PalmSource Drops Mac Synchronization in Cobalt

Gear_Media writes "Originally posted at PalmInfocenter: 'In a surprise announcement at the developer conference, PalmSource revealed that Palm OS Cobalt will no longer offer synchronization with the Mac. This marks a departure as previous versions of the Palm OS had long shipped with Mac compatible hotsync software.' Smart move? I think not."

Comments

Hmm....

[Mieckowski]

Maybe its time for apple to ressurect the Newton?

Stupid palm

[koody]

With Mac OS X getting stronger support from both nerds and end users and palm losing in its own niche, not supporting a platform with an existing userbase is pretty moronic.

Re:Stupid palm

[nehril]

Palm probably started designing their new system around .Net, activex, ms access/outlook, visual studio and other technologies that nail them to Microsoft. By the time somebody remembered to ask about Mac support, it was probably impossible without porting giant chunks of Windows along with it.

Cross platform stuff really needs careful design up front, the right choice in widget sets/dev tools/libraries WILL make the difference. Just ask the Neverwinter Nights folks, who even chose the wrong *installer file* format and got hosed at the end.

isync

[klyX]

maybe palmsource knows something we dont re: isync?

Re:Might be because...

[RevAaron]

Je-zus, it's good someone said this. I don't know how many posts were at OSnews.com saying "pfft- I already have iSync! Palm Desktop blows!" Blatantly ignoring the fact that if you don't install Palm Desktop, you're SOL as far as syncing your Palm with your Mac.

A reply mentions that you "probably" won't need the palm desktop any longer- but have we heard anything about this? Is Apple going to buy out Mark/Space's Missing Sync? Not likely. What is more likely is that Palm users on the Mac will have to *buy* a copy of Missing Sync just to sync their Palm OS devices with their Macs... Bleh.

Re:It's not trendsetting that counts, it's profit.

[ndpatel]

dude.

the usb market probably would have grown and done it's thing without the imac, but you know what? the instant the imac came out, the usb market exploded. yes, it's because all of the sudden there was a captive market of imac owners who needed printers and slow-ass usb hard drives, but the point was the imac was a major product whose sheer popularity created an entire market for usb devices.

the same could be argued for digital video editing--until apple created a market for 1394 minidv cameras by shipping millions of copies of imovie, no one was doing it at home except for uh, you, with your 1989 amiga. cut-ting edge, my man.

and i clearly had a centris 660av with a 25mhz 68040 and DSP chip that could capture s-video out of the box in 1993. it was just a pain, because the computer couldn't talk to the camera very well--there was s-link, but it never worked right. apple made it all just work(TM) and that's kind of what people give them cred for, y'know?

(interesting note about multitasking: when apple went to OS X, preemptive multitasking meant that the age-old behavior of all processes screeching to a halt when the mouse button was held down was finally done away with. there was actually a massive outcry because people in realtime production environments had used this little limitiation to their advantage, essentially starting and stopping the computer as they needed. i just thought that was interesting.)

Re:Obviously Mac Users are not a viable market

[jdhouse4]

I am an new-to-the-game Apple developer. MS tools have little on XCode and IB. MS doesn't have anything like the Controller Layer which negates the need for glue code to hook a UI and model code. In an app we developed for Win and X, the X version took less than a third, that's right 1/3, of the time the Win version did. So please, enough of the urban legend that MS has great developer tools.

Apple may have had a bad history in the past for supporting developers. That cannot be said today.