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."

Comments

I'm glad there are....

[callipygian-showsyst]

I'm sure glad they recently discovered three more elements! Now Palm can make three more versions of their OS.

Re:I'm glad there are....

[adrianbaugh]

Hmm. Element 115 is called ununpentium. Does this mean we're waiting for ununceleron, ununathlon, and finally ununG5, each of which will be heavier, contain more components, require more power (to make) and, just possibly, be more stable?

Phui

[Rick Zeman]

Not Mac compatible (synch wise), I heard.

Re:Phui

[rjelks]

OSNews.com has a story about how Palm dropped the Palm desktop for Apple, but as I understand it, there are better programs for synching on that platform. I don't believe that Palm Desktop has ever been very popular on the Mac.

Re:Phui

[Moofie]

I'm curious. What do people use? I like the idea of Address Book and iCal, but there are still a lot of compatibility warts there.

What do MacOS X users prefer?

Re:Phui

[lpontiac]

I spoke to one of the Palm engineers last night at the conference.

All of the development with regards to Hotsync, the Conduit Dev Kit and Palm Desktop has been happening on the PC only. They haven't ruled out getting it working on the Mac at some point in the future, and it sounds like the engineers want to do it, but there's no timeframe for this to happen.

It's a similar story with their development tools - they have PalmOS 6 (Cobalt) dev stuff happening on the Mac, and apparantly half the engineers at the company with laptops have a Mac, but they're not complete, tested and ready for release like the Windows tools are.

32,000x32,000?

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, that's a pretty high resolution for such a tiny screen.

Re:32,000x32,000?

[NanoGator]

"Man, that's a pretty high resolution for such a tiny screen."

That's a pretty high resolution for a sheet of paper.

Or are they just forward thinking? I wouldn't be totally insane if I predicted that display resolution will take a radical turn much in the same way that RAM and HD storage did in the not too distant future. I think we're all looking forward to 1200 dpi monitors. Microsoft's already pushing in that direction. Longhorn's UI is vector based with the idea that you can scale it up to really high resolutions and still maintain the same proportions. The image just gets clearer, as opposed to getting smaller. It has even been reported that MS is working with an LCD manufacturer (I want to say Viewsonic, but I'll just have to come forward and say I don't remember too clearly which company was mentioned) to develop displays that ran up to at least 5,000 pixels wide. That's almost 300 dpi on a 19" monitor. Crank that up to 1200 dpi and you almost arrive at that 32k number.

Does it still seem excessive on a Palm sized display? Sure. Given how the numbers work in the computing world, the next digit down was probably a little too close to what is practical in the next 2-3 years. Better to be safe?

Re:32,000x32,000?

[Sparky77]

Specifically, the article says "The new graphics system is designed to support screen sizes up to 32,000 by 32,000 pixels!" (emphasis added).
All they are saying is that the software is less limited in what resolutions are supported, not that they expect the device to actually have a screen that size.

Re:32,000x32,000?

[mrseigen]

Even if they don't use it, it sure looks good on a spec sheet, right? :)

Screen resolution?

[PatrickThomson]

Highlights are a 32,000x32,000 screen support

So when will I be seeing gigapixel screens in other devices?

I want to know if...

[lxt]

...existing Tungstens will be able to upgrade. Probably not, but they've done it before with OS 5...here's hoping.

Re:I want to know if...

[queen of everything]

PalmSource also announced Palm OS Garnet, an enhanced version of the popular Palm OS 5, designed to accelerate the development of Palm Powered handhelds and smartphones.

I think that's what you can get for that...Its a good reason to upgrade your hardware!

Hmm...

[JoeLinux]

Honest question: Is there any design that you can think of that doesn't result in a bulky cell phone/palm, or an impossibly small screen, with no stylus? I'd love to use this. But I don't want to feel like I have a mini-computer as a phone.

Joe

Re:Hmm...

[tachyonflow]

It can be done. I really like the size and feel of this Samsung i500 PalmOS phone.

Yea! 32,000 x 32,000 pixel resolution!

[stephenb]

Finally, I can use my uber wall of flat panels monitors with my PDA!

Welcome Slashdot Visitor?

[Dashing Leech]

When I clicked the link I got a message saying "Welcome Slashdot visitor, you have been redirected to a lite version ..." and so on, and this was before there were any comments on the article. Looks like they were heading off getting slashdotted beforehand.

Oh, and I also didn't see any screenshots anywhere. Could someone direct me to them.

Re:Welcome Slashdot Visitor?

[samsmithnz]

Now they will be slashdotted twice as bad, once for the first article, and then the 2nd time when people go to read the user comments.

:p

Re:Welcome Slashdot Visitor?

