PalmOne to become Palm Again; PalmSource & Linux

gandell writes "CNET is reporting that after only two years, PalmOne is spending $30 million dollars to become "Palm" again. From the article: "PalmOne, which makes handhelds bearing the same name, plans to change its name to Palm later this year, the company said Tuesday. At that time, its product line, which currently includes the LifeDrive, Treo, Tungsten and Zire devices, will be branded under the Palm name..." Some will remember that Palm split into two companies, Pa1mOne and Palmsource (which made the Palm OS). According to the article, "...At the time the two companies created a third company, called Palm Trademark Holding, of which PalmSource held a 55 percent stake. That stake will now be transferred to PalmOne for $30 million, the companies said.'" As well, at a recent show Dave Nagel gave notice that Linux is PalmSource's platform for the future.

Comments

Is PalmOS viable anymore?

[Dancin_Santa]

In the bad old days of the dotcom boom, Palm Pilots were the hottest executive PDA piece of flair out there. And all it really did was manage contacts.

Technology has really made a lot of progress since then and that old Dragonball chip looks like a Hyundai when compared to an XScale Ferrari. The processors can handle much more than the simple PalmOS requests, and in some respects this is a good thing. It means that the underlying OS is relatively light and lots of power can be used to run apps. Unfortunately, that also is a limitation of the OS.

Embedded Linux provides a full operating system with a plethora of drivers and applications. It uses the capabilities of the chipset without being too heavy. It is definitely the way to go.

And actually not just Linux, but any general-purpose embedded OS is the way to go. You'd obviously want something that had guaranteed real-time performance as well as a well-done threading model. The API would need to be very well understood too. This brings up a whole slew of embedded operating systems. It also leaves out PalmOS.

Re:Is PalmOS viable anymore?

[dreadlock9]

I've developed several apps for PalmOS 3.5 - 4, and I enjoyed its simplicity. The developer documentation is very well organized and easy to read. A couple years ago PalmSource released Palm Developer Suite, which is based on the Eclipse IDE. I imagine that it would be well suited for a future Linux based PalmOS. They could design the UI to run as a window manager, and we'll probably see other window manager mods. It would be very cool to be able to compile stuff on a PDA, and generally do most of the things that a Linux PC can do.

Imagine running Apache + your favorite scripting lanugage + database, and using web apps as a front end. You'd be able to run the hordes of PHP/Perl/etc scripts that are out there already, as if they were PDA apps.

Re:Is PalmOS viable anymore?

[stonemirror]

Palm OS is absolutely "viable." Dave Nagel pointed out in his keynote that the Kyocera 7135, a Palm OS-based "smart phone" which came out about two years ago, has outsold all Microsoft Pocket PC-based smart phones from all manufacturers put together...

Re:Is PalmOS viable anymore?

[rshimizu12]

If they want to succeed they need to sell the operating system seperately from the hardware. Secondly the OS needs be available on multiple distro's. The other thing they could do is adopt a more advanced processor like IBM's 405LP (low power). There is still a big power consumption problem and this processor would help to solve this......... From a marketing perspective they need to concentrate on solidifying it's existing market share. There is still a lot of opportunity, I have seen a lot of people purchasing the Treo's. A lot people have been purchasing the Tungsten line as well. Microsoft is incorporating speech recognition into their PocketPC phones. Once embedded speech processors are integrated then speech will really take off. You can imagine how what the productivity gains will be once people are able to process email while driving.

Re:Is PalmOS viable anymore?

[CrazyTalk]

Back in the dot com days, I relied heavily on my Palm Pilot - not just for contacts, but for the calendar, expense tracker (when taking business trips), calculator, notes application (for storing key information like server names, travel itenerarys, etc.), Avant Go for reading latest NY Times and Rolling Stones headlines while riding the El to work, and several other uses. I just bought a new one recently (Palm III finally gave up the ghost), and now I get all of that plus I can take Word and Excel files with me, photos, and music. Too bad they don't run off of AAA batteries anymore though - now I have to take a charger with me, and when the internal battery finally dies after a year or two probably have to buy a whole new device.

Re:Is PalmOS viable anymore?

[rshimizu12]

It's too bad that the PDA's use internal batteries. It's the ultimate upgrade for computer industry. Garunteed obsolesence.

Where are the Cobalt devices?

[torpor]

I'd love to know which Palm products allow one to use the Cobalt API's .. any Palm hackers around who have details? Its been a long time since I hacked on Palm ..

Re:Where are the Cobalt devices?

[argent]

There are no Cobalt devices. When PalmWhatever kept pushing out more iterations of the PalmOS 5 platform, it became pretty obvious that the BeOS curse was alive and well and Cobalt was never going to show up.

Linux, though? OK, it's not as badly adapted to handhelds as Windows, since the UNIX API doesn't have nearly as much desktop-nature built into it, but... sheesh.

Re:Where are the Cobalt devices?

[stonemirror]

One company at Palm's developer conference was showing a Cobalt phone on the exhibition floor; another announced that they'd be shipping a Cobalt phone by the end of this year.

I will never buy PalmOS device again

[Anonymous Coward]

To waste XScale processor for emulating 68k at pathetic speed.

Re:I will never buy PalmOS device again

[mcbridematt]

Pathetic? I don't think so. Pathetic compared to what? Judging from the two OS 5 devices I have used, the Zire 31 and Treo 600, they run quite smoothly. I can't speak for those who used later model OS 4 devices but those like me who had OS 3 ones and upgraded to OS 5 ARM devices haven't noticed.

If an application developer isn't interested in coding optimizations for OS 5 devices, well, your're the customer.

One good thing about PalmOS is backwards compatibility. Go out and buy some old Palm device such as a Palm III series or maybe m10x and find some apps for it.

Quite a few applications still support these devices, and if it was made by Palm you can upgrade them to OS 4 too.

Re:I will never buy PalmOS device again

[Anonymous Coward]

Pathetic compared to WinCE based devices with ARM processors.

Lyme
http://www.calerga.com/products/LyME/index.html
benchmark results:

Generic PC Pentium Win2K 300 MHz: 350.9 444 257 380 518 288 276 294
Dell Axim X30 PXA270 626 MHz: 143.4 55 140 31 381 111 59 226
Apple PowerBook 3400 PPC603 200 MHz: 133.7 141 120 111 215 182 79 88
CerfBoard 255 XScale 400 MHz: 84.4 11 25 42 234 92 63 125
Kontron X-board SC1200 266 MHz: 76.9 65 63 81 88 142 47 52
This computer (400 Mhz Xscale 255 with PalmOS): 3.4 3 3 4 3 5 2 4
Palm Zire 71 OMAP 144 MHz, emu M68k: 1.2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1
Handspring Visor MC68EZ328 16 MHz: 0.5 0 0 1 1 1 0 1

Writing ARM code for PalmOS devices isn't very easy.

Re:I will never buy PalmOS device again

[jack_csk]

One good thing about PalmOS is backwards compatibility. Go out and buy some old Palm device such as a Palm III series or maybe m10x and find some apps for it.

Not always, some shareware games that I got a friend of mine who runs OS 4 do not run on my OS 5-installed Palm, not to mention older versions of OmniRemote.

Re:I will never buy PalmOS device again

[NuShrike]

Obviously, any old apps that relied on hardware hacks are not upwardly compatible.

Re:I will never buy PalmOS device again

[loshwomp]

You know someone just doesn't "get it" when he starts quoting benchmark numbers for handhelds.

Re:yawn...

[AussieVamp2]

Quite likely.

30 million dollars?

Pretty unlikely to make the prices of Palm stuff go down?

Just change it's name to a symbol...

[KingSkippus]

So Palm is now the company formerly known as the company formerly known as... Palm?

Re:Just change it's name to a symbol...

[fname]

First there was Palm. And it was good.

Then they were bought by US Robotics. US Robotics was bought by 3Com. Then 3Com spun off the company known as Palm. And it was good.

Then Palm split the company in half, into PalmSource and PalmOne (which bought Handspring). Now, PalmOne is buying the Palm name from Palmsource. They will be known as Palm. And it was good.

Re:Just change it's name to a symbol...

[GodfatherofSoul]

After seeing some of the business decisions Palm has made in the last couple years, I say they pick an icon like Prince did in the 90's.

Such a waste of time...

[FF3451]

I just can't help but find it amusing how much time and money companies spend changing their names, to so often change the back again afterwards.

The new names are often awful, as well as the justification for changing them, like when the Post Office here in the UK announced they were to change their name to "Consignia" to enable them "to better serve the needs of customers". So many people went "WTF?" that they scrapped the plan, but not before they'd already wasted loads of money on it.

Re:Such a waste of time...

[ledow]

Actually... it was only their business-to-business arm that was ever called Consignia (and I think they kept that name for quite a while) but, point agreed.

You don't get a much better name than THE ROYAL MAIL. It's just about as good an endorsement as you could get. Why, then, change it to some wishy-washy, made up word which, I assume, is supposed to be a concatenation of Consignment and Insignia?

Mars/Snickers, Cellnet/BTCellnet/O2, Opal Fruits/Starburst, etc. all did the same for little reason. T-Mobile was somebody else as well, most phone companies have changed their name at least once (with the possible exception of Virgin Mobile).

Imagine the reprinting costs alone, not to mention customer confusion, disappearing brand loyalty and reputation, and not actually GAINING anything out of it (a company could be called Shit Computers for all I care... if they do what I want at the right price, I don't care what their name is).

The thing that gets me more annoyed, though, is when the company name is not obviously linked to their business AND they don't state their business on any slogan, advert etc.

M25 J26/27-ish, there is a MASSIVE warehouse with "Sericol... More than ink, solutions..." on it. I don't know what the bloody hell they do from that. They could be squid processors for all I know.

Re:Such a waste of time...

[FF3451]

It was actually Marathon->Snickers, and there was a slight difference in that case, in that Snickers was the US name for the product and they just brought it in line. As for all the others, totally pointless indeed!

I've seen that warehouse myself from the M25, and wondered... A quick google just revealed they make screen-printing ink - so when they say "more than ink", they just mean "ink" :)

Re:Such a waste of time...

[Anonymous Coward]

or GEC to Marconi.

I think rebranding exercises show a management that is devoid of ideas of how to nurture, grow or even run the business. When you see a rebrand, SELL SELL SELL

Re:Such a waste of time...

[t_allardyce]

I think they do it so customers will get desperate for the old brand and come back in droves when the name is returned. Kinda like New Coke, they probably knew it was shit and people would start stocking up on old Coke and when they came back with the original, people were desperate for it. Actually I don't really think that, its far more likely that the people in charge are idiots.

Re:Such a waste of time...

[Vo0k]

It's even funnier if the company changes the name but the customers insist on using the old one, and do so on regular basis. If you're ever in Poland and asking for direction, if they say "turn left past the CPN", look for Orlen gas station. I bet this drives the managers mad, also strangers find it confusing, but locals will find it a silly "marketing speak" if you refer to "old, good" by their new names.

Re:Such a waste of time...

[ctr2sprt]

Well, if you aren't seen to be moving forward, you're preceived as moving backward. A name change can be used to suggest a break from the past or a fresh start; a name change back can be used to indicate "We fucked up, we're going back to what worked." The name change itself, of course, means absolutely nothing, but it can be an especially visible indicator of a shift in corporate strategy.

This is especially visible in mergers. Compaq+HP became just HP, which was supposed to mean that they were keeping the HP culture. (This turned out be a really bad lie, but that was the story.) I forget now who made up Verizon originally, but they wanted to indicate a break from their stodgy Baby Bell history. I frankly think the only people they're trying to impress are the ones who are too smart to fall for this sort of gimmick, but, well... I think a lot of the shit companies do is stupid and counterproductive, so what do I know.

