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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."
i have something else my palm is in sync with ;)
This could be a good idea for them, because I bet Apple step in! (or someoene else) Outsourcing anyone!?!
Maybe its time for apple to ressurect the Newton?
As far as I know, Mac OSX comes with iSync which does this anyways.
They might be relying on Apple to take care of the software now. They have Address, iSync, Cal and other stuff that syncs with the Palm, so they probably figured, why not let Apple worry about maintaining this stuff instead?
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.
maybe palmsource knows something we dont re: isync?
Who cares about 3% less profit, when the CEO's are ranking in millions for running their company into the ground.
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 can understand their approach though. If they release their own sync software they end up with a bunch of extra tech support calls.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Right now there are two main players in the Handheld market: Palm and Microsoft. Most of those who are using a Mac are doing so because they arn't too happy with Microsoft's offerings. That leaves Palm (yeah, there are other companies, but none as strong as Palm). Sure its a pain in the ass to buy 3rd party software but I don't think it will affect them overall.
My Apple iBook G4 12" w/802.11b/g + Bluetooth is small enough anyway. It's the size of s sheet of paper and it weighs four and a half pounds. Meanwhile, it can burn CDs, play DVDs, and sync with my cell phone.
If I really cared about sync'ing with a lousy palm I've got Virtual PC on my iBook already.
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
Somebody got himself a woman...
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.
Given the relative market shares, maybe Apple is going to devote those resources to integrating with Linux instead. Didn't the Linux (desktop) user base slip past the Apple (desktop) user base last year?
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
Actually, iSync requires the palm desktop and the base palm conduits to talk to PalmOS devices. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Add to that that they need to dedicate developers to supporting a platform that less than 5% of customers use.
I'm sure that was their logic, but it's short sighted. Palm competes directly against Win CE--Mac users are a natural customer base. Case in point: I've been shopping for a cellphone/pda. Guess which ones I'm not looking at any more?
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
I've also owned and used various DayRunner paper organizers.
One of these will be usable with my wife's iMac and can hold a checkbook, paper receipts, and business cards. The other plays solitaire.
Goodbye, Palm - it's been fun.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Without Hotsync Manager, iSync does not work. So unless you want to spend more money, you will not be able to sync the newest palms with your Mac.
That's a shame because at my school district we were looking at rolling out a Palm program to help teachers stay organized. Now that Palm made this decision, I don't know what we're going to do.
I've already sent them feedback, but I'm not holding my breath waiting on a reply.
What, me worry?
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
Mark/Space, the makers of the Missing Sync for Mac OS, will fill the void. Check out their website to read all about it: http://www.markspace.com/cobalt.html
Stuart Eichert
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.
"Fortunately, a third party company, Mark/Space, has pledged to make a version of their Missing Sync client for Cobalt. It will be released later this year in anticipation of the first Palm OS Cobalt devices. Missing Sync for Cobalt will enable users to connect and synchronize information between Palm OS Cobalt devices and Macs running Mac OS X via USB, network, WiFi or Bluetooth."
They have ignored the OpenSource community, and now they are snubbing Apple.
Palm has ALWAYS BEEN SUPPORTIVE OF OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENT. I take it you have never actually DONE any palm development. There is a completely (f)ree toolchain available for the Palm devices, and it's why I use it. Palm does not have the resources to support the smaller market of linux (and mac, I guess) users. They have always been willing to work with developers and release information - at least so far as I've seen.
Please cite examples if you are going to make statements like the above.
If they choose not to write a conduit, then the information will be available to do so. My guess is that Apple will include palm syncing in their next iSync update as a internal thing, and this miffed PalmSource for some reason. (the iTools already do much of what Palm desktop does, better).
..don't panic
This is a dealbreaker for me. I was actually about to upgrade my Palm M505 to something newer/fancier, but if it doesn't work my iBook, that's it.
It also makes you wonder about the health of Palm as a company; are the Windows CE devices finally starting to take over the market and push Palm out ?
I have to believe that the business market for Palm devices is many times larger than the hobbyist ('hobbiest' for illiterate slashbots) market. And what are those businessmen running?
Windows.
