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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."
This could be a good idea for them, because I bet Apple step in! (or someoene else) Outsourcing anyone!?!
Apple obviously knew that Palm was going to bone them, so they've released iSync as part of MacOS X. I don't know how well it works since I don't use a Palm device.
I wonder if this stems from any concern at Palm that Apple might come out with an Apple-branded PDA.
On one hand, I think that is unlikely because, unlike the MP3 player, the PDA market is swamped and Apple can't make that much of a splash.
On the other hand, Apple has relentlessly marginalized 3rd-party developers in the past few years. That's not necessarily a bad thing (many of the iApps are great products), but I can see other 3rd-party developers getting scared.
However, all in all, I think Palm is just being stupid.
I have been shopping for a PDA for a while, and am pretty set on a PocketPC device,but that's beside the point. It got me thinking though, that there aren't any PDAs that are really FOR Macs. Palm does (or now used to) work with them, but PocketPCs don't I'm sure.
Are there any PDAs that work well with Mac? Given Apple's success with iPOD, I can't help but think it would be a great move for them to produce an equally-sexy PDA.
no comment
Well if Palm doesn't care about how I sync my device with my mac, I surely know that a P800 from Sony Ericsson p.e. does. Smart move indeed, same as in: I'll never look back.
These x% of computer users are among the ones who put their money where their mouthes are.
In other words: a highly attractive market. Especially for high cost PDAs, gadgets etc.
Sounds like Apple have synchronizing well and truly covered anyway. So this is probably no great loss. I mean Palm still haven't made it easy for me to have _one_ group of contacts shared between my PDA, cellphone and PC. It's left up to the true integrators such as Apple to do this.
Hopefully Palm will give Apple lots of support in the future -- and together can build something much more stable and well integrated than any Palm built effort could have produced.
--
Rare Window - free your photos
Yea, but now it probably won't. The worst thing about Palm-for-Mac sync software is that it breaks iSync.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
USB became popular because Apple pushed it. Home video editing became popular after Apple worked with it and made it easy. By Palm ignoring a trend setting platform it runs the risk of writing itself out of history. Just as in luxury cars the high end features eventually trickle down to every day models. Palm will be lost. Now the funny thing to happen would be Microsoft making their Pocket PC fully syncable and compatible with Mac Office products and Mac OS.
If nobody writes a free conduit to iSync, then I will. This isn't that big a deal.
..don't panic
If Sun raises a trademark infringement stink over the name "Cobalt", I won't blame them a bit. This is the first situation I've seen in a very long time where I could honestly state that a reasonable person could be confused over the use of the trademark. This is NOTHING like Linux laundry detergent or McDonald's Sheet Metal Fabricators.
This is more like, a computer maker creates an OS and calls it Linux, or a guy named Smith opens a restaurant called McDonald's.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
You could always help us with pilot-link to get it working properly for these devices. It builds fine, it works with serial devices on OSX, and it supports these newer Palm devices. The only piece missing is the IOKit changes to make it work with the OSX'ish USB device notification.
Apple could make iSync work without needing HotSync, but what about 3rd party conduits like Desktop2Go? AddressBook and Calendar aren't the only games in town.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
Hmmmm... Palm Desktop was built from the code for Claris Organizer. I wonder if Apple can reinvent that wheel, or buy back PD from Palm?
Palm Desktop is great, btw. I used it (it's a free D/L) for many months before I even bought a Palm.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
I see several possibilites here.
Palm might be counting on third-party software to cover their Mac users, or counting on iSync. In this case, they blew it big-time by not making that clear.
Or, Palm could have decided that they just don't need any Mac customers, and didn't give much thought to how their existing Mac customers would feel about it. This would be amazingly stupid.
I don't see any evidence that the second one is true; I'm sure it's the first one. Palm has been pretty good in the past about supporting their Mac customers; why would they suddenly abandon them, just when they are trying to win mindshare for their new Cobalt platform?
Hmmm, I just checked. Missing Sync costs $40. I'm starting to think "amazingly stupid" again.