I guess their logic is that it costs them fairly big money to pull of a name change, so it indicates their intent more than a mere press release would. Saying "We're changing our corporate stategy" is worth less than the paper or electrons it's printed on. Saying that and then backing it up with $30 million hopefully shows you are at least somewhat serious. (Serious about bilking your investors out of their money, perhaps, but serious about something.)

Re:Such a waste of time...

[Vortran]

Personally, I'd prefer that companies would focus less on public relations and marketing B.S. and more on action. For instance, instead of changing the name and spending an assheap of money to say, "We're going to improve customer service".. how about spending the money on training/hiring call center staff so when a customer calls they get through to a HUMAN who has the knowledge, skills, and decission making authority to resolve the issue?

That's just an example, but the point is if these corporate geniuses would do simple practical things to solve real problems, they wouldn't need to worry about public opinion. That would take care of itself. Actions always speak louder than words.

Re:Such a waste of time...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was actually Marathon->Snickers, and there was a slight difference in that case, in that Snickers was the US name for the product and they just brought it in line.

Same business with Starburst There are some more confusing candy bar naming differences that will probably always persist.

A "3 Musketeers" in the US is a "Milky Way" in the UK.

A "Milky Way" in the US is a "Mars Bar" in the UK.

A "Mars Bar" in the US is a "Snickers Almond Bar" in the UK.

(Unless I've managed to mix and of these up...)

Re:Such a waste of time...

[ignorant_coward]

A "3 Musketeers" in the US is a "Milky Way" in the UK.

A "Milky Way" in the US is a "Mars Bar" in the UK.

A "Mars Bar" in the US is a "Snickers Almond Bar" in the UK.

AAARRRGHH! *head implodes*

Re:Such a waste of time...

[Hognoxious]

It was actually Marathon->Snickers, and there was a slight difference in that case, in that Snickers was the US name for the product and they just brought it in line.

I always thought it was because most languages don't have the 'th' sound. [Pictures a German in a shop asking for a Marasson, then a Marazon, then a Maraton, and finally saying "Sheisse! Ich nehme eine Kit-Kat!". ]

Re:Such a waste of time...

[Hognoxious]

name change can be used to suggest a break from the past or a fresh start [...] The name change itself, of course, means absolutely nothing, but it can be an especially visible indicator of a shift in corporate strategy.

As in Windscale -> Sellafield. Or was in Ready-brek?

Re:Such a waste of time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandriva, anyone?

Re:Such a waste of time...

[Chris Burke]

Imagine the reprinting costs alone, not to mention customer confusion, disappearing brand loyalty and reputation,

I think you would find it unsurprising if I said that for many of the kind of companies who can't come up with anything better to improve themselves than to change their name, disappearing reputation can be a worthwhile goal.

By the way, what's Arthur Anderson calling themselves these days?

Re:Such a waste of time...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just can't help but find it amusing how much time and money companies spend changing their names, to so often change the back again afterwards.

I think some of that is going on here, but I think overall, there are three reasons why PalmOne wants to make this purchase of the trademark:

1. PalmSource (s/w company) is faltering. The new Cobalt OS hasn't been adopted. PalmOne (h/w company) is doing OK; its odds are better than PalmSource's. So, PalmOne wants to own the most well-known name, Palm, in case things get bad. If people hear "Palm went out of business", it sounds like the ship has sunk. If people hear "PalmSource went out of business, but Palm is doing OK", it sounds like some miscellaneous unimportant company failed, but Palm (which is most strongly identified with the platform as a whole) is doing OK.
2. They want to change their name for marketing reasons, same as all these other companies that are constantly changing things around in an effort to find a way to waste more money.
3. Corporate welfare. PalmOne has some cash, and they know PalmSource is doing badly. But PalmSource owns the OS, and PalmOne needs PalmSource to survive and keep doing the R&D, else PalmOne is up a creek with no new innovation going on. So PalmOne is buying this trademark as a way of giving PalmSource some money so that PalmSource can stay afloat, because it's in PalmOne's interest for PalmSource to stay afloat and not have to cut staff and scale back operations. It's very much like what happened several years ago when Apple was in bad shape: Microsoft signed some deal with them (where Internet Explorer would be bundled with new Macs and not Netscape), and then gave them $100 million. In that case, Microsoft did it so that they couldn't be accused of being a monopoly. It was in their interest for Apple to survive. In the same way, PalmOne needs PalmSource to survive. It's for different reasons, but they're not above just throwing cash at the problem as a way of buying insurance against PalmSource failing and throwing the platform into chaos.

Hell yes

[ciroknight]

PalmOS is like the Apple of the business. It may not be the cheapest (but often is). It may not be in the lead marketshare-wise (but currently is). But the interface is hella streamlined, and it Just Works (tm). Besides that, it's not too bad to code for, and it's got a firm old of the hardware it's on.

Even so, it wouldn't be all that bad to port PalmOS to the XScale chip, or any other archetecture. I'd be interested in seeing it run on x86 natively (emulators already exist).

I guess you're one of the few that actually like Windows CE or Windows Embedded or whatever they're calling it today; an existing system ported onto a system with ten times the restricted ram, and even more so when you speak of CPU power and battery power. Why not let PalmOS, the operating system designed to fit embedded PDA systems, do the job it was created to do?

Re:Hell yes

[Anonymous Coward]

You should check what kind of processor current palms have.

Hint: They're made by intel and their name starts with the letter that comes after W.

Re:Hell yes

[BenjyD]

Palm(One|Whatever) seem to be more like Apple before the "Second Coming of Jobs": lacking direction, floundering around trying to bring a new OS to market to replace their increasingly outdated current version, full of infighting and confusion.

I hope they can sort themselves out, because I really like the PalmOS platform.

Re:Hell yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you don't know what you're talking about... Did you actually program CE devices?

Re:Hell yes

[NMerriam]

Completely correct analogy. They're caught up in dozens of pointless rewrites of everything, nothing actually gets accomplished, the hardware and software are just getting more complex without actually improving, and they're losing sight of the core simplicity and "it just works" aspect that made them so successful in the first place.

Microsoft, to their credit, soldiers on, getting slowly better, version after version, as they always do. Palm had a huge lead, and squandered it on stupid stuff like splitting up into different companies and trying to sell the OS to clone manufacturers (sound familiar?).

I HOPE and PRAY that the embracing of linux on Palm will have the same effect that embracing UNIX had on Apple -- finally building in the robust multitasking and hardware management that have long been needed while letting more resources be spent on the actual user side of things

I quake in terror for the day when i have to use a Pocket PC device daily -- a horribly mangled UI designed for a regular computer and just shrink-rayed down to an unusable abbreviation of an interface. *shiver*

Re:Hell yes

[Trillan]

Yes, the previous Palm has screwed up so royally that we can't even point the finger at a single company anymore. As a developer of Palm OS applications, I nearly quake in fury when I think of what has become of the platform over the past couple years. And yes, I port my software to Pocket PC or whatever it will be called next week. (Well, actually, I get someone else to. I'm not touching the @#$%ing things.)

This latest move is interesting, but I think it completely fails to solve the core problem: One of PalmOne or PalmSource needs to buy the other, and then they need to focus on creating a great mobile platform... operating system and hardware.

Re:Hell yes

[dysprosia]

Chucking in a "me too".

I have the interesting circumstance of owning both a PocketPC device and two PalmOS devices and I have to say I do prefer the Palm devices more.

The one thing that irks me the most is the multitasking uder PocketPC. Sure, it's a neat trick, but I don't really need it. I can't change the behaviour of it (I can't keep one app in memory all the time -- rather important for the navigation software that I have on the PocketPC). It seems to me exemplifying the typical MS attitude of sacrificing resources to do something flashy and unnecessary (IMO).

I don't know how Linux is going to be integrated with PalmOS but I hope it does not detract from the hallmark simplicity and efficiency that PalmOS is known for.

Re:Hell yes

[aussie_a]

PalmOS is like the Apple of the business. It may not be the cheapest (but often is). It may not be in the lead marketshare-wise (but currently is).

So in retrospect it really isn't like Apple, is it?

Re:Hell yes

[pugnatious]

even so, palm os runs in emulation on the xscale,
a great part of the apps do too. it's all pretty much still 68k code.

Re:Hell yes

[mcbridematt]

I'd be interested in seeing it run on x86 natively (emulators already exist).

The PalmOS Simulator (NOT POSE) basically is PalmOS for x86, native components have to be in Windows .dlls and PACE (the 68k PRC environment for OS 5*) does the rest. Also does some emulation of GSM and CDMA radios.

And oh, Every PalmOS > 5 handheld runs an ARM processor these days. Ok, maybe some of the newer devices aren't in the Just Works(TM) category, but every PalmOS device i've used up to the Treo 600 I have here Just Works(TM).

* I haven't spent much time reading over PalmOS dev docs (I'm using the SuperWaba java language) but PalmSource doesn't seem to distribute the native ARM toolkit (FAST) anymore , instead asking developers to code PACE Native components and/or use the OS 6 Protein API.

Re:Hell yes

[mr_sas]

Except that Windows CE which PocketPC/Windows Mobile is based on, was pretty much a new OS designed for embedded systems...so it's not as big an issue as what you make out..

Re:Hell yes

[digitalgiblet]

"I have the interesting circumstance of owning both a PocketPC device and two PalmOS devices and I have to say I do prefer the Palm devices more."

For what it's worth I've had the exact opposite experience. I found the Palm to be so limited in it's capabilities that I didn't get much use out of it. As a programmer I don't have all THAT many meetings and contacts to manage. About the only thing I really used my Palm (well actually Sony Clie) for was reading eBooks.

As for programming the Palm, I found that all the really interesting stuff I wanted to do was beyond the capabilities of the device.

I now use a Dell Axim Pocket PC and I do mean use it. I have a 1 GB SD card, so I can carry quite a bit of music. I have watched some videos on it, but I don't watch movies or TV very much anyway. I copied an episode of Stargate SG1 from DVD to the Axim and could watch it just fine. I just rarely find myself in a place where I have time to watch video, but don't have access to a TV, DVD, etc.

The real kicker for me was Wi-Fi. I have a really cool RSS feedreader (Egress) that can handle enlosures. That means I can subscribe to Podcasts directly from the Axim. No half-step download to PC then PDA. I like to listen to Podcasts while I commute since I drive an hour each way.

The one area where BOTH Palm and Pocket PC suck is gaming. There are a few notable exception on both platforms, but overall neither is a good as a gameboy...

But wait, you say. How about the Tapwave Zodiac? It's Palm based and is built from the ground up as a gaming device. I have to admit that the specs are damned sexy, and I spent a long time in geek lust for the Zod, but that all ended when I played with one at CompUSA... Tapwave did a fantastic job of getting the hardware right, but unfortunately either the OS or the games themselves were sorely lacking. Doom was a herky-jerky mess. Spyhunter was sadly boring. Both left me with sore hands after only a few minutes of play (OK, that was a hardware design issue...). Plus the bounty of new games never really materialized.

Splitting Palm into two units was just dumb. The OS division has had a really slick new OS available for a year and a half and not ONE single device uses it. Cobalt addresses many of the problems with the Palm OS, but who cares? You can't get a Cobalt device.

The new Lifedrive is interesting since it comes with a 4GB harddrive. Having now filled up my 1 GB card, I am envious of that storage space... BUT, it doesn't have Wi-Fi built in. Just Bluetooth. Why is Palm so averse to 802.11?