So this may not be as short-sighted as you think. Let's say that they have 6 engineers responsible for the Mac sync software, each making 50,000 dollars. That works out to 300,000 dollars a year in savings if they don't have to hire those engineers. It actually works out to more than that when you take into consideration all the hidden costs that come with each employee (insurance, unemployment, etc.)
Palm can save maybe half a million dollars a year by stopping development for Mac. They only make about 80 million dollars a year in sales. They certainly aren't profitable.
Add to this that they only have about 34 million in the bank, and their burn rate will bankrupt them within the next 6 months, Now is exactly the time to stop supporting areas of business which provide insignficant upside and significant loss potential.
I have been pwned because my
Aside from the fact that Apple and other third party entities do a MUCH better job a syncing that Palm does on it's own hardware, I think this is a strange decision. In fact, this might be one of the few "no longer supporting Mac" statements I've heard in almost two years.
If anything, most companies are jumping into the ring on Mac support because of OS X being so versatile. Seems strange, but like I said-- you'll still be able to sync your Palm pilot, just not with their software.
If anything, it's bad PR and just another reason to ask yourself why you really need a PDA anymore. I believe a good cell phone with iSync would take care of it.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
One thing to think about is that it's not like PalmSource has been all that good at keeping Mac sync up to speed with Windows in the past.
The first version of Palm Desktop for Mac was terrible. Then they bought Claris Organizer when Apple no longer needed it after killing the Newton and de-emphasizing Claris products other than FMPro. At that point things were OK, but really Palm just picked up Claris Organizer for cheap. It wasn't a real commitment on their part.
From then until OS X they really did nothing for the Mac desktop. Then they came out with an OS X version, but no new features (no network sync, no WiFi sync, etc...). Now they've given up altogether.
Mark/Space makes pretty good stuff so far, and their support has been very good. There's some question of whether or not they can handle the scale, but I'm sure they'll make a greater effort at pushing the Mac 'Palm' desktop forward than PalmSource has. In fact their first release will have more improvements than PalmSource has given us in years (WiFi sync, Ethernet sync).
The longer term issue is whether or not third party conduit makers stop supporting the Mac because of this move, even though Mark/Space has said they will make a conduit manager that works with everyone's conduits.
But in terms of development focus on the desktop and conduit manager itself, I'd expect Mark/Space to make more progress than PalmSource ever has.
Well it's better than dropping it in carbon freeze, I guess. Oh, wait. Different thread.
What probably happened was that Mac users are probably moving to the free Apple stuff like iCal and iChat and iWhatsis instead of Palm Desktop, and then by extension they'd be required by the userbase demand to make the Palms sync with the iApps. So they said, "Feh... whateva..."
I would almost wager on Apple putting a Palm sync feature into the next releases of their iApps. At this rate Apple might wind up making all the hardware AND the software for Macs.
Not that I'd turn my nose up at iBryce. C'mon, Apple. Everyone's grandma wants to do 3D rendering with deep texture editing.
--- Ban humanity.
It is interesting that the Treo 300 I bought in December 2003 did not mention Mac support. It syncs just fine. If it did not work, I would have returned it and my wife's new phone. It appears their plan to drop Mac support has been in the works for at least a few months given their box labeling.
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 think Palm's decision is probably a mistake, but hardly unprecedented. A lot of game developers, for example, have done the same thing.
The math is really pretty simple - if Macintosh development and support costs total less than the potential income from sales to Mac owners, the company stands to make money. Nonetheless, we have repeatedly seen companies forego such profits, reasoning that the market share is too small to bother with.
As long as they allow independent developers to step into the breach, no-one should suffer from this - but all too often that route is blocked as well. How they justify this to their financial officers I can't understand.
Mac users suprisingly announce they will drop support for Palm
I know that a lot of Mac users out there see this as some kind of conspiracy, but the truth of the matter is: if Mac Users were a viable market for Palm OS products, Palm OS would enjoy continued support on that platform. PalmOne, and PalmSource, are not run by fools. They're the only company in recent memory to beat Microsoft in direct competition. This decision can not have come as arbitrarily as a lot of the people on this forum speculate. Either there are some serious architecture issues with OS X that drive the cost of developing a software package that is comparable to the one available on Windows to an unprofitable level, or the market for OS X users is just so small, that it doesn't make it worth their while to pursue that segment. Considering that software for the Mac has been released for previous versions of Palm OS, I'd tend to believe that the prior is the actual reason.