Thinking about this some more, Apple customers are unlikely to embrace PocketPC. Maybe Palm figures those guys will buy Palm PDAs even if Palm doesn't do anything to support them. That's playing with fire, if true. If you drive customers away, it's hard to get them back.
What Palm ought to do is make sure that Apple has all the data they need to make iSync just work out of the box with all new Palm PDAs. This ought to just mean keeping Apple up to date with some information. Easy, inexpensive. And they ought to brag to all their Mac-using customers that they are doing it!
And if Palm wants to walk away from their Mac desktop application, they should either gift it to Apple, or open-source it, not just throw it in the bin.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I just wrote "beat up martin" into my Graffiti 2 Palm Tungsten T2. What did I get?
"Qpmm."
I'll take "eat up martha" any day of the week, except - of course - that when I write "beat up martin" into my Newton MP 2100 I get "beat up martin"...
That was classic intercourse!
Only problem is that iSync only syncs the calendar and address book entries. I rely on Palm Desktop on my Mac to sync memos, pictures (I have the zire 71 with the crappy digital camera), doodles, etc. Unless Apple plans to provide a full palm desktop replacement, I think Palm's leaving apple users twisting in the wind here.
Head down, go to sleep to the rhythm of the war drums...
Given that their developer tools appear to be migrating away from CodeWarrior and toward Eclipse/gcc/etc. (not Visual Studio), that doesn't seem likely. (Go here and scan down to "PalmSource Offers New Software Development Tools" for more info. They don't yet have it available for download, though, or I would've already snagged it.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
This decision to stop supporting macintosh is not a good thing. Back in the good old days when Handspring was its own company all the mac users purchased visors as visors(usb) were the only palm to sync out of the box with mac. Handspring is now owned by palm. I wonder what this decision means and what its implications are.
The Television Wiki
One area that Palm had a clear and obvious edge over the PocketPC/Windows CE/whatever-Microsoft-will-call-the- next-version is that Palms, out of the box, work with both Windows and Macintosh systems. Giving this market niche up will be a serious mistake - almost all Mac users that bought handhelds were going to buy Palms until now, that probably is a major bolster to Palm's shrinking market share.
If I were to guess as to a reason, I would point at the beginnings of a competing product in the iPod - which already does the contact and calendar functions. One wonders how easy it would be to add the other functions to make an iPod a true PDA. That and the additional expense of developing for two more platforms (don't forget OS 9) that supporting Macs includes. I hope that the reason is not due to Palm using Microsoft's tools or code somewhere...
...if Apple jumps on it. What they need to do is rework existing open source Palm OS connectivity solutions to work with Palm OS 6 and their existing iApps (iCal, Address Book, iSync). This would be better for Mac users as it would make things a little more unified. Sure, there's already a conduit for the current Mac Hotsync and iSync, but that's more of a kludge than the elegant solution we could see here. Palm could really just make this necessary software themselves at little effort anyway. All they need to do is adhere to whatever standards seem to be used already with phones and so on for synchronization. Either way, let's get rid of Palm Desktop for Mac OS and let's see more integration with better-made apps.
I am feeling fat and sassy
because I bet Apple step in!
Oh ye of too much faith!
You do not remember the lessons of the NCU - Newton connection Utilites. The NCU was botched so badly that this post to UseNet where Apple developers finally 'uncloaked' to call the 'mounting of their heads on pikes as a warning to future programmers to never do such a crappy job' as harsh.
Apple couldn't be bothered to do a good, working sync system for their own product, why would Apple bother this time to get it right?
Apple will have to rely (some more) on Open Source developers to get jpilot (or others) right.
I think part of this is Palm's move to (in general) marginalize their own Palm Desktop application. On the Windows side they've already begun making the Palm work better with Outlook - the latest Palms can HotSync with Outlook without any third party software.
On the OS X side Apple already has the same framework in place with iSync, iCal and their Address Book.
At some point they obviously made the decision to let Apple and/or a third party worry about how to make it work and forego the cost of development themselves. And MarkSpace is already fairly well established - the Sony Clie has never synced with OS X and needs the Missing Sync software to work.