Granted Wi-Fi really drains the battery, but I'd much rather HAVE Wi-Fi and manage my usage myself to maximize battery life. I also have an adapter in my car so that I can power my Axim while driving. I much prefer that to longer battery life and NOT doing the wireless stuff I now depend upon.

I have mixed feelings about .Net Compact Framework. On the one hand it is very easy to get applications up and running. On the other hand you have limitations over writing native code. Overall the .Net apps perform well. I haven't done enough yet to offer any great insights, however. I will say that I have managed to do more interesting things in much, much less time than on the Palm... YMMV.

In conclusion, I have used and programmed both Palm and Pocket PC devices and overall like both environments, but I do have to give a nod to Pocket PC as my current favorite. The newer Palms are definitely slick, but I think they still have a ways to go and they definitely need to embrace Wi-Fi!

Re:Hell yes

[Hognoxious]

Palm had a huge lead, and squandered it on stupid stuff like splitting up into different companies and trying to sell the OS to clone manufacturers (sound familiar?).

Sounds a bit like Psyon/Simbian to me.

Re:Hell yes

[rho]

Maybe if we're lucky, Palm will re-introduce support for Macs, and add real support for Unix. Why Palm doesn't recognize that it needs those markets to compete with PocketPC beats the hell outta me.

A Palm and a Mac should go hand-in-hand together. Instead we have to depend on a third party (Mark/Space) for real sync support. And since Missing Sync supports PocketPC, Palm is rapidly losing even this meager support.

Re:Hell yes

[ignorant_coward]

I HOPE and PRAY that the embracing of linux on Palm will have the same effect that embracing UNIX had on Apple

Let's see...

Linux interoperates well with UNIX. Linux runs on lots of stuff, including, potentially, future Palm devices.

Sun _is_ UNIX. They interoperate with UNIX by default.

Apple also interoperates well with UNIX.

Microsoft is working with Sun on single sign on, directory stuff, etc.

Open standards _do_ win!

Re:Hell yes

[Anonymous Coward]

One important difference is Apple went with an OS API that has a BSD license, not GPL or LGPL.

If Palm* goes Linux, they need to deal with LGPL c runtime libraries. Why does this matter?

Before I begin, if you don't believe any of the following info, please contact David M. Turner of the FSF for confirmation rather than flaming (do your homework before responding). David's resume and contact info is at http://web.novalis.org/resume.html

I found David to be very helpful in explaining the obligations of LGPL and second to none regarding GPL and LGPL expertise.

According to LGPL Section 5 Paragraph 3, any software simply using header files of LGPL libs to link must at least allow users to modify the resulting *binaries* for their own use and also explicitely allow reverse-engineering. If you think this is no big deal, think of all the trial software that can be reverse-engineered and patched to have full functionality. The ability to do this with explicit legal permission is yummy for those of us that cannot afford expensive software.

LGPL Section 5 Paragraph 3:

When a "work that uses the Library" uses material from a header file that is part of the Library, the object code for the work may be a derivative work of the Library even though the source code is not. [...]

For those that don't understand the difference between GPL and LGPL, LGPL allows distribution under the library user's own terms provided that the new terms allow modification of the work by the end-user and allow reverse-engineering (among other things). This is an oversimplification but you can see for yourself, especially by reading Section 5.

Again, if you don't believe any of this, please contact David M. Turner of the FSF for confirmation. His resume and contact info is at http://web.novalis.org/resume.html

Re:Hell yes

[fishdan]

That Apple/Palm similarity is not just a coincidence. There are ALOT of people at Palm who were with Apple in the 80s. Well, there were alot of people from Apple. Many of them were driven out -- (as a former Palm employee myself I think as they got rid of only the smart people) but just as Apple drove out, and then returned Jobsto great success, I believe Jeff Hawkins will have the same prodigal son type affect on Palm

Re:Hell yes

[Moofie]

Just because it was designed for embedded systems doesn't mean it was designed well.

Re:Hell yes

[cpeterso]

PalmOne or PalmSource needs to buy the other, and then they need to focus on creating a great mobile platform... operating system and hardware.

I completely agree. PalmSource needs PalmOne. No other company makes successful Palm OS devices. PalmOne does absolutely need PalmSource (given the rumors about a Windows CE Treo), but PalmOne+PalmSource makes a lot more sense. There are also rumors that RIM may acquire PalmSource, but I don't think RIM can gain anything from PalmSource. RIM's hardware and software is closed, proprietary, and based on Java. Why would they want PalmSource's Palm OS (without PalmOne's hardware)? I mused more about this in my blog: " Will PalmOne acquire PalmSource?"

Re:Hell yes

[turbidostato]

I am not English native, but I think the word for what you are doing is "astroturfing".

In other words what the hell are you talking about?

"For those that don't understand the difference between GPL and LGPL, LGPL allows distribution under the library user's own terms provided that the new terms allow modification of the work by the end-user and allow reverse-engineering (among other things)"

That is, simply stated, pure bullshit.

Re:Hell yes

[loshwomp]

even so, palm os runs in emulation on the xscale

No it doesn't. The OS is nice, fast native ARM code. The PACE environment interprets 68K code, but all system calls execute the native OS. And guess what. Most apps spend most of their time making OS calls.

Re:Hell yes

[mr_sas]

Oh, I never claimed it was :p

Re:i could be wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, real projects change their name every few months, just to keep people on their toes. Wake me up when they merge the Netscape and Firefox code to form FirEScape.

Thank you, Palmsource

[cianduffy]

For buying the OS I use for really bugger all (11 million), ceasing development and distribution, not using any of it, sapping the life-force from its developers, and then moving to the polar opposite (Linux). Hope it feels great to get almost three times more for your NAME than the only OS that had Microsoft actually scared on the -home- desktop.

Re:Thank you, Palmsource

[Anonymous Coward]

In case anybody is wondering what the parent talks about.

PalmSource acquired the rights for BeOS and he's right, they didn't really do anything with it, but at the same time people who wanted to do anything with it had the problem that they couldn't get the rights needed.

P.S.: Why BeOS should be the polar opposite of Linux is beyond me.

Re:Thank you, Palmsource

[cianduffy]

BeOS. Which Palmsource bought, refused to licence even to people who had pre-existing reseller licences, and never used in (any|a major) way in a product, and not at all in a shipping product.

Re:Thank you, Palmsource

[jacksonj04]

Ah, thanks for the clarification. Now to deal with the moderators, hope I get to M2 some of the ones I've seen today.

Re:Thank you, Palmsource

[loshwomp]

Actually, the Be heritage is extremely alive and arguably well in the Cobalt (aka 6.0) products. After four years of development, the number of Cobalt devices shipping (yeah, that'd be zero) is perhaps a testament to the lameness of BeOS in a handheld.

Re:i could be wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, it is of significant interest that they will also rebrand their entire product range. We care very much about their product range. Really. We do.

And while we're on the topic of free advertising, if you quote the promotion code "slashdot" on my new website www.getpalmnow.com you will get a palmone t-shirt for free.

Re:700 - PalmOne = Linux

[treff89]

Previous application compatibility: Palm OS Cobalt (6.x), which is being waited for with bated breath in the handheld industry, is being built as a combination of Linux technology gained through CMS (a China-based mobile company) which palmsource purchased last year, and the BeOS which Palm purchased when still a combined company (IIRC). Although PalmOne (now Palm) switching to Linux _by themselves_ may sound a great idea at first, there could not be any backwards compatibility (licensing), and there would therefore be no apps - and apps are the reason p1 remains in the game.

Money use

[VincenzoRomano]

I'd like to see a better money use in a "so smart" company!
Changing names, logos and even Internet domain names seems to me to be just a waste of resources.
What about giving that extra money to some third world aid program?
What if Microsoft spended USD 300M to switch the name to Megasoft in order to give its mobile OS better chances over the PalmOS?

Re:Money use

[itchy92]

I don't think it would really matter if Microsoft spent $300M on a name change, since they annually donate ~$250M (granted, mostly software, but still) and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donates ~$1.3B to non-profits and charitables.

Corporations don't deal in dollars; they deal in millions and billions. I'm currently consulting for one of the major credit card companies, and it boggles my mind how wasteful and inefficient they are about everything, from too much paper-shuffling to how they're handling their current million-dollar systems refresh.

If some executive thinks it's a good idea to dump $$$ into an arbitrary name change, it will happen.

Re:Money use

[Hognoxious]

What if Microsoft spended USD 300M to switch the name to Megasoft

It would take all of 0.03 seconds before some wag thought of putting an S in front of it.

Re:Money use

[Bloke down the pub]

... and another 0.6 seconds later, someone would s/S/$/.

Note to self, upon owning massive software monopoly, choose a name that doesn't contain any of the letters S,E, or L. Oh, and Y.

Re:Money use

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand, what's special about S, E and L? Oh, and Y.

Re:i could be wrong...

[MasterSLATE]

how is that pronounced?

fire escape
fir escape
fire scape
fires cape
fi res cape

hmmm

Re:Palm = JustWorks (tm) - history

[drmaxx]

Unfortunately the latest OS5.4 Palms (Tungsten 5 and Treo 650) are not branded under the JustWorks(tm) trademarks. Crashes with wired error messages are very common. Substantial bugs (such as the global find function that does not work) are persistent and not resolved by PalmOne. Daily work with my new Tungsten T5 with 416 MHz XScale Processor is slower then with my 5 year old PalmV (e.g. opening up a split screen in DateBK5 takes 50 seconds - 0.5s on my old PalmV), due to the inefficient handling of the data management between flash and ram. The flash memory has 512 byte minimal cluster size. This increased the DB sizes substantially and did not help to make the slow flash access faster... There is a patch out there for some Treo650. The Tungsten T5 is still waiting for the second patch. The first patch improved the TT5 from unworkable to buggy! Hope there *will* be a second patch. Hope is all we can do... Together with me there are many other ex-loyal Palm follower that are severly disappointed about the latest models and the way Palm is not dealing with it (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tungsten-t5/).

viable and sensible

[cahiha]

This brings up a whole slew of embedded operating systems. It also leaves out PalmOS.

PalmOS isn't really an operating system, it's more like a window system, toolkit, and standard library. All that stuff already runs on top of a third party embedded, real-time kernel.

Sticking with that kernel for as long as Palm did was a mistake, as was their attempt with PalmOS 6 to develop their own kernel. What they are doing now is to take PalmOS (i.e., everything other than the kernel) and move it on top of Linux.

PalmOS on Linux combines one of the best available embedded kernels with arguably the best available user interface and core apps for PDAs/smart phones. Neither Qtopia nor PocketPC are even close.

So, moving PalmOS to Linux makes perfect sense; applications don't need to change significantly, current PalmOS applications will work much better, and Palm can focus on new functionality. The only thing that doesn't make sense is that it took so long.

Re:viable and sensible

[argent]

PalmOS isn't really an operating system, it's more like a window system, toolkit, and standard library. All that stuff already runs on top of a third party embedded, real-time kernel.

PalmOS is a lot like the original Mac OS, with the difference that instead of trying to cram a minimal OS under the GUI and then crank it up, they licensed the OS from someone else. The problem is their license kept them from being able to take advantage of that underlying OS properly.

I suppose that slipping Linux in underneath is reasonable, though Linux does raise some interesting licensing issues for kernel extensions. On the other hand, I don't expect Palm to voluntarily release kernel source the way Apple has... Palm's always seemed a lot more secretive than Apple (and that takes some doing), so perhaps it's best that they're using a kernel that obligates them to do so.

