Slashdot Mirror
Details Of Palm OS 6 - 'Cobalt'
Splezunk writes "Looks like Palm has finally released some details on Palm OS 6 a k a 'Cobalt'. Palminfocenter has more on it, and I have just noticed that there are now screenshots. Highlights are a 32,000x32,000 screen support, BeOS like multitasking and threading. Currently 256MB memory, but this will be upgraded in time."
...existing Tungstens will be able to upgrade. Probably not, but they've done it before with OS 5...here's hoping.
With support for up to 256MB of RAM and 256MB of ROM...
I suppose this is a lot for a Palm, but what's the imitation? Address space/overhead? Nowadays you can fit a gig into an area that the first Palms fit 512K into, so size isn't an issue... voltage/battery life might be a consideration, but probably not a showstopper.
Eh, I suppose the design of the Palm is really not meant to handle things requiring that much memory. But guys at work are cramming 512meg memory cards on their iPaqs and watching movies; does the 256MB limitation in the OS mean that "external memory" cannot exceed that amount as well?
the info on that is vague.... it's possible Apple will make it work straight through with iSync. Hopefully they will, and add some way to upload Palm OS apps? Maybe Palm desktop is not worth them working on when iCal and Addressbook are on every Mac now running OS X (unless the user deletes them).
Why would they build it off the Linux kernel when they already own BeOS? Yeah, I'd say that's a rumor alright.
SO they have added some BeOS functionality to this thing. I owned a Palm. I thought it was brilliant, but as i saw the prices of PDA's drop and the Palm price stay the same for less features, it didnt seem like such a good buy anymore. I wonder what they will charge for this. I think the resolution is a bit of overkill. I'm not gonna hook this thing up to a television to play Galaga on an emulator. My Zaurus does all the things this thing can and probably a hell of a lot more. The tungsten's werent too impressive, this one doesnt seem to be either. And why dont they gave us the names of the "industry leaders".
there are some interesting discussions at the bottom of the page regarding the naming of "Palm OS Cobalt" instead of "Palm OS 6".
the CCO's reply was "As for the naming, numbers were a problem because in the PC world a higher number means the lower number is obsolete (Windows 98 immediately replaces Windows 95). Palm OS Garnet is just fine for many users and will persist a long time, so licensees asked us to move away from numbers."
so maybe the naming also implies the confidence in a product? the company sees no need for users to UPgrade unnecessarily in the future. eg Mandrake Almighty instead of Mandrake 1241.12.102
As a Mac user, extremely disappointed that Palm has decided to completely nix the Mac market with OS 6, I'd now seriously consider a linux based PDA. If I'm forced to buy a PDA that doesn't support the Mac out of the box I'd rather give my money to a company supporting open-source. The Sharp Zaurus line is appealing, but the last I heard there was no syncing solution at all for the Mac, even from 3rd party's. Has this situation changed yet?
--- What?
Is it me, or does there seem to be an overabundance of old CPU's floating around out there? I'm sitting on at least 6 pentium 1 class CPU's here in my garage with speeds varying from 75-200mhz.
Looking at these old CPU relics, I remember how nice BeOS ran on the machines of the time. PalmOS=(PalmOS + some BeOS IP)
I think it would be a neat idea if someone made an affordable, upgradable, palm like device that could use these old CPU's. I mean, I know there must be millions of these things being used in less usefull roles, such as doorstops and monitor stands. It's a shame that all these pentium CPU's have more or less been "retired" or tossed into a landfill.
Sure a p-200 isn't that powerful of a CPU by todays standards of P4's and Athlons, but they have enough power to decode mp3's, compose e-mail, and surf the web.
I don't think it would be that expensive either to build a socketed palm device. Sure it would be a bit bulkier than new palms, but for small form factor geeks or just guys like me that have 30 years of computer crap in his garage it would be a godsend. Something the size and dimensions of a 3.5" hard drive only slightly thicker would be perfect.
Now go ahead and tell me about pc-104 devices, blah blah... Yes I know they exist, but they're not a single integrated device in sleek packaging.
Well, they may be able to address 32000 x 32000 pixels (actually, I'll bet it's 32768 x 32768), but good luck getting it to actually drive that big of a screen. At 256 megs of maximum memory, you'd need 31 palms just to store that much screen real estate in memory.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
I know third party hardware existed to allow powerpoint slides (no motion or sound) be carried and transmitted from a palmpilot.. this may have built in vga output for road warriors.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
CC
If I remember correctly it's 1 arcminute, which is 1/60th of a degree if I remember right. This is at the center of your eye, where things are the most clear (and it degrades from there, toward your peripheral vision)
Whoever said "Think Angular" is right.
What this means is that it depends on distance. The farther you are for something, the less resolution it has. Try it -- have someone hold a ruler and walk away from it... pretty soon, you can't see the lines of demarcation. Yet up close, they are quite clear.
I played around with these numbers with a friend of mine for a whole class period once. It worked fairly well. Best way to re-figure these numbers is to assume a straight line out of the eye of length "l", and some height, "h", where the angle inside the eye from the top to bottom of H (along the triangle is 1/2 an arcminute (1/120 degree). So, therefore...
tan (1/120 degrees) = h/l (and l is given, find h)
h = l * tan(1/120)
2h = one dot. 1/(2h) = dots per unit of h. proper unit conversions then apply.
so, at 1 foot (12 inches)
h = 12 in. * tan(1/120)
h = 0.00175
2h = 0.0035
1/2h = 286
thus, at 1 foot, the eye has (at it's center) close to 286 DPI.
More than you cared to know, I'm sure. Interesting nonetheless.
(Sorry about the English units. I guess I'm just being an insensitive clod.)
Barak Michener
I don't know where this stuff about lack of Mac support is coming from. I'm here at the PalmONE conference and everyone is going out of their way to say that there is/will be mac support at every opportunity.
While currently there are few gaps in the mac developer tools, they seem comitted to remedying this situation. It's eclipse based, but the resource editor and simulator are windows only. They talked about moving the resource editor into eclipse, but I don't see the simulator getting ported any time soon.
It's also worth remembering that it's going to be some time before there is going to be any Cobalt (OS 6) devices on the shelves, so it's a little premature to complain about hotsync when there's no hardware.
On the whole, Cobalt looks awsome. The demos of the multi-media capabilities are fantastic. This is a proper growed-up operating system that bests anything else on the market for the forseeable future.
I was prepared to be underwhelmed by the new OS, but I'm totally won over now.
The transition is going to suck a little for developers, but they've put a great deal of effort into making it as easy as it can reasonably be.