[momerath2003]

Just copy/paste the URL so it doesn't have the REFERER as slashdot.org.

And even on the full site, there are no pictures.

Re:Isn't 32k x 32k overkill?

[Karamchand]

Think in bytes. Or words at least. You can't always have anything in between.
Think about the colors.. 16.. 256 - there's no such thing as "120 color support".

256MB memory

[LookSharp]

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?

Re:256MB memory

[milgr]

does the 256MB limitation in the OS mean that "external memory" cannot exceed that amount as well?

Currently PalmOs 5 devices can handle 1G or more memory. I would expect that Colbolt devices would handle GB of static external memory.

Re:256MB memory

[Splezunk]

Most palm devices have External memory slot. My Treo has a SD card with 512M on it, and has no problem using it. Most applications I have run of the SD card.

I have seen people cram a DVD (reformated into the screen dimensions) on an SD Card. Works great. I have my MP3's on there too. Not bad for a phone!

Re:256MB memory

[dulinor]

This is true - PalmSource has confirmed that the 256 MB limit is for internal RAM. External sources - CF, SD, memory stick, etc. are supported at least up to current capacities (1 GB or so)

The "Chief Competitive Officer" posted to Palminfocenter on this:

RE: Limited vision Michael Mace @ 2/10/2004 12:39:57 PM

We can go higher than 256 megs in future editions of Palm OS Cobalt. And keep in mind that you can go to gigs of storage on a memory card.

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.

I have worked on a lot of naming over the years, and the one sure thing is that you can never please everyone. It is very hard to find names that pass trademark muster and also do not mean something inappropriate in some country. We settled on minerals because they are an ingredient in many things. That seemed appropriate for software designed as an element in many great products.

Mike
CCO, PalmSource
On a Treo at the conference

OS X / Mac hotsync....

[johnpaul191]

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).

Re:OS X / Mac hotsync....

[momerath2003]

Actually, the only way that iSync works with palms is if you have Palm software installed. When you install it, it installs Palm Desktop (the PIM software), the HotSync application, support libraries, and conduits.

The iSync for Palm basically removes the Palm Desktop conduits and adds a conduit to sync with iSync.

In order to use iSync with the Sony Clie, one of which I have, you must have Palm Desktop, Missing Sync for Clie, iCal, and the iSync for Palm installed.

Missing Sync provides the Palm HotSync communication, iSync for Palm provides HotSync iCal/Address Book.

iSync alone won't touch Palms, so it is highly unlikely that Apple will be able to bypass Palm Desktop/Hotsync completely.

Re:OS X / Mac hotsync....

[JWW]

You know the sad part is, its not much easier for Palms (or Pocket PCs even!) connected to windows. Depending on your email client and other software on your PC the setup gets just as convoluted as you have mentioned.

Hmmm...

[dustmote]

I know these are pretty ubiquitous among business users and those who can afford them, but are they really that useful to the terminally broke? What functionality does a PDA offer that makes it worth the price tag to someone who is making something in the neighborhood of 20k a year? I'd love to play with one, but I just don't know what I'd do with it, apart from hold my phone numbers. My cell already does that. Anyone?

Re:Hmmm...

[AKnightCowboy]

I'd love to play with one, but I just don't know what I'd do with it, apart from hold my phone numbers. My cell already does that. Anyone?

Well then they're really not targetted at you. If you only make $20k/year then blowing $400 on a PDA isn't that great of a decision. These are for people that need the newest and greatest gadgets and have gads of disposable income. If you don't fit in there then stick with a paper day planner from a dollar store. I've still got a Palm M505 and hardly ever use it. Once in awhile I play Tetris on it or jot a phone number down, but I could've just bought a Game Boy and used a piece of scrap paper for the phone number (or programmed it in my cell phone like you said). I honestly don't know what people see in PDAs.. I'd prefer having a subnotebook like the old Toshiba Libretto that I can type fast on to take notes in class or something.

Re:Hmmm...

[vondo]

Well, a monochrome Palm can be had for $80 and a color Clie for about $150, so I don't know if that's something you'd want to afford.

The first thing a paper organizer can never do is beep to tell you were to go. Also, with Palms there is an amazing amount of software out there (www.palmgear.com) which will do all kinds of stuff. My two favorites are a great shopping list program (HandyShop) and a program to keep track of all my business travel (TravelTracker).

You'd likely find other things that were very useful.

Re:Hmmm...

[cnkeller]

What functionality does a PDA offer that makes it worth the price tag to someone who is making something in the neighborhood of 20k a year?