That's also ignoring that Garnet (support was only dropped from Cobalt) upon which it sounds like most consumer level handhelds will be based, continues PalmOS 5.X and will presumably continue to work with existing Palm Desktop software...?
You guys are putting way too much thought into this - it just ain't that hard. Palm screwed up. Didn't want to deal with Apple on their terms, and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates decided to hurt Palm, to their mutual best interests.
1. Apple is working on a PDA product of their own based on OSX, Palm got wind of it and decided to jump before they were pushed. Newton II? Odds are against it, but how much more work to add a bigger, 65K color screen to an iPod and brush off Inkwell, which is already in the OSX product? Sync with OSX, sync with Outlook, which explains the lack of an Appleworks 'Office' killer and the integration of Entourage to be used in the Enterprise. Now that Pocket Windows is in cars and smartphones, Gates is willing to cede some marketshare to Apple, whom he thinks he can control better than Palm.
2. The number of takers for Palm's Cobalt is so low that they can't afford the engineers to do the Mac sync. Remember, if you make PDAs like a Clie or other product, you probably purchased a license for Version 5 of Palm OS. If nobody is buying Cobalt (Version 6) you have to make cuts somewhere, and they are making it here. They can easily add it back in if enough Cobalt licensees ask for it.
Now - do a Google check. You will find that none of the usual suspects has agreed to build a new PDA using Cobalt - everything being announced is based on the current Version 5. Palm is in deep doodoo - they haven't sold any Cobalt licenses and have to trim back. Time to sell the Palm stock?
Given the Palm platform's pretty shaky hold on market share right now, I don't think they can afford to drop even a single-digit percentage of their market. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I don't know how much it costs to develop their HotSync software for the Mac, but I doubt that it's all that expensive. Palm devices also had a monopoly on Macs - heck, even old Newtons can't plug into a modern Mac. And, as Apple would probably point out, when you sell a PDA to a Mac user, today, you're selling it to someone who has a good looking computer and OS, and maybe an iPod with them - in short, if they've got a Palm-powered device, the device is cool by association. Plus, I'll bet that they sold enough PDAs to Mac users to make it worth their while.
There have been rumours for YEARS that Apple has been developing a PDA of some sort - the iPod was originally rumoured to be a combo MP3 player/PDA, but turned out to be mostly an MP3 player with some extra features.
I think PalmSource wants something from Apple - maybe it's an easier way into iSync, maybe its some more cooperation from Apple with the way OS X works... and, maybe they're trying to force Apple into releasing a Palm-powered PDA.
Sure, it's a longshot, but think of what a Palm-powered PDA would do for PalmSource, which now ONLY makes software. It'd give them huge "mindshare," the kind of 'hip' image that Palm doesn't have anymore as they've been replaced by flashier devices.
I don't think it'll work - I think that Apple isn't going to put ANYONE else in charge of an operating system with a GUI - there's no way they're letting PalmSource tell Apple how a button should work.
IF PalmSource doesn't change their mind -- and there's a good chance they will, IMHO -- what it might do is force Apple to enter the PDA market, which I'm sure Steve Jobs wouldn't mind TOO much. They could certainly use a Linux or similar PDA distro and build onto it. Now, I don't know much about PPCs that aren't used in Macs, but doesn't Motorola have some kind of a PPC for embedded apps? Maybe Apple could even use some scaled-down form of Aqua with relatively little modification. That might be cool... but I doubt we'll see PalmSource make Apple tread that path.
iSync is a Palm Desktop conduit, not a standalone sync program.
With no Palm Desktop for MacOS, iSync is useless. I submit as evidence the Sony Clie, which does not come with support for the Mac. iSync is useless until you buy a $30 third-party program called The Missing Sync.
I doubt Apple is going to completely re-write a program to change it from being software to allow you to update your Address Book and iCal from any number of devices including but not limited to PDAs to being a Palm Desktop clone.
As a third party vendor has already announced that it will step into the void, this means that the Palm world will simply be returning to the way things were.