Re:viable and sensible

[pugnatious]

-- Neither Qtopia nor PocketPC are even close. --

I sure hope Qtopia would be an option, what with the future linux kernel of the palm OS

Re:viable and sensible

[stony3k]

An alternative could have been to use BeOS as the kernel - they're just letting all that good code rot! I hope someone in that company remembers they own BeOS

Re:viable and sensible

[argent]

An alternative could have been to use BeOS as the kernel

That's what Cobalt is. They've spent years trying that, and apparently come to the same conclusion that everyone else who's tried to use BeOS for real work has... it's less an operating system than a piece of performance art, an ongoing exploration of operating system ideas. It's not actually smaller, faster, or better performing than its contemporaries (in fact it required a faster processor and more RAM than NeXTstep or Windows NT). It was billed as a "media OS" but had no real-time support. It's got an object-oriented API using the worst object-oriented programming language in the world.

At this point letting it rot would probably be better than inflicting it on another company.

Re:viable and sensible

[ILikeRed]

[SNIP]So, moving PalmOS to Linux makes perfect sense[SNIP]

I agree, but the other trouble that I see, that Palm does not seem to have addressed yet, is issues with their desktop and sync software. This is especially evident on OS X, where syncing is a terrible mess. (e.g. try putting a multi-day event in iCal.) I can not see any down side to Palm releasing all their versions of hotsync under the GPL, it would open so many possiblities to them.... As for their desktop software, I know of very few people who like it or use it, on any platform. I think they would be better off transitioning to Novell's Evolution. It is being ported to Windows now, and somewhat runs under OS X. The thing is, with Palm's support, it could run well under Linux, Windows, and OS X; - it supports Exchange and Novell's groupware products; they could bundle all three versions with their pdas; and they would no longer be dependant on Microsoft for help with Outlook. I just don't understand why they have not done so yet.

Re:viable and sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

worst object-oriented programming language in the world

What would that be? Perl?

*ducks*

I don't have anything against Perl... it's just that object-oriented stuff with it seems very hackish.

Re:We tried working with PalmOne...

[CommunistTroll]

Needless to say, the PalmOne team offered no support whatsoever. I made the employee remove the handhelds from the offices and lets just say he's not with us anymore.

And there we have it in a nutshell.

Employee makes reasonable suggestion, management tries it but it doesn't work out, employee sacked.

I notice you didn't resign for allowing the trial.

One law for the boss, another for the workers.

Re:We tried working with PalmOne...

[petermgreen]

mmm nice variant of the troll but its still easilly recognisable.

your trolling from an account with karma bonus too wow!

wrong

[cahiha]

Although PalmOne (now Palm) switching to Linux _by themselves_ may sound a great idea at first, there could not be any backwards compatibility (licensing), and there would therefore be no apps - and apps are the reason p1 remains in the game.

Quite to the contrary: PalmOS on Linux will be highly backwards compatible with existing Palm applications according to Palm, probably more so than than Cobalt would have been. That's one of the big attractions of doing this.

PalmOS started out as Palm libraries on top of a third party kernel. With PalmOS 5, they added a 68k emulator into the mix. With that history, moving to a different kernel while preserving backwards compatibility should not be all that hard.

Re:wrong

[Trillan]

I, um, haven't actually read anything about PalmOne going to Linux by themselves. So I have no comment on that.

However, I would expect PalmOS-built-on-Linux (hypothetical or planned, whatever) to be 100% compatible with all existing PalmOS 5 applications, so long as the processor remains the same. PalmOS 5 offers very few services to ARM code, and those are made available through a procedure pointer.

Moving forward, there'd be ways around the processor limitation as well.

In short, I believe you're 100% correct.

Re:wrong

[treff89]

That's the whole point of my post! I am rebutting the parent that we should "run Linux" on palms.. the only way this is happening is _through_ palmsource (therefore gaining backwards-compatibility) and therefore parent is redundant. Read my post again. Mod cahiha down.

Re:wrong

[hackbod]

Quite to the contrary: PalmOS on Linux will be highly backwards compatible with existing Palm applications according to Palm, probably more so than than Cobalt would have been. That's one of the big attractions of doing this.

Sorry, but this is completely incorrect. PalmOS for Linux will be the higher-level PalmOS COBALT system sitting on top of the Linux kernel. This is absolutely not Garnet being ported to Linux, it is Cobalt being ported to Linux. All of the compatibility code needed in Cobalt is still needed when moving to Linux, plus a little bit more to deal with some of the lower-level application APIs that are replaced by Linux.

The reason for doing this is that a large chunk of the work in writing Cobalt involved making the current PalmOS programming model sit on top of a modern, protected-memory operating system (like Cobalt and Linux are). We still need that new system architecture on Linux. If we just ported Cobalt, all you would end up with is PalmOS applications sitting in a big, isolated box, running in a single-threaded single-process world.

Btw, as far as compatibility goes, the backwards compatibility level of Cobalt is not that different than Garnet was when it was first introduced. The main difference is that it has taken a lot longer to get Cobalt devices out, so we haven't yet seen most of the expected application updates that will address many of the problematic apps.

PalmOS started out as Palm libraries on top of a third party kernel. With PalmOS 5, they added a 68k emulator into the mix. With that history, moving to a different kernel while preserving backwards compatibility should not be all that hard.

Because this history of the platform completely disregards Cobalt, it is quite wrong about when moving to Linux means. The 68k emulator is -purely- a 68k emulator -- it gives no help in providing compatibility for system APIs. All of that compatibility is a part of the system architecture, which also needs to be available to run existing applications.

For example, in Cobalt there is a header WindowCompatibilty.h that includes things like WinCreateWindowV50(). This is the API that PACE calls when a 68k app calls WinCreateWindow(), to have the Cobalt UI system create a window that is set up to run in a mode that provides the same behavior as pre-Cobalt versions of the system.

Re:wrong

[cahiha]

That's probably what you meant, but your posting was unclear. It's important to be clear about such things.

(You also made several factual errors. For example. you claimed that Cobalt is a combination of CMS/Linux, PalmOS, and BeOS. But the first version of Cobalt was completed before the acquisition of CMS, so that can't be true. We don't know yet what PalmOS/Linux will be called.)

Re:wrong

[cahiha]

Because this history of the platform completely disregards Cobalt, it is quite wrong about when moving to Linux means.

It disregards Cobalt because it isn't relevant to my statement. Given the history of PalmOS, you had a simple, obvious path towards a highly backwards compatible PalmOS on a Linux kernel. Are you saying that what you are actually creating is going to be less backwards compatible than the obvious and simple solution?

all you would end up with is PalmOS applications sitting in a big, isolated box, running in a single-threaded single-process world.

Some Palm guys I talked to when the story broke seemed to imply that you were considering that option. If you had followed it, you would already be shipping fully backwards compatible devices based on a Linux kernel (which has several advantages in itself), and you could be putting a lean Cobalt-based set of APIs next to that without the burden of backwards compatibility for the new APIs.

Re:wrong

[treff89]

It will be called Cobalt 6.1, iirc. Or at least a derivative thereof. Palmsource would be crazy not to call it Cobalt, in fact, as all the hype surrounding the new OS is directed thus. Cahiha, ignorance is better than the illusion of knowledge - and the latter is clearly applicable in this case. I made my posting extremely clear - likely, you were karma whoring so much you didn't even read the post.

Re:wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I made my posting extremely clear

Actually, no. When I read your article I thought you were saying that Palm using Linux would mean no apps. On careful re-reading I see what you meant, that Palm would be crazy to dump the API from their current OS family.

The followup post stated clearly that Palm is keeping the API while switching to Linux as the kernel. Note that it was modded up to 5 and your post wasn't. That's the advantage of clear writing. It's not cahiha's fault you didn't express yourself well.

likely, you were karma whoring so much you didn't even read the post.

Childish, immature. And I wasn't impressed by your plea to "Mod cahiha down."

Re:wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had [made a PalmOS compatibility box], you would already be shipping fully backwards compatible devices based on a Linux kernel (which has several advantages in itself), and you could be putting a lean Cobalt-based set of APIs next to that without the burden of backwards compatibility for the new APIs.

Man oh man, I wish I had mod points to mod this statement up. Insightful, cahiha.

Re:We tried working with PalmOne...

[Hack Jandy]

It's just so addicting!

Rosie Palm etc.

[csrster]

None of this solves the basic problem that "Palm Pilot" sounds like a slang term for a serial masturbator.

Re:Rosie Palm etc.

[metamatic]

It could be worse. Game Boy is slang for a gay prostitute.

God, I hope...

[thzinc]

... they don't continue the leetspeak in their name. Pa1mOne? Psh.

That doesn't sound like a Palm experience...

[argent]

That sounds more like my experience with the Pocket PC. So long as you use the Palm software, which all works well together, it's been absolutely reliable for me since 1999. I've gone through 3 Palms and 2 Pocket PCs, and the only time I've lost data has been on the Pocket PC. Even when my Visor was sat apon by a less than watchful 17 year old, I was able to replace it, sync, and EVERYTHING came back, applications and all. I was never able to perform a complete recovery from a backup on a Pocket PC even on the same handheld (after an embarassing data loss when Microsoft Pocket Streets crashed while I was trying to give someone directions).

It's a pity Palm lost the plot. The whole handheld market has turned very strange, with Microsoft crippling the Pocket PC to make it more like the Palm, and Palm trying to cram so much into the Palm to compete with the Pocket PC on features. The last of the 68000-based Clies, Sony's Palm-OS devices, ended up being the best of the lot.

I have no idea what handheld I'll get when my SJ22 breaks. I can't see anything in the current lot on EITHER platform that really attracts me, but I suppose it'll be a Tungsten or a Zire. There's no way I'm going to trust a Pocket PC again.

Re:That doesn't sound like a Palm experience...

[gothfox]

Sorry, you are wrong.

PalmOS has gotten worse and worse in terms of stability (lookup information on PalmOS 5.4 aka soft reset ten times per day).

All this years while PalmOS5 has been becoming more and more technologically retarded, Microsoft was slowly enhancing its offering, like they always do: PPC2000 and below was horrible, PPC2002 was somewhat usable, WM2003 was okay and 2003SE is actually pretty good.

Compare PocketPC devices with VGA screens, exceptional communication capabilities and good battery life with this recent LifeDrive shit of palmOne creation. And I was hoping for a new GOOD Tungsten flagship PDA...

Palm really needs a good leader like mr. Jobbs who could recreate Apple from the ashes. As was already noted in the discussion, Palm is in very similar position with pre-Jobbs Apple right now.

Note for flamers or idiot moderators - I own a Palm device (Tungsten T5), WM2003SE device (Loox 718) and have been poking aroung with PDAs since Palm m100.

Re:That doesn't sound like a Palm experience...

[argent]

PalmOS has gotten worse and worse in terms of stability (lookup information on PalmOS 5.4 aka soft reset ten times per day).

When I've tried to use my Palm as a "laptop replacement" then I've had that experience too, though I never managed to suffer irrecoverable data loss no matter HOW hard I pushed it. Palm OS was designed to manage the information you use to manage your life. That's what it's for, and that's what it does better than anything else.

The Pocket PC started off as the "Palm-Sized PC", as a laptop replacement, and its biggest problem was the poor performance of the chips it was running on. Then Pocket PC 2000 tried to turn it into a Palm clone and it was far far worse... if it wasn't for the 206 MHz StrongARM in the iPaq it would have sunk without a trace. PPC2002 seemed better because it required the StrongARM, and the faster ARM processors since then have made things even better, but the OS itself is still the same potentially good laptop replacement OS hobbled by its 5 year old attempt to look like what Palm was shipping in 1999.