Money is relative I guess, but I use either a Palm or iPaq for my keeping track of my gym workouts. Yes, it's a little geeky, but I find that it works far better than paper for estimating goals and graphing history of bodyfat, weight lifted, reps, etc. They also make great places to hold grocery lists and generic shopping lists around holidays and birthdays.

Yeah, I know paper works wonderfully for that. But lets face it, for 99% of the world (me included) they are toys that you buy with disposable income. At 20K, you don't have any discretionary income if you live in first world....

Re:Hmmm...

[iSwitched]

I love this question, and I'm hoping you get lots of opinion, and not modded 'offtopic'.

Here's my $0.02

For the average person, and even average geek, there is absolutely nothing to see here. I carried a PDA for years (Palms of gradually increasing fanciness). At first I would whip it out at the drop of a hat, take notes on it, etc. Kept all my calendars, addresses, the usual, even had some cool games, like a version of Galaxian with real authentic sound.

Over time - it started running out of charge more and more frequently, as i started ignoring it more and more. It was rare that I ever need to look up someones full address, and my phone has all the numbers. My calendar wasn't that busy, so I hardly ever referred to it.

I gave it to a friend - I simply didn't need another gadget weighing me down. Nowadays, I carry a good laptop in a nice backpack. The thing has decent battery life and wakes from sleep reliably, so if I really need to look something up I just open the lid. Not as convenient as the handheld, but quite a bit more powerful.

If you don't travel extensively, and work in a field where you're gonna carry a laptop and a backpack anyway (sounds like virtually every programmer I know), save the dough until you can afford a nice portable, something under 6 pounds or so, and just use it.

This works for me, as usual, your results may differ.

Re:Hmmm...

[homer_ca]

The older Palms aren't powerful enough for multimedia, but they're surprisingly useful if you happen to find the right apps. Things like Pocket Quicken to organize your finances, IP subnet calculators, offline web browsers like Avantgo and Plucker (I prefer Plucker myself, it's Free and Avantgo needs registration). You can read ebooks too, but the 160x160 screen is hard on the eyes. The PocketPCs and newer Palms have at least a 320x240 screen. Of course ebooks can mean a lot of different things, like novels to read on a long plane ride, reference books, or Linux HOWTOs. $50 to $80 for one of these is still a non-trivial amount for a starving student, but it's in the realm of affordability.

Re:Hmmm...

[lpret]

As much as I wanted to mod you down, here's my response instead:

The beautiful thing about PDAs are their flexibility. I'm a college student and I use one, my father is a systems administrator and uses one, and my mother is in human resources and uses one. My mom has a Zire71 and uses it for keeping her meetings planned out, all of contacts for people in her office (as well as the many family and family friends), and she keeps her recipes on a mobile database.

My Dad uses his (Toshiba e755) to do remote network administration and to give presentations in meetings (yes, full-blown powerpoint presentations) among the reasons my mother uses hers.

I use mine (Sony NZ-90) to take notes in class, take pictures (2 megapixel camera built-in), email/browsing with wifi, mp3 player for walking to/from class, and keep track of my diabetes, among the other things my mom and dad both use it for.

It's all up to you what you want to do with it. I have art friends who use it to quickly sketch ideas, finance majors who keep track of every expense on there, and my sister who's a nurse and keeps her drug dictionary on there. Get a cheap Zire, see if you use it at all, and go from there. It's not for everyone, but for those of us who use them, it becomes incredibly important.

Re:Hmmm...

[MissMarvel]

I own a Palm and use it a lot.... telephone directory, address list (a must for xmas cards), calendar, computer inventory at work, and the occasional game to keep me entertained when in a queue. The resident physician staff at the office use theirs to keep track of their procedural experience which must be reported as part of their training. The Palm fits nicely in their breast pocket, is easy to use, and is jolly-on-the-spot when needed.

Of course, I will admit to being forced to use one and that it took a long time to adjust to the non-paper method. Now I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Re:Hmmm...

[tyen]

...but are they really that useful to the terminally broke?

You don't say what you do for a living, but if you are learning how to sell, just a few tools can make you stand heads and shoulders above other salespeople in your field. A PDA is one of those tools. If your raw sales skills are about par, employing these tools with the savviness of a geek will set you apart. The really outstanding salespeople I've met had some things in common. A biggie I've seen is they follow up until they get a sale (then they keep following up to get the next sale), and they stay hyper-organized to do that. They also organize a systematic way of selling and marketing. Keeping track of hundreds, even thousands of sales leads and clients simultaneously is ridiculously easy when you are systematized and computerized.