I suppose there is a third option, and that is that Palm is aware of some new product that Apple is preparing and doesn't wish to commit resources to the development of a software package that may be trumped by some new Apple product. This doesn't make that much sense, in that Palm was able to wipe the floors with Wince, developed in house by MS. In that situation Palm couldn't give up on such a huge market segment and remain in business. With Apple, they could certainly give up on such a small segment without much concern. Apple has done so much with its branding that there is a risk that even if Palm could create a better product for the Apple market, it might not matter in the minds of Apple users.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I wonder that it doesn't bother Palm that they are tying their future to a company (Microsoft) that also happens to be their biggest competitor (PocketPC).
It'd be worth a little money to retain some freedom, I think.
I also wonder if Microsoft's use of PowerPC chips in Xbox2 is a similar sort of freedom from Intel.
How hard is it really, to put together a little app that sits between the USB port and some generic calendaring application, that passes info back and forth, applying simple rules as whether to delete, duplicate, or change a database record?
.05 (mac user) = 4Mil/yr old mac revenue
.5 (loss in customers) = 2 Mil/yr new mac revenue
The fact that some small third-party developer has been able to do this in the past (and probably will do so in the future) points to the fact that this is a trivial thing to do. The only cost to Palm is in tech support (which may be the real reason they dropped support, not the development costs.)
Assuming that Palm really can save maybe a million dollars a year by not developing for the Mac, and in doing so, they alienate about 50% of their future Mac business, AND that Mac users are represented in their customer base at about 5%:
$80Mil sales/yr *
4Mil *
Assumed cost savings by laying off Mac engineers: 1 Mil/yr
Projected loss by laying off Mac engineers: 1Mil/yr - 2Mil/yr = (1 Mil/yr) decrease in gross sales revenue.
Like I said, the real cost probably isn't in the engineering, even if you're real conservative about the cost of the engineering talent. It's probably in the tech support (Palm has outsourced their tech help line to India, so this probably has something to do with it...)
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...
Very rarely do you see Mac users toting non-Palm OS handhelds, thanks to new synchronization from such companies as mark|space now there are ways to seamlessly hook up with a Pocket PC or WinCE device....
Palm's products have a huge base of Mac users. I don't know what the hell they are doing with this, but it has to be one of the stupidest business decisions(SCO aside) that I've ever seen in my life.
My Windows XP using friend called me 3 times before I got his call, and he was urgent to tell me as I entered the supermarket about this...I tried to restrain my foul language in such a public place. He couldn't believe they are doing this either.
Mac users make up about 3% of the total PC market, and more than 3% of Palm users are Mac users, I guarantee you that.
Apple sells Palm handhelds, for God's sake!
Don't be surprised if HP(Apple's new partner, they are now bundling iTunes) lends Mac OS X support to their iPaq line somehow, Apple will surely be scrambling to get some handheld native on their system.
I own some shares of PalmOne, thankfully this is more PalmSource...but get ready for a dive, Palm, you dumbasses.
I try new versions of iSync every time Apple releases them. And yet iSync still takes 5-10 times longer to sync then the Palm HotSync software. This sucks because I *want* to use iCal, but I can't if I have to spend 5 minutes syncing (instead of 30 seconds).
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
Number of Macintosh users: 25 million
Percentage of Mac users who own a PalmOS PDA: 12%
(source: Apple)
Lost market for Palm: 3 million customers
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.)
london is drowning and i live by river
...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 have extensive experience working with the low-level serial communications facilities on the Palm platform. I've bypassed hotsync on a number of ocassions because it is overkill for a lot of things - but I can't see anything that difficult about it, just tedious. The information, at least on the Palm side, is all available.
..don't panic
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?
Jpilot is the answer. Not only is it a near-perfect replacement for the Palm Desktop, thanks to the pilot-link backend it can do things the latter can't, including synching over Wi-Fi.