More interesting to me is the implication of the announcement that Palm apps for 6.x will be built on top of Microsoft tools: The new PIM apps have be re-architected to more closely resemble Microsoft Outlook fields and the internal database use a new SQL like schema to store records. While this could very well reference in house tools, it seems to me that they are thinking of using an MS dev kit to simplify development. I wouldn't be surprised to hear an announcement in the near future which proclaims that Palm OS 6 will support dot net.
We can't neglect the fact that PalmOne is pitching Cobalt at ENTERPRISE users and will continue to mantain and develop OS 5 under the name Garnet. The Cobalt fork will scale to a diff class of device (larger screen, more robust multimedia support, etc.) (at least that's the pitch.) Unfortunately, Macs haven't secured a big piece of the enterprise market at all (certainly not on the desktop), and Cobalt is not being aimed at the home or SOHO user. (at least not yet....)
It is what it is and it aint nuthin else.
First, those two statements are not equivalent.
It's quite possible for a disproportionate number of Mac users to be Palm users; in fact, it's pretty likely that Mac users use Palms at a higher rate than Windows users, because Palms work better with Macs than the competitors to Palm do.
However, "a significant number of Palm users own Macs" doesn't follow. If a town of 150 people in Angola had 50 Ford F150 owners, sure, the residents would have a disproportionate number of F150s. Despite that, it's not true that those 50 Angolans would constitute a significant number of Ford F150 owners, given that Ford sells thousands of them a year.
Frankly, I doubt anyone, except maybe Palm, has stats on what percentage of its users have Macs. (Given the rigor of most marketing surveys, Palm likely thinks it knows, and is wrong.)
Second, what computer current Palm owners have is largely irrelevant, which is why I ignored it. Cobalt devices currently have zero marketshare in any market; Palm's decisions have to be made in the context of who they think they can sell the Cobalt devices to, not whom they've sold different devices to in the past.
It may be giving up its special advantage in the Mac marketplace will hurt them; on the other hand, they may have run estimates and think the development costs are more than they'll lose by having Mac owner marketshare move to the same proportions of Pocket PC/WinCE vs. Palm devices that the Windows world has.
Third, "rant"? That was just numbers thrown to show that "3%" is not confusing marketshare with installed base. The Mac marketshare was around 1.7% in 2003 (Mac unit sales from the Apple 10K filing for the year divided by Gartner's released-to-the-news estimate of PC sales). 3% is one estimate of installed base, as was my 4.3%.
You want a rant, you should see me on the subject of [muffled sounds of a man yelling through a gag] . . .
I'm not too worried about the syncing aspect of this, as Apple or other developers will step in to fill this gap. What is sad, however, is the end of development of Claris Organizer/Palm Desktop.
I've used Palm Desktop continuously since 1998, when it was still Claris Organizer. The application has hardly changed at all in the intervening years, but in my view it remains the most elegant PIM available. It's also remarkably feature-complete for such an old product.
"Palm Desktop 4.0" brought OS X compatibility and some terminology changes ("Contacts" became "Addresses", "Tasks" became "To dos" etc.), but beyond that it was the same app. It even retained the scripts to open URLs in Cyberdog, or create form letters in MacWrite.
Now that the product has been orphaned, I'll probably switch to Entourage, which I find nowhere near as elegant. What are the chances Palm could be convinced to open-source Palm Desktop and allow it to live on?
Chief Products Officer
PalmSource
To Mr. Slotnick,
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.
My next purchase of the next generation Treo device will be dependent on the fact it will be able to interchange data as easily as it has my Treo 180 has in the past with my Apple Powerbook running OSX. By only supporting Windows in the future , Palmsource effectively is giving the Microsoft monopoly a distinct advantage, while Palmource loses its advantage of being the only PDA vendor for the OSX platform. I feel that Palmsource is only helping Microsoft establish itself as the only dominate player in the consumer computing arena.
Sincerely,
-Diganta
One can speculate this to be a case of Bad blood or a case of industry karma. 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?