If you are like most Slashdotters, you'll dismiss sales and marketing work. Before you do however, consider this. High end sales and marketing skills (that is, involving more than phone monkey work, and require domain knowledge of an industry) are the one set of skills that have never been outsourced. Ever. If you learn how to market and sell, and you are a geek in even a modestly-growing area, you will never lack for a job. Hell, you can always create your own job when push comes to shove. Remember, even during the Great Depression, the worst economic calamity the U.S. has experienced to date, there were still want ads in the paper...for sales positions. If you are a rainmaker, doors open. Geeks have natural talents that can be applied to sales and marketing tasks, with tremendous leverage. If you just have to get over the awkward social skills you currently labor under, there are coaches and mentors to help you with that; if it helps you learn how to market and sell, their fees are repaid orders of magnitude over.

So even if you only make USD 20K per annum right now, a PDA is appropriate if you are at the stage where you are applying your sales skills, and need a way to keep track of your contacts. I say this as a geek who eventually learned how to market and sell well enough to do it on my own. Believe me, it was worth it in spades.

Re:Hmmm...

[AKnightCowboy]

As much as I wanted to mod you down, here's my response instead:

BTW, WTF is up with that comment? You really need to read the moderation FAQ sometime and quit using moderation as a way to censor people who have differing opinions from yourself. Fine, you use your Sony NZ-90 a lot, I don't use my Palm M505 at all.

A guy making $20k/year who can't come up with a reason on his own why he needs one certainly shouldn't be blowing a couple hundred bucks on one just to satisfy his curiosity. The fact of the matter is, if you need a PDA you will buy one, if you don't then get a dayplanner, they're much cheaper.

As for using a PDA for network administration, why would I bother with a kludgy pen interface for debugging issues when I can just grab a laptop if I needed a mobile device (which I don't since we're sane and have everything on terminal servers). I can quite comfortably sit at home at my desk and bring the entire network up or down via a modem.

Re:Isn't 32k x 32k overkill?

[El Pollo Loco]

It's for porn. Horray for microscopicaly small boobies!!!

Re:Rumour

[Temporal]

Why would they build it off the Linux kernel when they already own BeOS? Yeah, I'd say that's a rumor alright.

text of article

[Anonymous Coward]

PalmSource today introduced Palm OS Cobalt, previously know as Palm OS 6. Cobalt is a new enhanced version of the operating system that is designed to enable the creation of new categories of devices for the communications, enterprise, education and entertainment markets. PalmSource also announced Palm OS Garnet, an enhanced version of the popular Palm OS 5, designed to accelerate the development of Palm Powered handhelds and smartphones.

"We believe Palm OS Cobalt will pave the way for new categories of smart mobile devices and solutions, for the communications, enterprise, education and entertainment markets," said David Nagel, president and CEO of PalmSource, Inc. "We have also reinforced our commitment to optimize our platform for wireless devices, by including wireless capabilities in both Palm OS Cobalt and Palm OS Garnet, designed to enable a wide range of smartphones and other wireless products."

Formerly known as Palm OS 6, Palm OS Cobalt is a complete rewrite of Palm OS designed to maintain ease of use and software compatibility while creating a foundation for next-generation Palm Powered devices and solutions tailored to the growing needs of the communications, enterprise, education and entertainment markets. Palm OS Cobalt improves compatibility with Microsoft Windows, while offering advanced features including:

Multitasking, multithreading;
Memory protection;
Support for more memory and larger screens;
Industry standards-based security;
Extensible communication and multimedia frameworks capable of handling multiple connections simultaneously;
In addition, Palm OS Cobalt provides rich graphics and multimedia features derived from the Be OS, which Palm(R), Inc. acquired in 2001.

Also announced today, Palm OS Garnet builds on the solid foundation of Palm OS 5 and incorporates new built-in technical features such as standard support for a broad range of screen resolutions, dynamic input area, improved network communication, and Bluetooth. Palm OS Garnet is designed to enable licensees to more efficiently bring Palm Powered handhelds and smartphones to market and reduce development costs.

New Software Development Tools
PalmSource also introduced new software development tools for Palm OS Cobalt and Palm OS Garnet. A technical preview of the new Palm OS Developer Suite is now available to Palm OS developers in the Resource Pavilion in the Developer Zone. The new Palm OS Developer Suite is based on the industry-standard Eclipse environment, an open-source, Integrated Development Environment (IDE) originally developed by IBM that supports software development in a variety of languages, including C, C++, Java and COBOL. The Palm OS Developer Suite provides one set of tools designed to assist Palm OS developers to create and bring to market higher performance wireless, entertainment and enterprise-grade applications that take advantage of the advanced functionality of Palm Powered smart mobile devices. PalmSource and its partners now offer a wide variety of development tools, including Metrowerks CodeWarrior, the Eclipse environment, Borland's tool suite and the Microsoft NET compatible tools from AppForge.

