psion) do I own to backup the bastard? How many variations on small proprietary storage devices?
Sure I can get programs for it.
On cards (only 2 in the machine at a time). Which were often ok, not great. But they were too often islands. I know 3 people who ever had Psions. And I'm a geek. I know about 100 people with Palms these days.
What do I miss in the Zaurus?
I loved that I could press the PHONE button on the psion and it would emit touch tone. I made a call when visiting mom. Looked up the number, held it to the phone and pressed DIAL. Mom looked up at the sound and, after a couple seconds realized what I'd done. "God, that's so lazy..." Sure,,but I never misdialed numbers and it worked for my answering machine when NYNEX was disabling touch tones after the call went through on their payphones.
I miss the battery life.
I don't miss that the free software was mediocre and that the pay software was also not stellar (for lots of money).
I don't miss buying cards for that one model.
CF's boot a couple computers, feed the zaurus and work the camera.
BSD? Linux? who cares? :)
You don't buy it for the OS (though ssh'ing to it is killer). OPEN SOURCE is good. It means that people can use and extend it. Try that with VxWorks or Wince.
For flamebait, I find that most BSD developed software runs on any unix, but not so with too much software developed on Linux. That's not a reflection on the kernel/OS, but more a reflection on the professional maturity of the developers. There aren't that many fresh faced newbies that find BSD first. (but it's dead anyway and has been for 15 years
My question is what does this mean to Symbian. The alliance to prevent Microsoft from controlling the operating systems of future mobile phones seems to have vanished now that Symbian is becoming a subsidiary of Nokia. How come the other big mobile phone manufacturers were not interested in buying Psion's Symbian shares? I would think that Nokia wouldn't have bought the shares unless it absolutely had to. Must be hard now to convince other mobile phone manufacturers that Symbian OS does not favour Nokia over other companies. Does this mean that the chances to see Microsoft OS in my next mobile phone have increased?
It's 2004, and we seem to be WAY behind the curve on that prediction...
Call me synical, but the '00s seems to be the Commercial Interests boom. Unless we get a major revolt soon, expect that to continue for the rest of the decade.
If all goes to plan, I'm betting the '10s will be the nano-technology and alternative fuels boom.
--D
I've been putting Linux on small systems for a while, now. Generally, it means rolling my own kernel with uClibc and using BuildBox. A company could start building a good, stable distro for compact notebooks and handhelds (yes, I know there's Linux on handhelds already...) and make a killing selling it to OEMs.
:-)
Anyone want to start one? I'd go after it.
And being able to plug straight into a router and configure it with a pocket sized device, rather than jugging a laptop around, is great when having to work down in London - carrying laptops on the Tube is and always will be a fag.
Sadly, mine died when it fell on a tiled foor and killed the LCD :(.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Some of you are missing some key points. Battery life has nothing to do with Symbian. 1. It's a pain to develop for Symbian. I hate to say it but .NET is easier. GCC is easier. Almost anything is easier then Symbian.
2. The head of Symbian is saying that they own the portable OS space. That they have a 2 year lead on Microsoft. Well, the 'computer world' landscape is littered with folks that didn't change and adapt FAST to avoid the Microsoft juggernaut. I don't see Symbian doing anything to fix that.
3. Information on Symbian is sparse and wanting. Symbian charges a $$$$ to go to one of their classes. There are only 2 books for writing C++ to mobile handsets. I don't know of anything for the Psion.
4. Nokia is making phones and Psion is making portable devices... maybe the two device will met in some ephihany device in the future. BUT for now the only thing close is a Treo.
Dr. Potter is right to change. Linux takes care of all this.
1. easy to develop on
2. Linux is gaining ground on Microsoft
3. Tons of information on Linux and help everywhere.
4. By choosing Linux, Psion gets a development solution for everyone's tastes. Lots of programs developed for it. Plus, they avoid having to go through any hoops that Symbian or Nokia creates, to serve their needs.
The folks at Symbian/Nokia need to wake-up and start address their problems, FAST! The juggernaut is right behind them!
Although I was working on the goefox - which I bought because I thought it would be better for linux that the psion 5 . There was a lot of discussion back then (around 1998 for those who want to check the archives) about trying to persuade psion to give help.
So it isn't excactly wrong to say psion weren't helpful -they didn't really seem to grok the linux / open source philposhies. OTOH Maybe we (As in the linux-7k project) managed to alert the psion management to linux in early enough that they can now see the value of helping us.
Master of Peng Shui.Ancient oriental art of Penguin Arranging)
I still use my 'ancient' Series 5 for working on the move because A: it fits in a pocket; B: I can touch-type on it; C: it uses two AA batteries that last for ages; D: I can pull out the flash card and drop files straight onto my Mac; E: it has a decent programming language (OPL) built in; F: it's been pretty rugged so far, going around the world with me; G: the built-in office package is solid enough for most tasks. Every time I see a co-worker pecking away at a PDA trying to enter text with a stylus, it makes me wonder what they can accomplish there that a 50p notebook and pen couldn't.
But then, that's the British technology story all over. We come up with great and novel ideas, then botch the actual selling of them and allow everyone else to take over. I shouldn't be surprised by it any more.
You must think in Russian.