If you are trying to use your Palm as a laptop replacement, I would recommand you look into a Tablet PC or one of those really nice tiny laptops they have in Japan. If you're just looking for a dependable handheld that actually makes your life better, get a cheap PalmOS device and quit looking for something that isn't "technologicaly retarded".

Re:That doesn't sound like a Palm experience...

[gothfox]

When I've tried to use my Palm as a "laptop replacement" then I've had that experience too, though I never managed to suffer irrecoverable data loss no matter HOW hard I pushed it.

Yep. That's why "soft reset ten times per day", not "hard reset". Very annoying anyway and doesn't really speak well for PalmOS programmers.

I don't use PDA as a laptop replacement. As I posted some times before, generally I read books and use PIM. I don't even have a laptop and feel no need for one, that's why I didn't say anything about vast superior multimedia or whatever capabilities of Windows Mobile line, because I see no use for it anyway in a handheld.

better, get a cheap PalmOS device and quit looking for something that isn't "technologicaly retarded".

You know, some basic stuff like font anti-aliasing and fucking normal multi-lingual support with unicode wouldn't hurt even for a "simple handheld". Cyrillification issues (I'm a russian guy) of PalmOS are an endless torment.

Some real multitasking (no, horrible hacks don't qualify) so I could use IRC and book reader simultaneously if I ever wanted to would be kinda nice too, don't you think? Even for a simple handheld? :-)

My point is, PalmOS is nice interface wise, I like it very much, it is easy to use and all that, give or take a few quirks. But as of year 2005 it is very outdated and needs refreshment, just like OS9 before OSX.

I don't know what Palm is thinking with their two last half-assed flagship products (T5 and LifeDrive). Maybe they just need money to survive until new OS will be ready, I dunno.

By the way, recent PalmOS devices use the same Xscale processors and ARM architecture and under the hood (IMHO) are very similar to the PPC line.

Re:That doesn't sound like a Palm experience...

[argent]

That's why "soft reset ten times per day", not "hard reset".

I get soft resets occasionally running "find", I'm sure it's some application that I haven't managed to identify yet. I don't like it, but at least recovery is reliable, which hasn't been the case on the Pocket PC... I've had corrupted files and occasional hard resets following a soft reset. And hard resets on the Pocket PC are MUCH more traumatic than on the Palm, because ActiveSync only backs up part of the system on a sync.

I don't use PDA as a laptop replacement.

I suspect that if you're even considering doing things like IRC, you probably are using what I'd call "laptop replacement" tools.

Some real multitasking (no, horrible hacks don't qualify) so I could use IRC...

Oh, man, you would be SO unhappy if you got real multitasking and discovered just how limited the PalmOS TCP/IP support is. That's the real problem that's keeping you from using networking from the backend, not the "cooperative multitasking" model.

I don't know what Palm is thinking with their two last half-assed flagship products

They're thinking "oh, shit, this BeOS stuff isn't what it's cracked up to be". Palm OS 5 was originally going to be a stopgap while they got the BeOS-based ARM-native OS working. When they started shipping updates I figured they were running into problems...

I think at this point their best bet would be to go to a UNIX kernel and UNIX apps and treat the old PalmOS API like something between Carbon and "Classic" on the Mac.

Big thinkers

[t_allardyce]

And as usual with 99% of company name changes I could have told them (for free!) that changing their name to PalmOne was a stupid idea. And as usual the company realises this and wastes millions more changing it back. One day I hope to be a 'company image advisor' so I can stop this sort of thing. I bet they're all going to palm one out tonight over their new increased stock value.

Re:Big thinkers

[TheGavster]

Worse than changing their name back in shame is having to pay some company that you used to own for the privledge ... I mean seriously, what was the logic behind giving 55% stake in the holder of your old name to a spinoff. (not that the spinoff was a terribly good idea, since PalmOne was the only customer)

Re:Big thinkers

[jwave]

I mean seriously, what was the logic behind giving 55% stake in the holder of your old name to a spinoff.

Perhaps the reason for changing names and exchanging money from one self-owned company to another self-owned company was to essentially launder money for tax purposes.

By shifting money from one company to another, one can "lose" money, while the other company is just being started and organized can write off "losses" and such. Maybe the benefit has passed and it's time to re-shift the money in order to save money again.

----
This semi-paranoid view is brought to you by the Tin-Foil Hat Squad(TM).

Re:Big thinkers

[myov]

When we launched our current company, I joked that we should also register OurCompanyOne.com, so that we have it in 3 years when we rebrand ourself.

Palm has lost their direction. Make good, simple devices and you'll win. I'm still on my Handspring Visor (basically a Palm III). I'd love to replace it, and I've almost bought a Treo 650 a few times, but I don't think the current devices would work as well.

Re:Big thinkers

[t_allardyce]

I think most of the PDA market has lost its way, everyone is just producing poor clones, and all windows CE has done is increase the need for memory (hum yes a calculator in 1.5 MB sure) We need something good from someone like Apple (who also haven't changed their name).

Re:Big thinkers

[myov]

That's another reason why I'm still on a palm III. It just works.
It handles email (as long as I sync often), my various log databases (HandDBase) - relational at that, notes, todo, etc.

About the only driving factor is that I would have real time access to my mail (and the subsequent raping by my phone company for data charges), a slightly more modern device, and avoiding bat-belt as I'd be replacing my cell phone. The main reason though is that I'm looking to switch my cell service to one that uses VOIP when available, so I need something that can be a SIP phone.

My company has been pushing Blackberrys (they bought a BES server to go with Exchange... ugh). I just don't see a Blackberry having the same usefulness as a Palm - if I understand correctly it's geared to email, but can't do third party apps the same way Palm does.

Palm: Go back to what worked. Update it, but still keep it simple!

Re:Palm = JustWorks (tm) - history

[Fred_A]

I'll stick with my trusty Palm IIIx which suits my needs until they come up with something that does something more that I actually find useful (besides useless pretty pictures, short battery life, and general eye candy...).

Linux based would be good, the API would be easier to work with than the current embedded system. They might screw up yet again though.

I'll wait and see what happens.

Name change

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the most shocking name change since sgi changed its name to sgi.

Re:We tried working with PalmOne...

[rikkards]

Yeah seriously.
I think what we have here is deciding to only dip one toe into the pool as well as not identifying the type of user who needs one. The comment about batteries makes me suspect that they went out and purchased the cheapest Palms i.e the M100-125 range. I should know I have one. The biggest thing I hate about it is the replaceable batteries. If your batteries die and you wait longer than a minute you lose everything and have to resync. The nice thing about the more expensive ones is you can keep it charged up whenever you put it in the cradle.

From what it sounds like as well, the people who tested them in the trial didn't really benefit from one. At one of my prior positions we introduced Palm pilots to all the partners and they were incorporated into the work environment for them. It was a huge blessing for them and was considered an extreme success.

Isn't that what it's SUPPOSED to do?

[argent]

And all it really did was manage contacts.

Contacts, schedules, notes, and simple applications. Which is still what you use these things for, and it's still what you NEED these things for. You don't NEED the power of an Xscale processor to do what an organiser needs to do.

That's why I'm using a 68000-based PalmOS device again and if anyone's interested in a deal on a Pocket PC mail me.

Re:Isn't that what it's SUPPOSED to do?

[pugnatious]

hmm, I don't have that many contacts to manage I guess, but the primary use of my T3 is as a lightweight laptop replacement. I got a scheme interpreter (lispme), a C compiler and tools, an ssh client and some misc tools that I wrote myself.
The sweetest part of the deal is, you can take it out on a field trip, or to places where lugging a laptop would be inconvenient

Re:Isn't that what it's SUPPOSED to do?

[tzanger]

Yeah and I bet the tiny screen and lack of real keyboard are real convenient, too.

Palms are meant as extensions to a real computer, not a real computer replacement. People who constantly try to put ten pounds of shit in a one-pound bag are rather amusing, because it's usually those same people who give up after a while, claiming that the Palm platform sucks balls because it can't replace their computer.

If it works for you, great, but you are one of the very small minority who can function in such a restrictive environment. And hell, I'm an embedded systems designer, I know all about restrictive environments. :-)

Re:Isn't that what it's SUPPOSED to do?

[argent]

Palms are meant as extensions to a real computer, not a real computer replacement.

Palms are "a real computer". They're not "a desktop computer", but then a desktop OS makes a crappy server OS (hey, Microsoft, I'm talking to YOU here) and a mainframe would be out of place on the desktop (though IBM's first personal computer emulated the IBM 360 mainframe... and almost nobody's ever heard of it). There's lots of "real computers", just like there's lots of "real vehicles" from a pushbike to a space shuttle.

Re:Isn't that what it's SUPPOSED to do?

[rho]

A friend of mine got the folding Palm keyboard and he took that and his IIIxe to Chiapas for an archeological dig. He used it to input data and take notes, rather than bring a big, heavy laptop.

For all its limitations, you could still take the Palm 3.5 OS, put it in a box with a screen and have a real computer. Nothing blazingly fast, but it would do word processing, spreadsheet, database type work well enough. Email, even.

I agree with you that people who want the Palm to be a desktop replacement are usually misguided, but the Palm is a very robust and quite powerful platform.

Re:Isn't that what it's SUPPOSED to do?

[ChatHuant]

Contacts, schedules, notes, and simple applications. Which is still what you use these things for, and it's still what you NEED these things for.

You really shouldn't generalize blindly. That may be your usage pattern, but other folks do different things with their PDAs. I use mine to listen to music, read e-books, I have Streets And Trips maps on it, and also use it to manage my expenses. I experimented with video too, and I'm working in my spare time on a script that would record a couple of shows on my desktop computer, encode them for the iPaq overnight and transfer them to the device, so I can watch them during the morning's commute.

It's an older iPaq 3800, and it's starting to feel slow, so I'm planning on getting a faster one soon. I had a Handspring Visor still gathering dust in some drawer, but there is no way I'd go back to it.

Re:Isn't that what it's SUPPOSED to do?

[argent]

That may be your usage pattern, but other folks do different things with their PDAs.

OK, maybe I should say "which is still what the majority of people use these things for". Or even the "vast majority": I have done do other things with my PDA, too, but it's the simple stuff that makes it essential. No matter how good it is at being a "laptop replacement", if it couldn't do the basics well I'd find something that could.

And, in fact, did.

I use mine to listen to music, read e-books, I have Streets And Trips maps on it, and also use it to manage my expenses.

Reading e-books, managing expenses, and viewing maps are the kinds of "simple applications" I'm talking about. The bigger and higher quality screen for reading e-books is why I tried switching from my Visor to the Jornada 568, which is pretty much equivalent to your iPaq (and I've also had an iPaq 3600 and a work-provided 3800 that now sits in my drawer... gathering, as you put it, dust).

It's interesting that it was playing music and using Pocket Streets that convinced me to quit using the Pocket PC and go back to a PalmOS device, albeit with a better screen. And eventually an iPod Shuffle as well.

Music, because it's a continuous draw on the battery. Playing music is what led to my first "hard reset" on my Jornada.

Pocket Streets because a map of even 1/4 of Houston was too large for it. Which ticked me off, because Mapopolis on the Palm was able to easily handle that same area in a Visor deluxe with only 8M of RAM (and most of it was full)... to top it all off, in some cases I had to dig up my Visor and use Mapopolis because Streets and Trips was missing the street I was looking for.

But most of all, the Palm did a MUCH better job of reliably providing me with the core functions that I needed. Because that's what it was designed to do.