More About Palm OS Cobalt

Multithreaded, Multitasking -- Palm OS Cobalt is designed to enable multiple applications to run simultaneously, so users gain more productivity and a better user experience. For example, a user can listen to MP3 files, book a calendar appointment and take an incoming phone call. A background-processing model is designed to reduce most memory problems commonly associated with multitasking in mobile devices.

Expanded, Protected Memory Architecture -- With support for up to 256MB of RAM and 256MB of ROM, Palm OS Cobalt paves the way for the creation of more sophisticated communications, enterprise, education and entertainment applications. In addition, the new protected memory architecture is designed to protect against applications "hanging" the system or causing crashes.

System Wide Security Archit

Re:Isn't 32k x 32k overkill?

[minkeyboodle]

Article: The new graphics system is designed to support screen sizes up to 32,000 by 32,000 pixels!

That doesn't mean the screens themselves will support that resolution (yet). But in the article it is abundantly clear that they're really, REALLY targeting multimedia applications for this OS, and very much want to push PalmOS into the "true modern operating system" realm. So big numbers like 32,000 x 32,000 sound good to people who don't know any better. At least I'm not aware of any technology that can deliver that many pixels in the size of current palm screens.

Hairy Palms...

[highwaytohell]

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".

About the 32k pixel screen.

[MooKore 2004]

If you read the article properly, You would of noticed that it supports *upto* a 32000x32000, it dosent actually have one. So if you had actually had a 32000x32000 screen somewhere, it would work. If you looked at the Actual screenshots, it is only doing 320x480!

dumb terminal

[SHEENmaster]

Those with network support can be used as terminals, effectively allowing you to keep any computer at your fingertips wherever you are. "Palmtop" operating systems always try to limit what you do, and a thinclient/dumbterminal design seems better for a phone, which is nearly always connected to the network.

the link.....

[johnpaul191]

There is an article on what Cobalt lacks...

Macrumors posted this toot hough:

While a 3rd party (Mark/Space, Missing Sync) is planning on providing this functionality for Mac users, a lack of built-in functionality is unfortunate.

32K

[ColonBlow]

they better be able to support more than 256Mb of ram, since you'll need at least a Gb to represent that 32kX32K screen.

Re:32K

[stratjakt]

The 32k x 32k represents addressable pixels. You could manipulate such a screen directly, or through a framebuffer built into the display block. No need to do it in RAM.

Though of course no Palm will have such a display.

It's simply got two 16 bit words to represent an X/Y coordinate. (15 bits + 1 for something else?) Nothing magical there.

8 bit would have left it at 256x256 max, anything between is silly given conventional device design.

version naming

[maliabu]

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

Re:version naming

[drinkypoo]

The problem with this is that one used to be able to say "works with PalmOS 3.x and up" and now one will have to say "works with PalmOS thiselement, thatelement, and thisotherelement". Unless perhaps they picked elements with ever-increasing atomic weights, and they provided a periodic table with each software package so you could determine your version compliance. I mean who's going to remember if unobtainium comes before or after adamantium?

NVIDIA is going to enhance Cobalt devices

[queen of everything]

I saw this at the bottom of the article. NVIDIA is going to enhance the graphics for devices using Cobalt and Garnet. They're going to "bring advanced multimedia support to the OS". I thought it was pretty cool; although it makes my PDA sound so old and boring.

Was considering Palm, but now maybe linux-based?

[sjonke]

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?

OT but BeOS & Old hardware

[t0qer]

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.

Re:OT but BeOS & Old hardware

[stratjakt]

Desktop CPUs were never designed with low power consumption in mind. You'd probably need to lug around a 10lb battery unit to have any sort of reasonable usage time in such a thing.

Besides, a dragonball cpu is probably cheaper than a ZIF socket these days.

Re:OT but BeOS & Old hardware

[jackmakrl]

I keep a 486DX266 in my glovebox so I can tell people "my car has a 486 in it".

Screenshots are here...

[SkiddyRowe]

Here are the screenshots. But better open them in a different window 'Slashdot User!'

Re:32k x 32k with only 256 MB?

[stratjakt]

Devices like that dont have framebuffers like a VGA card, the display *is* the framebuffer, you address and flip pixels directly on it.

Or, rather, they dont need one, but I'm sure many do to facilitate multimedia functions.

You don't need Missing Sync.

[Grincho]

You don't need Missing Sync. Just download Apple's iSync 1.2 Palm Conduit. Combined with Palm Desktop, it works great with my Clie PEG-SJ20. Clie, Palm, whatever--the only difference, as far as the desktop machine is concerned, is the logo on the front.

Re:You don't need Missing Sync.