Ok some of you don't use the palm..great..however understand they in some segments of the business world they are MANDATORY... As a 3rd year medical student I can tell you that every serious doctor is getting one, pt charting systems are supporting them etc .. they are awsome reference sources.
The problems with palms action is not the lack of hot sync as I fully expect isync to fill this gap and if not mark space will fill the gap.
The problem lies in the many applications on the palm that "sync" with a central DB to update a reference. Apple needs to ensure that palm and pocket PC apps that use this fuctionality have the hooks in OS X that they need to function , without a seperate version of the palm or pocket PC app.
This kind of thing KILLS Apples market share. Apple can do what they like on their own turf but they MUST interoperate with 3rd parties SEAMLESSLY, better then windows if they expect to grow.
This is a crushing blow which means Apple will have to work hard to overcome. Futhermore dog plus world will cover the fact that palm will not support the mac but no one will cover the fact that isync can fill a significant portion of this void.
I love my mac but more Apple needs to realize that they must beat windows when it comes to 3rd party interactivity.
Apple could come out with a PDA device
BUT
1.)It must be perfectly compatible with palm or pocket PC...no exceptions
2.) when connected to my mac those palm apps must sync and be able to conenct without a single change in the developers code.
if either of the above is NOT true then the problems will ALWAYS be blamed on Apple so long as the product functions under windows XP..even if the real problem is with the palm app.
Which brings me back to my original point...this is a huge burden for Apple but its the ONLY way to make the device work.
The iPod is an excellent example. The ipod has been succesful BECAUSE it works better on BOTH mac and windows esp with itunes....any PDA will have to follow the same path which is significantly harder due to multifunctionality of a PDA
i suspect that Steve Jobs problem with PDAs have something to do with these tough issue.
I would love to hear from some people who develop for palm about the problems with syncing thru a mac for a Db driven app..(like Epocrates or PEPID)
IMHO
anyway
Andrew
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.
Not true.
I own a Sony Clie and iSync(forgive the pun) just fine with the palm desktop and iSync without the 3rd party app. The app in question allows you to access the memory stick as a separate usb mass storage device and some other advanced features which i never use anyway.
I agree that some of the special functionality and software that makes a Clie so special is lost on a mac though.
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.
PalmSource Cheif Competitve Officer, Michael Mace, has issued a statement direcct from PalmSource regarding the issue in the article comments, "PalmSource is fortunate to have a great Palm OS developer community who provide solutions for Macintosh compatibility today. Palm OS provides an open and flexible architecture and allows its licensees to decide whether to ship a Mac compatibility solution with their Palm Powered device. (One such solution is provided by Mark/Space.) We are continuing our efforts with Apple to provide compatibility between Palm OS and Macintosh."
This last statement is the most promising. Assuming it isn't empty spin, further support for Palm devices via iSync seems probable (provided the HotSync manager issue is addressed). I can't imagine Apple will let a core part of their iSync hub disappear. But we have only the above to speculate about. Perhaps Apple will make some sort of announcement. Once again, speculation.
Still, I feel Palm's decision is a foolish one. I am a Mac user mostly, and when I hear somebody isn't going to support my platform of choice I get angry - feel betrayed - dread the smug comments from my Windoze using associates.. All in all, I am left uninclined to further support that company. For instance, my Clie 710C is getting long in the tooth. I've been eyeing Tungsten PDA's for a few months and was initially excited about the Cobalt announcement. A part of me wants to look elsewhere now just to spite them. Maybe an iSync compatible cellphone might be my next purchase?
But since I do own a Clie, and already own Missing Sync, I have already gotten used to zero Mac support from the parent company. I trust Mark/Space to fix this problem for future versions of the Palm OS. But other people won't feel the same way. Mac zealots especially. Is it good business to anger even a small percent of your customer base? Shouldn't the "working with Apple" comment have come along with the bad news? Seriously stupid business move, IMO.
~Doug!as
Fun with Inkwell | www.coo
Just like all the rest of us Linux users already do. Stop complaing and show some inititive on your own; write a conduit or the like.
Get it here.
http://www.pilot-link.org/
use Signature::Witty;
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?