Now I've got an older Clie and I'm much happier. It's got a better screen than any Pocket PC, it's more reliable, and while it can't play music (let alone videos) or make phone calls it doesn't go flat if I don't recharge it every day.

Yet another Palm

[vginders]

As long as they don't mess with http://www.palmbreweries.com/index.php?language=en :test this one, let those PHB's have fun.

BeOS clarification please

[michaeldot]

I thought Palm bought Be to integrate parts of its OS technology into future Palm OSes. (Not that BeOS was ever intended to be a handheld OS, but Palm did buy them for something.)

If it's now Linux all the way, what aspects of BeOS, if any, are going to be in there?

Re:BeOS clarification please

[biglig2]

They were never going to put BeOS onto Palms. Never!

This mistake has been going around forever, and it's still here.... Palm bought Be because it was a company stuffed full of acclaimed OS developers that was about to go bust. That's all. They needed to massively boost their development resources in order to make Cobalt and the easiest way to do this was to buy an OS company.

Of course, it didn't work - I don't know what state Cobalt is in now but no-one has put it into a production PDA yet, so I'm assuming "bad".

Re:BeOS clarification please

[stonemirror]

A good deal of Cobalt was derived from work originally done for BeOS (actually BeIA)--the IPC/component broker called "Binder", the entire graphics subsystem underpinnings, the multimedia framework--all were based on work originally done at Be.

Re:BeOS clarification please

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's now Linux all the way, what aspects of BeOS, if any, are going to be in there?

It's not actually Linux all the way. Linux is just a kernel. It's not a userland. As far as I know, PalmSource's Linux plans are to take the Linux kernel and use it to replace the custom kernel they developed themselves. By doing this, they get to take advantage of the maturity of the Linux kernel (compared to something developed in-house and relatively untested), and they also get free device drivers for just about anything they want, because embedded Linux is pretty huge right now.

But just because it will have the Linux kernel does not mean that it will have bash and inetd and cron and all those familiar Unixy things on it. In fact, it's entirely possible that PalmSource might not even provide an SDK that lets you target the POSIX APIs. They might just expose only the Cobalt APIs that they've already made available with the development versions of Cobalt.

David Nagel

[Anonymous Coward]

" As well, at a recent show Dave Nagel gave notice that Linux is PalmSource's platform for the future."

Looks like Mr. Nagel also gave notice of another kind.

Embedded

[Treth]

It's about time we saw Linux support on the Palm platform. I for one was always a dedicated Palm fan until OS 5 made me lose faith in the direction of the company--the old Palm KISS dogma was being lost in favor of 'niftiness', and as a result, their simplistic interface was being wasted on a cluttered product.

I looked into the Sharp Zarus several times but never really liked it. I always wanted something palm-like, but with Linux on it so I could do my R1GHT0US H4XX0RZ!!! on it and be all, y'know, 1337 and stuff. Oh yeah, baby.

Kidding aside, this move, if they do go through with it, could quite possibly win back my heart to Palm.

~Treth

They're circling the wagons...

[mtec]

as they circle the drain.

Drainwagons!! Ho!

Re:Palm = JustWorks (tm) - history

[tzanger]

I used to love my V, then got an m515 and was totally in love with it. the LED on the power button and the vibrate motor were awesome additions, and the colour was alright too. Battery life still rocked.

Now I've got a Tungsten E and even though I miss the lack of the LED and vibrate motor and I miss the form factor that the V and 500 series had, I can't give up the screen. Hell I miss the cradle/serial port connection but I got over it. Battery life is still stellar but that screen is just unbelievable. I didn't think I'd give a shit about a high-res colour screen on a Palm but I'm telling you I use those features every single day. Yes battery life isn't what the V had but you know what, lasting a full week to two weeks without a recharge is still pretty damned good in my opinion.

Tried to switch my company to PalmOne

[Canberra Bob]

I used to work as a consultant for a Fortune 500 company (more than 10,000 employees). As an expert in the field of IT consulting, I think I can shed a little light on the current climate of the open source community, and PalmOne in particular. The main reason that open source software, and PalmOne in particular, is failing is due to the underlying immaturity of the technology and the perception of the viral GNU license.

I know that the above statements are strong, but I have hard facts to back it up with. At the Fortune 500 company that I worked for, we wanted to leverage the power of PalmOS and associated open source technologies to benefit our server pool. The perception that PalmOS is "free" was too much to ignore. I recommended to the company that we use the newest version of PalmOS, version 5.2. My expectations were high that it would outperform our current solution at the time, WindowsCE, which was doing an absolutely superb job (and still is!) serving as web, DNS, and FTP PDAs.

I felt that I was up to the job to convert the entire PDA pool to the PalmOS technology. I had several years experience programming VB, C#, ASP, and .NET Framework at the kernel level. I didn't use C, because contrary to popular belief, ASP and VB can go just as low level as C can, and the latest .NET VB compiler produces code that is more portable and faster than C. I took it upon myself to configure and compile all of the necessary shareware versions of software that we needed, including sendmail, apache, and BIND. I even used the latest version of gcc (3.1) to increase the execution time of the binaries. After a long chain of events, the results of the system were less than impressive..

The first bombshell to hit my project was that my client found out from another consultant that the GNU community has close ties to former communist leaders. Furthermore, he found out that the 'S' in PalmOS was a tribute to the former Communist leader, Joseph Stalin, whose last name also begins with 'S'. The next bombshell to hit my project was the absolutely horrible performance. I knew from the beginning that PalmOS wasn't ready for the desktop, but I had always been told by my colleagues that it was better suited for a "PDA". As soon as I replaced all of the WindowsCE PDAs with PalmOS PDAs, the PalmOS PDAs immediately went into swap. Furthermore, almost all of the machines were quad-processor x86 PDAs. We had no idea that PalmOS had such awful SMP support. After less than 1 day in service, I was constantly having to restart PDAs, because for some reason, many of the PDAs were experiencing kernel panics caused by mod_perl crashing apache! The hardship did not end there! Apparently, the version of BIND installed on the PDA pool was remotely exploitable. Soon after we found that out, a new worm was remotely infecting all of our PDAs! We were not expecting this, because our IIS servers running on WindowsCE had never experienced a worm attack. Microsoft has always provided us with patches in the unlikely event that an exploit was found. It took us hundreds of man-hours just to disinfect our PalmOne PDAs! After just 48 hours of operating PalmOne PDAs in our PDA pool, we had exhausted our budget for the entire year! It was costing us approximately 75% more to run PalmOS than WindowsCE.

Needless to say, I will not be recommending PalmOS to any of my Fortune 500 clients. In the beginning, we thought that since PalmOS was such "old" technology, it would be more mature than anything on the market. We also found out the hard way that rag-tag volunteer efforts responsible for Apache and BIND simply are not able to compete with the professional operations of Microsoft. I guess the old saying is true; "You get what you pay for!" Needless to say, I will be using Microsoft's "shared license" solution for my enterprise clients, rather than the communist GNU license.

As it stands now, I do believe PalmOS has some practical uses. I think it will be useful in a University setting for first year computer science students to compile their "Hello World!" programs on (provided that gcc won't kernel panic the machine). Simply put, PalmOS just doesn't handle the rigors of a real-world work environment

You say that Linux is the way to go.

[Colin Smith]

Maybe, but every Linux PDA device I've seen has had the shitest user interface. Dreadful to use, and this is from a Unix systems administrator typing this post on a Linux based laptop running KDE.

KDE on a laptop is fine, windows, lots of colours, a mouse, big screen, it's easy and it works. Assuming you can just transfer windowing and stuff to a PDA is a big mistake. The Qtopia interface for instance on the Zaurus was *horrible* to use, it wasted huge amounts of screen real estate. I eventually binned mine as more trouble than it was worth.

On a PDA and PDA/smartphone you've *GOT* to get the user interface right, it's far more important than on a desktop even because of the size limitations. I've only found one company which got it right, Psion and they'd been making PDAs since the 1980s, doing more than Palm with less hardware.

Re:You say that Linux is the way to go.

[jwave]

Maybe, but every Linux PDA device I've seen has had the shitest user interface. Dreadful to use, and this is from a Unix systems administrator typing this post on a Linux based laptop running KDE.

I own a Zaurus and have seen other Linux PDAs and must agree with you. However, let's take a look at one company that took a clunky interface and has made good so far; Apple. Their Mac OS X looks just like a next-generation version of their old OS 9 interface. The result is that by maintaining familiarity (through coding their own interface), they were able to keep their old customers and provide a stable and sufficiently open OS to attract new customers and coders.

Perhaps Palm (a.k.a. PalmOne, a.k.a. Palm) will do the same. I hope so. I like the the current interface and would hate to see it change. You know the old aphorism, "If it ain't broke..."

IMO, the smart decision would be to maintain the same appearance while giving the under-structure the versatility and power of Linux. In other words, don't let the users who wouldn't know Linux from a hole in the ground even realize that there's been a change. They don't care, shouldn't care, and therefore don't need to know. If it still looks the same, and even has an emulator to run older PalmOS apps, then the only thing that could hinder Palm from regaining the market would be their Marketing Dept. and their allegedly monopolistic competitor.

Advantages I personally see for the move to Linux include threading, versatility, access to open-source community programmers, potential emulator for backward compatibility, and superior driver capabilities. I'm still angry at Palm for not helping other wi-fi manufacturers to develop drivers, which I've read is due to the limitations of the current PalmOS.

----
If you want what you've always had, do what you've always done.

Re:You say that Linux is the way to go.

[Hognoxious]

The Qtopia interface for instance on the Zaurus was *horrible* to use, it wasted huge amounts of screen real estate. I eventually binned mine as more trouble than it was worth.

Archos (at least in France) are selling a combined PDA, mp3 player, video recorder & dishwasher using that, I wonder if technology has moved on to cope with it?

I've only found one company which got it right, Psion and they'd been making PDAs since the 1980s, doing more than Palm with less hardware

Seconded, I still use a 5mx for note-taking, drafting documents, quick calculations etc etc. Of course I could do those with a laptop, and probably better ... if I could be bothered to take it with me or get it out of its case.

Of course the OS was designed for that purpose. Built as a bike, rather than taking a car & chopping two wheels off. Not that Psion got it totally right - magic number file associations & lack of context sensitive help - but they certainly got it more right than wrong.

Re:Palm = JustWorks (tm) - history

[biglig2]

another example of Palm's lack of vision. The V form factor is the single best form factor and PDA has ever had. Why don't they make something in this form factor any more? Why?

some ideas are just too big to be one company...

[capsteve]

according to www.palm.com.
this was their original (public) explaination for the split between palm source and palm one.
what a joke. now their going back to their old name, but in the meantime the focus on thier product line is fuzzy at best. i.e. the treo 650 is canibalizing sales from the 600(yet both are sold at the same time) and although the lifedrive seems like a cool idea, it just doesn't to have the sex appeal of an ipod, and will probably have a rocky product life before being shelved.
palm needs to refocus on what made their product popular in the first place(speed, compact size, efficient) and eliminate the product line bloat.

Why Palm is failing

[duffer_01]

I think it is farily straightforward why Palm is failing.
It is primarily due to the lack of development tools available. The main ones (I know of) are Metrowerks Codewarrior which is a fairly hard to use development environment and AppForge MobileVB which allows you to develop in VB but port to PocketPC and Symbian. I mean sure there is Java but come on, we all know that is unrealistic on these devices. None of these tools make people want to stick with that device.
Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of the Treo 650 and would love to see Palm succeed because nothing would be worse than if MS had another monopoly.
I just think they need enterprise business to succeed and they are not going to get this until they have the ease of use development environment for the Palm.