[heychris]

It depends on the Palm. My old Palm (can't remember what it was, but it was the low-end grayscale Clie) didn't need Missing Sync, but my new one (TG-50) most assuredly does. I've read that it doesn't if you use Bluetooth to sync, but BT syncing is soooo slow. My fault for using Vindigo, I suppose.

CC

Coooool.

[josh glaser]

Sounds sweet! I think it's actually a good thing that they are switching to a non-numeric naming system because OS 5 isn't going to be outdated anytime soon. I mean, you can still get new OS 4.1 Palms, so why give people the impression that they're outdated right out of the box? (Well, in the 4.x case, they might be, but OS 5 will be around for a while, I think.) The only downside is that having two "modern" operating systems might confuse people...should they want people to know that the newest is the most advanced? But that's they're call, not mine, so I'll move on. 32Kx32K is overkill. I'll be accepting my Obvious award now. From what I've heard, you will be able to upgrade from the some of the Tungstens. The T3 seems likely, and the C is a possibility (that's just my - well, mostly other peoples' - speculation). Oh, and where are the screenshots?

OT: What is the dpi "resolution" of reality?

[NotQuiteReal]

I think I saw this somewhere before, but can't remember the numbers...

What kind of dpi would I need to be looking at on a display before I couldn't tell it was a display? E.g. what is the resolving power of the typical person's eyes?

[Assume it is before beer-o'clock]

Re:OT: What is the dpi "resolution" of reality?

[LowPoint SATA]

It's 1 dpi. That's right; 1 dpi.

Unless you are in space. That makes it 2 dpi.

YRMV.

Re:OT: What is the dpi "resolution" of reality?

[drinkypoo]

Somewhere between 300 and 600 dpi, closer to 600 than 300. This assumes that you have an infinite number of colors available to you, or at least you're "close enough", which is to say at least 24 bit color. (36 bit would be better.)

I don't know how many discrete imaging elements are in the eye itself, but it hardly matters because the eye moves (involuntarily) to make a smooth image out of a number of samples, or more to the point, a certain sampling duration.

Re:OT: What is the dpi "resolution" of reality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think in terms of angular resolution rather than dots per inch.

Re:OT: What is the dpi "resolution" of reality?

[BarakMich]

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

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[account_deleted]

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32000 x 32000 -- not really

[Wateshay]

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.

Re:32000 x 32000 -- not really

[Xeger]

Right.

The cynic in me reads this statement as "The graphical subsystem on previous versions of PalmOS suffered from extreme lack of foresight and failed to allocate enough bits to device coordinates, thereby preventing PalmOS from supporting any reasonable screen resolution. We're not quite so myopic now, and we've allocated 32 bits for the same purpose."

Big whoop. By this metric, Windows (and X) are capable of supporting TWO BILLION x TWO BILLION resolution screens, because they use an entire 32-bit unsigned integer for the device coordinate along each axis!

MAC LOVERS! You will be OK...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Visit http://www.markspace.com/ the makers of The Missing Sync and you will discover they fully intend to provide sw to suppor teh new Palms on the mac.

Of course, with that said, if I have Chapura Keysite style syncing between my Palm and Entourage on the Mac, I would get rid of windows forever. Oh well.

perhaps the point of the high resolution

[way2trivial]

is to enable it to drive a projector..

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.

It is funny!

[yudan]

Palm OS Cobalt is designed to enable multiple applications to run simultaneously, so users gain more productivity and a better user experience. For example, a user can listen to MP3 files, book a calendar appointment and take an incoming phone call.

wow! I really don't know how to listen to MP3 AND make phone call, AND GAIN PRODUCTIVITY! Can anybody tell me?

Re:Isn't 32k x 32k overkill?

[Wateshay]

Hmmm... "microscopically small" isn't usually what I'm looking for in porn star breasts.

Security

[octal666]

Industry standards-based security; I wonder what is that security, I don't see much security as a standard on industry.

Complicated schedule & poor temporal orientati

[arsinmsn]

Since I've got many meetings in a day, and am only vaguely aware of the passing of time, a palm is crucial to allowing me to anger as few people as possible during the work-day by accidentally blowing them off.

Plus it plays MP3s; admittedly only a few at a time, but enough to get me home in a revised state of mind.

The eye

[autopr0n]

There are about 6-8 million color sensing neurons in the eye, and about 120 million brightness sensing neurons.

I don't know how many discrete imaging elements are in the eye itself, but it hardly matters because the eye moves (involuntarily) to make a smooth image out of a number of samples, or more to the point, a certain sampling duration.

Where did you hear this? That isn't how the eye works at all. You can test this yourself by writing a program to flash a word on the screen for a short amount of time. (like a 30th or 60th of a second. You should still be able to read it.

Re:The eye

[Shanep]

Where did you hear this? That isn't how the eye works at all.

I've heard this in a few documentaries about human sight. I was sceptical until I experimented with my own sight. I tried moving my head to a random location, while my eyes were shut and then opening them with the intention of not moving them after opening (Ha! that's funny! I think I can completely control my brain!). The image that forms seems instant and extends to my peripheral vision. I believe the eye needs to detect movement only in the peripheral areas to form an image there and the movement can be extremely small. So small that I do not notice and why would my brain allow me to notice anyway? BTW, this test is flawed because the act of opening ones eyes, causes an image change within the eye, which is the same as detecting movement.

I think when people hear this theory, their first thought is "small area of detection" and "large movement required", whereas I think the truth is "moderate area of detection" and "extremely small movement required to complete peripheral image".

Curiously, I see colour all the way to the peripheral edges using this method. Which goes against what I have learned about peripheral vision (no colour) and this image "build up" through movement theory (colour added by brain through what it knows is there).

To get a dramatic demonstration which adds weight to this theory... Ever tried staring at the same spot for an extended period of time (without even blinking)? You (well I do) get a flashing image (ring) where the peripheral vision is, which eventually blacks out completely. I find this state very hard to sustain. My eyes normally move a tiny little bit (seems to be horizontal movement) which causes the peripheral vision to suddenly appear again. This is difficult to do, your eyes will be stinging and begging for mercy because they have become dry due to no blinking and you will find that whether you like it or not, your eyes usually step from side to side ever so slightly, undoing the effect. The easiest way to do it is to lay down on your back with your head well supported so that movement of your head is less likely to ruin your chances of this working.

Based on this effect alone, I think the theory is correct.

I have been doing this since I was a child. I can also voluntarily change the focus of my eyes. Every person I have asked about this (bringing eyes in and out of focus), claim they cannot do it. Anyone else able to do these things?

It's as if our brain contains a frame buffer (the image we perceive) which gets updated by the eye as it moves around under brain control. I guess we are like this because using our entire retina as the frame buffer for our brain, would not be feasible due to the huge amount of information that would have to constantly traverse the optic nerve. It's like using a video card with local frame buffer to get around bus interconnect (PCI/AGP) bandwidth limitations (I am serious by the way).

You can test this yourself by writing a program to flash a word on the screen for a short amount of time. (like a 30th or 60th of a second. You should still be able to read it.

Hang on, there are far too many things at work here that might muddy the facts. There is persistence of an image on a CRT screen due to light emitted from the phospors slowly decaying after they have been switched off (perhaps slow LCD response could cause a similar effect) and then there is also the persistence of vision due to slow response of the human eye itself.

What's more, how big is this word you are flashing on your screen? The fact that it is flashing means that it will be detected as movement to the eye, voiding the test.

What's BeOS about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive my ignorance, but what's distinctive about "BeOS like multitasking and threading"? I know Palm bought the BeOS IP, so presumably it's exactly like BeOS's, but what does that mean? Is it generally considered better than, say, Linux or BSD's? Better for certain purposes? Or what?

Mirror of screenshots

[BRSQUIRRL]

Unfortunately, it is on Yahoo, so if anyone else has a better place to mirror, it would be appreciated.

Screenshots

Re:Isn't 32k x 32k overkill?

[stonecypher]

Man, this would be insightful if what you were claiming was a boundary power of two. Unfortunately for you, that's 2^15, not 2^16, and the whole-screen resolution is 2^30, not 2^32.

I think the real issue here is that someone at Palm said "hey, let's not impose stupid limits on the platform for five generations from now" and everyone went "What? i can't count that high. That am be dumm. Let's guess why! It's got to be... uh... about... uh... the *machine*. Yeah."

Of course, the astute notice that 32,000 isn't 32k, that a word isn't nessecarily (soon even frequently) 32 bits, and that colors don't always come nearly packaged in machine-sized powers of two.

Re:Was considering Palm, but now maybe linux-based

[darrylo]

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.

Even if there was a Mac syncing solution for the Zaurus, I'd strongly recommend that you take a good, hard look at the Zaurus PIM apps before making a decision.

I have both a Zaurus and a Palm (a Clie, actually), and the Palm is what I use, because I need a PDA with good PIM apps. After being spoiled by DateBk5 on the Palm, there's no way I could use the Zaurus. And, I'd be willing to pay US$100 for Zaurus PIM apps with equivalent functionality and usability (DateBK5 is soooo incredibly polished).

Here's a basic example: on the Zaurus, create an appointment that's five minutes long, and give it some descriptive text. On my Zaurus, this is displayed this as a completely unusable and unreadable line of pixels. On the Palm, it's just displayed as completely readable text.