Re:Why Palm is failing

[stonemirror]

Are you unaware of the Eclipse-based Palm OS Development System...?

Re:Why Palm is failing

[GodfatherofSoul]

I disagree. PODS is a young, but awesome IDE, and I think a lot of developers are slowly migrating over to it. In fact, I've heard it rumored that CodeWarrior is going to drop its Palm support (though this might have been miscommunication on their part).

Palms problems are at the top and some of their decision making. Such as crippling WiFi support in the successful Treo 650 in order to make Sprint happy (another poorly run corporation). Now that Nagel is gone, I think the ship will be righted again.

I've been developing for PDAs for about a year now, and I would hate to see Palm go under, forcing everyone to use Microsoft's horrible mobile device OSs.

How Strange

[NextGaurd]

>>Furthermore, he found out that the 'S' in PalmOS was a tribute to the former Communist leader, Joseph Stalin, whose last name also begins with 'S'.>Microsoft has always provided us with patches in the unlikely event that an exploit was found

Right.... So do you get paid directly for posts like this or are you just helping the cause?

Re:How Strange

[Canberra Bob]

I would have thought that talking about a 4-way PDA and PDAs running web servers on WinCE would have more or less given it away as a fictional post but that appears to have eluded yourself. (it was an OBVIOUS modification to an old troll regarding Win v Linux)

Make haste - there are many more highly subtle and devious astroturfing posts requiring your keen intellect and observation skills that must be found out before some poor unsuspecting sysadmin attempts to set up a web server using WinCE on a 4-way PDA. You are needed! Up, up and away!!!

Give me a non-proprietary system!

[Anonymous Coward]

Like many /.ers I need a PDA that can communicate using industry-standard file formats, so I can synch my work and personal e-mails, appointments, contacts and calendars. I also want to synch via bluetooth or USB, not a proprietary interface, so I can use it as a portable file USB keychain-type drive.

The OS should be invisible. PDAs watch out. Smart phones are creeping up on you!

Re:Give me a non-proprietary system!

[metamatic]

My Palm device already syncs via Bluetooth and USB, and connects via open protocols including IMAP, SMTP, and HTTP. I can import and export data using the industry-standard vCard and vCal formats. I'm not sure what exactly you're waiting for.

Couldn't care less about Linux

[joenobody]

I traded mail with David Nagel about two months ago when he first talked about Linux being important to them. I asked why the tools for developing Palm OS apps on Linux were so neglected by them -- the devs for pilot-link (great guys) could only support what they happened to own because they had no technical documentation, no code from either Palm company, not even anyone they could ask questions of occasionally.

Nagel's response was that they're thinking about porting their Eclipse toolkit to Linux. No one wants or cares about it.

Years ago Palm employed and then fired authors of open source tools. They've got a terminal case of NIH and don't understand that they're dying because they don't do enough to make it easy to develop for Palm OS. It doesn't matter what the handhelds run if they don't have third-party developers, and they shit from a great height on the Linux alpha geeks who could be incredibly valuable.

Re:Couldn't care less about Linux

[bfree]

Nagel's response was that they're thinking about porting their Eclipse toolkit to Linux. No one wants or cares about it.

I want their Palm OS Developer Suite (eclipse kitted out as a full Palm OS ide) on Linux. I have the sources and their patches but haven't been able to put aside the time yet to see how far I get and what problems I hit. In fact, their desire to maintain their own Free Software based ide was a significant factor for choosing Palm for our product. I'm not complaining about PalmSource not having done this work already, they have done it a free software way so their work is there to pick up.

they don't do enough to make it easy to develop for Palm OS

It may only be available for Windows (90% of the market?) but how much easier do you want then PODS? A complete, Free software based ide, using standard tools, register as a developer (basically to get access to device roms), download one file and install it, you know have a small cygwin setup with all the command line tools, plus a kitted up eclipse to act as a full ide (including Palm documentation).

You say that you asked why tools for developing Palm OS apps on Linux are neglected, but you mention pilot-link as an example. pilot-link is a hot-sync program, not used at all to develop programs (though perhaps to transfer them to a device for testing, or to test conduits under Linux).

Note that I am not trying to refute any arguments you make about the history or levels of co-operation, I don't know enough to say anything sensible about it.

Correction

[digitalgiblet]

Looks like I was mistaken about the Lifedrive. The website says it DOES have Wi-Fi built in. My mistake.

Open Be OS!

[Cane Corso]

Why did they buy it and do absolutly nothing with it at all?

Re:Palm = JustWorks (tm) - history

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved the V form factor as well, but I heard (from friends at Palm) that it was difficult to manufacture.

Re:No Teeth, No Balls.

[paesano]

Way back when I worked at Novell, they spent millions trying to change their image as they struggled in the market playce. At first they had a really cool shark's tooth trademark. Then the decided to change it to a bunch of balls connected by lines in the shape of an N (it was extremely ugly). Then they changed it to Novell(R). Our motto back then was "No teeth, no balls, just plain Novell."

Re:700 - PalmOne = Linux

[indiechild]

Speaking of Palm OS 6, does anyone know why no devices have come out with this yet? It's beginning to look more and more like Duke Nukem Forever. I've been reading reports saying "it's coming out soon" for years now and still no sign.

Snickers/Marathon

[metamatic]

In the US, they've just launched the "Snickers Marathon". I kid you not. So it might be that they've realized they did the renaming wrong and are getting ready to reverse it.

It's time we ask Palm to set BeOS free!!!

[oktokie]

It's time that we start writing to Palm(Source?) to set BeOS free!!!

If they are going to bury bastard son cobalt!!!

They should set bastard's old brother BeOS free!!!

Source code given to Haiku-OS project might revive dying Cobalt and bring more developers to Haiku-OS project!

()()
(@@)
oktokie

Re:Palm = JustWorks (tm) - history

[rho]

I'm still on my IIIxe, but I'm going to move to the Tungsten E2 pretty soon.

It does have a battery-eating color screen, but they put a pretty big battery in there to compensate. I've seen numbers at about 8ish hours of normal use, and more than 11 playing MP3s constantly with the screen off. It has Bluetooth, which is important because syncing with my Mac via IRDA is pretty slow, and it means I can use it with my phone as a portable Internet terminal for email, ssh and the like.

Oh let's see....

[furry_marmot]

...where to start. Why does Palm have so much trouble?

Self-proclaimed genius works on stylus UI for Psion (IIRC), decides to take it further, comes up with one of the few interfaces would-be PDA makers hadn't thought of and it actually takes off -- though slowly at first.

Genius forms a company with a bunch of bitter ex-Apple folks.

PalmPilot starts to take off and Palm immediately make plans for the Nth generation of the OS, which will work on handhelds, phones, game consoles, etc. They also make plans to split the company into a hardware and OS division so there will be no conflicts like Apple had when Palm takes on Microsoft and kicks their butt. They talk about this for years.

The split is a disaster. They didn't figure out how groups would work together and left lots of unanswered questions -- and then rushed the split. The result? Two half-staffed divisions with no plan for how to work together.

Carl Yankowski is hired, who tells all of Palm to stick it 'cause he's here to tell y'all that Bluetooth is the future. A year is wasted trying to a) figure out how to cram Bluetooth into a Palm without sucking its batteries dry, b) trying to figure out the protocols, c) trying to figure out something useful to do with a Bluetooth-enabled Palm. The result? Carl is fired (Oh I'm sorry. He resigned. And all that cheering when the door hit his huge butt? Um...that was cheering.)

The two divisions are re-merged, with plans to split them again at some future date. Jobs are duplicated, jobs are lost. Nothing is gained.

The relatively inexperienced guy who runs the supply chain operations, after years of pressure from marketing over parts shortages, finally works out a contract so that Palm will have more Palm V's in the next couple of years than you can shake a stick at. I don't know how it got approved, but someone finally worked out that the Palm V was supposed to be end-of-lifed in six months and they needed to clear out the channel for the new devices. This is bad.

In Europe, in March (IIRC), Palm announces the release of the next-gen Palm. People say "Wow, that sounds good, so I'll put off my purchase of a Palm V until the new one comes out." Later marketing claims no one told them that the project was delayed until at least June (it actually turned out to be September). The channel is stuffed with Palm V's -- with tons more on the way -- and no one's buying them. The new Palm isn't ready, so no one's buying them either. Palm's revenue dries up faster than an earthworm on a sunny day.

The billion dollars or so that came from its IPO was partially committed to all those Palm V's no one wanted. But there was also some kind of fallout from the land deal for the new World HQ, that was made worse by ever-abusive parent company, 3Com, raping Palm yet again to pay for its own lost business. Palm loses something like $800M in six months.

First round of layoffs are announced. People panic. Next two rounds of layoffs are not announced. But someone reserves every conference room in the Outlook calendar, so it's kind of a tipoff.

All those friends of friends who were hired when everyone thought they were going to get rich from the IPO fall into two camps: A) Friends in high places are still there to protect them, B) first to go. Where Camp A people are found, so are scapegoats.

Lunatic VP of engineering cheerfully announces that the only way to continue on towards greatness is by adopting parallel development. To wit, every engineer is now on 5 projects. Project A on Monday, Project B on Tuesday, etc. Completion dates are not changed.

Stock options are repeatedly given as incentives. Let's say options at $10 are granted on Monday. By Wednesday, when they can be distributed, the stock is down to $9.50. This happens repeatedly.

A calendar company is bought, not used, its people fired. A web portal company is bought, not used, its people fired. A French software company is bought and the engineers are actually vit

Re:Oh let's see....

[NuShrike]

Oooh.. sounds like the old Apple, the old IBM, or any dotbomb actually.

If you still got any Palm(*) stock, or hardware, it would seem smart to dump it. Things are gonna end up high and dry in abandoned niche product, such as the Newton, seems coming again.

Sony (even though they kept making throw away models) was the only other real innovator in PalmOS field besides Handspring, and they're both gone now.

It's now the time of complacency and rot.

Re:Oh let's see....

[iwebmaster]

Wow, look like "Let's work ourselves to the top and screw ourselves to the bottom."

Sounds like the BS project managers and upper management freaks who work for status and money raped this company.

There is a entire class of these morons left over from the bubble (and helped create it). Blind ambition, greed and a lack of social skills are their tools.

I'm thinking you have insider knowledge are a lot of time on your hands. Good observation.

Re:Oh let's see....

[furry_marmot]

Very insider. Thanks for noticing. :-) I had time to sort it out after I got laid off (round 3). My wife made it to round 4. Now I'm happily out of high-tech.

Re:Oh let's see....

[SewersOfRivendell]

Don't forget the brilliant ploy of hiring the engineering management masterminds directly responsible for Apple's Copland disaster. (*cough*DavidNagle*cough*).

Re:Oh let's see....

[furry_marmot]

Well, I'm gonna have to disagree with you there. I mean, if your company's weighed down by a political war between the Palm and Be folks (who were pretty sure they were much smarter than anyone at Palm), wouldn't you want to bring in masters of immobilizing politics? That's just fighting fire with....actually I'm not sure about that analogy.

Re:Oh let's see....

[steveha]

You clearly have insider perspective I do not (cannot) have. But I still want to argue a couple of points.

Jeff Hawkins deserves most of the credit for Palm's early success. He really did figure out exactly what customers wanted in a PDA, where no one else had successfully figured it out before. He specified that the first Palm must: fit in a pocket; syncronize seamlessly with a host PC; use Graffiti instead of whole-word writing recognition; and have at least one model that cost $300 or less.

The first Palm devices were an amazing home run. Long battery life with 2 AAA cells. Simple software that really did Just Work. Replaceable/upgradable memory cards, so you could buy a $300 Palm and later upgrade it to the same amount of memory as the $500 one. Infrared "beaming" of data, including the cool feature of "here is my business card" (just press and hold the "contacts" hard key).

So Jeff Hawkins and a few others split off to make Handspring. You dismiss the Visor as "-- a Palm Pilot knock-off." Actually it was another home run. The first Palm PDA to use USB for HotSync. Much faster processor (Palms at the time were 8 MHz, the Visor was 16 MHz, and it wasn't that long before they shipped Visors with 33 MHz). Springboard was also a really cool slot; you could take a stock Visor and slot in an MP3 player, a flash card reader, etc. Maybe it was a "fat, ugly" add-on card standard, but it had some cool features. (For example, it used the same connector as a PCMCIA card, to make it cheaper to make in small quantities; and Handspring paid for the equipment to make the plastic shells for the cards and sold the shells cheaply. Basically the cost of entry for Springboard was as low as Handspring could manage.) I was happy that I could use a Visor keyboard and a Visor Springboard modem at the same time; all Palm modems at the time used the same connector that the keyboard needed to use.

I always wished someone would make a Springboard card that would turn a Visor into an autoranging voltage tester, but that never happened, sigh.

After the Visor, though, I waited for the next cool thing from Handspring and it never came. The color Visor was thick and heavy, and I never bought one. The Visor Edge was thin, but somehow cheap-feeling and never felt right in my hand. The Treo PDA with a built-in keyboard wasn't great either; I bought one but somehow kept using my Visor.

While you were chronicling the list of management mistakes, you missed a big one at Handspring: they "pulled an Osborne". Donna Dubinsky announced that PDAs were dead, that the Treo line was the future and there would be no new development of the Visor line. The problem was that she announced this at a time where Treos weren't the bread-and-butter of Handspring yet, and the Visor was still selling. Well, not for long, not after that. All the small companies that offered Springboard accessories pulled the plug, and just like that the Visor sales plummeted.

Jeff Hawkins probably is a genius, but he hasn't done much lately. Maybe it's too late anyway--it's now pretty clear what customers want in a PDA and execution is probably more important than genius.

Still, it would be cool if Jeff Hawkins started up a new company that made a new PDA that ran Linux. He could possibly hit a home run a third time.

steveha

Nagel is out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dave Nagel gave notice that Linux is PalmSource's platform for the future.
Dave Nagel also gave notice to PalmSource's board that he's stepping down as CEO.

New Palm subsidiary: PalmSuck

[Anonymous Coward]

This subsidiary exists only to dilute shareholder value and suck it out of the main company and transfer it to Top Management. Its only assets are two Gulfstream Vs and a private island in the Bahamas.

Why did Palm fail?

[jfaughnan]

When I teach about data interfaces in healthcare systems, and the complexity of integration, I compare Palm original representation of a 'contact' with Outlook/Exchange server's representation. The complexity (non-computable complexity in some areas) of synchronizing between these two was a huge problem for Palm. I'm not sure when they figured out how much trouble they were in, but once Microsoft took over the enterprise with Exchange server Palm's fate was pretty much sealed.

In later versions of the OS they tried to better match Outlook's data models, but they botched the software layer that provided some backwards compatibility (arguably they should have given up on the backwards compatibility, they ended up with the worst of two options).

Linux on the Palm is not as important, really, as matching the Exchange server data model.

Synchronization is a problem that's been grossly underestimated in many quarters. It often requires a fuzzy non-deterministic reconciliation of semantic models; the same challenge that Berners-Lee addresses in the context of the semantic web. This issue is a major part (along with some perverse economics) of why healthcare IT projects are so difficult.

I hope Palm now understands these issues, I fear that much of their intellectual capital may have moved on.

PS. The above aside, I do agree Palm completely lost track of issues like reliability, simplicity (though that can be illusory -- per above), and pocketability. Stylist revisions to the stylus slot to maximize stylus revenue was a classic foolish decision representative of many business errors.

Is it time for the funeral dirge?

[LionMage]

And now it would appear that all that work on Cobalt, aka PalmOS 6, was squandered. With this new Linux focus, I wouldn't be surprised if what's left of BeOS/BeIA at PalmSource is jettisoned. *sigh*

I had been fervently hoping, as a former BeOS developer and BeBox owner, that the OS would survive in some form. I had some high hopes in the Palm acquisition of the Be intellectual property. Then I noticed that PalmOne kept using PalmOS 5 instead of releasing devices running PalmOS 6 / Cobalt. So I waited, and waited, and eventually stopped paying attention...

And now we have a Linux initiative, and Be's legacy seems to have truly died. Not that I don't like Linux -- I think Linux is a fabulous server OS, and it even has the potential to be a great desktop OS, but BeOS / BeIA had a lot of promise in the handheld arena. Fully object oriented development environment, lightweight threading and messaging, great speed, and modest resource requirements.

As a final note, just want to say that I'm sad to see that PalmSource sat on the Be IP to the point where it became impossible for people to acquire legitimate copies of BeOS for x86, and since development on that product was halted, it simply stopped working on more modern/recent hardware. I think BeOS on x86 was a fantastic hobbyist OS, and it could have survived in that niche with the right support.

My take...

[matthewcharlesgoeden]

here.

Is it just me

[PMuse]

or is the Palm - PalmOne - Palmsource - Palm Trademark Holding saga starting to sound like New Coke, Old Coke?

I have this sick feeling

[PMuse]

that the Palm - PalmOne - Palmsource - Palm Trademark Holding Corp. saga isn't all that different from the first few chapters of the Santa Cruz Operation - Caldera - SCO story, lo these many years ago. I guess I'll just have to RAFO.

Re:We tried working with PalmOne...

[petermgreen]

nah its an adaptation of a popular troll

maybe it is true and/or convincing the first time but the almost identical wording to previous times gives it away.

Asshead corporate suits blow it again

[jhylkema]

CNET is reporting that after only two years, PalmOne is spending $30 million dollars to become "Palm" again.

What a stupid move on the part of (Palm || PalmOne || NameThisWeek). This, of course, is why they'll have to outsource their developers to India "to stay competitive." Their entire upper management should be summarily terminated.

Palm is fscked

[bored]

They can't figure out what they are doing. They stared out with a nice product, then instead of fixing it they have been playing palm works with "buzzword of month club" games.

I could give a fsck if its on a 300mhz ARM, i could give a fsck if its linux (which seems like a recipe for disaster on a handheld). Adding a non GUI thread scheduler should be easy( and not require a heavyweight OS like linux) As a developer what I wan't is a consistant API that extends rather than gets replaced every few years. Their product isn't even that good anymore. The new plams are more like crappy CE clones rather than Palm's which were always known for a unique and very stable system with loads of applications. Now days most of the applications seem like they are for palmOS 3.5 or 4, and the new ones don't scale well down to old devices. Plus palm is to busy making 100 diffrent versions of the same product to accually provide a nice range of expansion options. Then there are the tools, frankly the opensouce tools are a pain, it takes 1 day or so to get the enviroment working enough to write a hello world application. That is if your lucky or already know what to do. Writing a PalmOS 5 application with the opensource tools is a joke...

Now I just need to find a CE device with the battery life of my old Palm 505 and a similar footprint.

Re:Palm is fscked

[hey!]

I could give a fsck...

Well, you put your finger on the problem for palm.

What will people give a fsck about, at last enough to allow Palm liberate them from a couple of hundred dollars every two years or so?

The thing is, Palm used to be about two things; form factor and simplicity. Now everyone has pretty small PDAs. There isn't a lot of ways you could simplify the classic platform say from the m500 era.

So how do they respond to competition? Can they survive on the momentum of current customers replacing their worn out devices? What is Palm about now?

I think they were going for a position as the kings of convergence, but RIM beat them at their own game, producing an incredibly rudimentary PDA with a form factor that people like. At least email junkies. RIM owns that segment. Microsoft owns the segment that thinks they want as many desktop features shoehorned into the PDA. What market segment does Palm own?

The real reason the bloom is off the Palm rose is that nobody can think of a reason to be loyal to the brand anymore.

The thing is, I think people have a glass-half-empty perception of Palm. Sure my Treo 600 locks up once in a while, but it isn't that often. PocketPC has Microsoft's trademark "I want to kill the person who designed this precious piece of shit" user experience. The last non-converged Palm device I had any experiene with was a T3, which I thought was a creditable extension to the classic Palm heritage, adding a classy and innovative chassis to the tradtional Palm virtues of size and simplicity.

It may be, however, that the non-converged PDAs don't have any future unless they offer features that are impractical in a phone.

Re:Palm = JustWorks (tm) - history

[a-z0-9]

I too have similar problems. With a T5 running Datebk5, opening and switching this application takes at least 7-8 seconds. I realized that you lay the blame on the OS itself but I think that the creator of datebk5 also has share in it. I noticed that NOT installing Datebk5, among the stock apps provided, loading times is extremely fast. It is well-known fact that Datebk5 has problems with the current T5 due to VFS cache error. In the latest version 5.4a s1 it claims to now able to write directly to native database, therefore having performance benefits. However it did not solve the slow access speed. Only by playing with the stock apps "Tasks" a few days ago when I noticed that I am not able to create a "TO DO", did I finally manage to get DateBk5 to to open in about 1 second. Note that I am not slamming the Datebk5 author, I have been using it for about 5 years and I hope that he can code his way out of this dreaded problem. Also T5 has its plus point, chiefly, the gorgeous full screen and its pretty large battery capacity compared to the T3.

Re:Palm = JustWorks (tm) - history

[drmaxx]

The reason why I am not blaming it on DateBK is, because I encountered this problem with any program that uses links (e.g. Shadowplan). As soon as any program accesses a second database it takes for ever. I solved the problem for the ToDo list (purging), but for my very extensive AdressDB there is no cure. The DateBK creator is really responsive - he reported that PalmOne released the DB structure about a month ago so that he's working on a workaround right now. Nevertheless, I think PalmOne should get their act together and solve the painful cache error - together with a few other minor bugs. Yes, the TT5 is sweet and I really like the hardware - but in my case productivity comes first.

Yeah sure.

[jotaeleemeese]

That means you can't use the damn thing for more than 20 minutes a day. The music and video would drain the battery in no time.

One needs substantially bigger batteries, big power efficent RAM caches.

Yeah, you need a media player like the ones from Archos, to do the work properly.

But is that a PDA work? Not in my opinion.

Re:Yeah sure.

[ChatHuant]

That means you can't use the damn thing for more than 20 minutes a day. The music and video would drain the battery in no time.

You never had an iPaq, have you? With my usage pattern, I only ran out of power twice in the years I had the device (both times in airports). I often listen to music on the iPaq while reading an e-book (didn't bother to check the time, but it's at least 2-3 hours at a stretch). I do turn the backlight off, that's true, and I have recharging cradles both at home and at work.

As a UNIX SA....

[jotaeleemeese]

.... you know that Linux is a kernel and that KDE is an application layer program. Right?

Linux is the way to go as explained earlier, but Qtopia may not be the best UI.

THe problem we have here is one of UI design, which can be solved easily given the Linux/UNIX philosophy of modularization.

The moment somebody comes with a better UI than Qtopia's then Qtopia's is binned.

Way OT

[zobier]

Did you write the copy on http://www.fireyourfuckingboss.com/? Email me.

Regards,

Mike :)