(Oh, and don't even get me started on the fact that I have to use a #$%^&*()?%! dialog box to enter text. On the Palm, I just write or type. For the virgins out there, this is the difference between on-screen editing (the Palm) and using dialog boxes for all editing (the Z).)

Re:Was considering Palm, but now maybe linux-based

[a1291762]

You can get Qtopia Desktop from Trolltech but it is not compatible with Sharp's "new" and incompatible syncing stuff. It is possible to sync with an "older" zaurus (it's the ROM that matters, not the hardware). It should be possible to setup OpenZaurus/Opie and be able to sync with Trolltech's Qtopia Desktop if you've got a "new" zaurus and you can't put an older ROM on it.

There is a USB driver somewhere that you'll need to connect your Zaurus to a Mac.

I've synchronized an A300 (older model zaurus only sold in Japan) and a SL5000D (really old "developer only" zaurus) with a Mac.

Link

Re:Isn't 32k x 32k overkill?

[drayzel]

I just figured that 32k x 32k would be the maximum resolution in the noncolor modes. As you add color I would assume the maximum screen dimension would shrink as the color depth increased. So maybe with 32bit color the max screen size would be 800x600 or something?

I'm sure there are some math genius out there that can do the math for me... that reminds me I need to go study for a math test :(

~Z

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Lack of out-of-box-support a very negative message

[michaeldot]

As a longstanding Palm supporter and a Mac user, I too am quite disappointed at this "unfortunate" turn of events. So disappointed that I've felt it necessary to drop Larry a polite note:

Larry Slotnick (larry.slotnick@palmsource.com)
Chief Products Officer
PalmSource

Dear Larry,

I am extremely disappointed to read that you no longer intend to support the Mac OS with your future products.

As a Palm user since 1996, having owned six iterations of them up to my current T3 and recommended them to countless numbers of buyers (both Mac and PC users), I feel that my support of the Palm platform may now be drawing to an end.

I am aware that 3rd party solution(s) may be available to provide the missing synch support, just as they exist for using Pocket PC devices on a Mac. However, by not providing "out of the box" support for the Mac platform, you are sending a clear message to both the press and the Mac-using community that you believe the platform no longer worth your attention.

I strongly urge you to reconsider this short-sighted and potentially damaging move. You may not be aware that many of us Mac users do actually talk to PC users and influence their PDA buying decisions. To jettison the minority Mac platform because of its low marketshare is one thing, but to cause them to become disgusted advocates for competing products is another.

Please reconsider your strategy.

Sincerely,

Michael -------
Palm user since '96

Things a $100 Palm PDA can do that paper can't

[enkidu]

• Backup to multiple locations so you aren't screwed if you lose your PDA. How often do you photocopy your day planner?
• Encrypt passwords/PIN# private information.
• Search for all occurances of a string
• Store/index reference books
• Actively remind you of deadlines
• Cache content from your computer/web

Check out my journal entry on what I want in a PDA. Palm OS Cobalt seems like a sideways step at best.

History repeats itself

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Palm creates a system called "Cobalt"

2) Sun buys Palm for an amazing sum without knowing why

3) Sun Cobalt is slowly destroyed for a second time ...

4) non-profit!

Coments from nerd at PalmOne

[Inflatable Hippo]

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.

Re:About damn time!

[Acrimonious Coward]

Palm OS already is already multitasking and has been this way since the first Palm OS. The original OS was built upon the AMX embedded kernel, which has preemptive multithreading, however the more recent Palm OS's are based on Palm's own multitasking kernel. The real problem is that the user events are only handled in the "UI Thread" so all GUI driven applications must run in that single thread.

Bad blood or a case of industry karma

[saha]

I guess the ex-Be OS executives could be getting back at Apple for shutting out Be OS development beyond the 604 processors on the Mac. I'm a huge Be OS admirer and still refer back to Scot Hacker's columns on Byte magazine to understand the way a truly modern OS should run and be responsive under heavy workloads. I think its ironic that Be OS who's microkernel originated to run on the AT&T Hobbit processor (Newton PDA prototypes) will now end up going back into a PDA. Funny how that works right?

I'm also very disappointed with PalmSource decision to stop development for the Mac OSX platform. I've been a Handspring Treo 180 user for a while now and regularly use iSync and the Hotsync tools to back up my Treo and synchronize my Addressbook and Calendar with the Mac OSX built in apps. I couldn't be happier with the whole configuration and interoperability of the two devices. Personally I think its the best damn thing since slice bread and I pity the masses who still have a separate devices with addresses, numbers and calendars in their mobile phone, PDA, home computer, work computer with out a single button solution to synchronize all that data.