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The End of PalmOS?
SLT writes "According to Engadget, PalmSource was purchased by Access, a Japanese cell phone software company known for their NetFront browser. What does this mean for the future of Palm?" More coverage at LinuxDevices and Reuters. From the Reuters article: "Japanese software developer Access Co. said on Friday it would make U.S. software developer PalmSource Inc. wholly owned in a 34.4 billion yen ($311.3 million) cash deal to strengthen its development of software for handheld devices. Access will pay cash to shareholders of PalmSource, which will be later absorbed by Access' U.S. unit Apollo Merger Sub Inc., Access said in a statement."
Most consumers thought 3Com was stupid for spinning off such a profitable business. What I recall is that it sold for 300 times earnings and a bunch of investing consultants warned of such a pricey model for such a small niche product. End result is usually the same with PE ratio being to high. The OS isn't really that important, they should make it free to run anywhere and try selling the hardware; yeah exactly opposite of what has been said by some big OS makers.
Hardly. It'll just be in more devices. And the Palm handheld will just morf. OTOH, I think we may see $20 organizers or cheaper given away with other products. Kind of the way MP3 players are being given away these days.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
So maybe they'll release the BeOS source code! Probably just wishful thinking..
There's been speculation that the Treo 670 will not be running PalmOS anymore -- how does that fit in with this?
There are a few Korean, Japanese and Chinese producers of PalmOS devices, especially smartphones. The pen interface is more suitable for iconographic languages so it would make sense to keep a presence there. Where will this go from here?
Netcraft confirms it... PalmOS is dead.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Well, if you've ever used cHTML, they are the ones who came up with it. Back in the early days of featurephones, NTT Docomo sent out a call for browser software, and Access was the only game in Tokyotown. Unfortunately, they didn't really support all of HTML, only a subset. But that subset was handled well and allowed the browser to display pages on the small cellphone screen without forcing the user to scroll horizontally.
So Access, riding Docomo's coattails, became the premier web browser company for cellphones in Japan. It's like how Gary Kildall was approached by IBM to sell his CP/M system, only in this case Access was able to capitalize on their position instead of losing out to a second-rate compiler company.
Now with PalmSource in their possession, they are strategically aligned to provide browser software, mail software, scheduling software, and a host of other useful PDA-like features in their cellphone software suite. Add to that that with greater cellphone power is bound to come greater demand for more feature-filled "smartphones" and they're in a great place with a ready-for-delivery PDA suite.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Okay, so PalmSource, was acquired by Access, a company that is roughly in the same market as PalmSource (mobile devices) while not doing the same thing (OS vs. browser). It sounds like PalmSource would complement Access' offerings nicely, and actually, that is what Access is stating as its reason for the acquisition: PalmSource's OS and linux expertise. How do you get from there to the statement that Access will scrap PalmOS?
Um, what kind of company would spend $311 million to buy PalmOS, then STOP SELLING THE TECHNOLOGY? Sure, they may eventually integrate the parts of PalmOS they like into "Access OS" or whatever they sell, but they are certainly not going to just exit the market that PalmOS serves.
/. can be so reactionary.
When Maytag bought Whirlpool last month, it didn't mean they were ditching their product line.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
?Did Palm release a BeAI/Palm?
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
it's just my .02, but...
The end may be a bit of hyperbole, although PalmSource has made some historical blunders which contributed to its demise (and I love thier devices, and have had them since the very beginning):
1.) Basically did not update the core OS between 1997 and 2004. Version 5.x is bascially 3.x with color and a network stack shimmed in. A lot changed over those seven years, and the OS did not evolve as well as it could have. They rested on thier laurels, much like Apple did during the Scully era at Apple, releasing new models every 8 months but not really improving the core operation.
2.) They released the big new version (6.0.) in late 2003, and no devices were ever released with it. This was a huge mistake, and points to poor partnerships (ISV and others) and planning. No other company in history has released an PDA OS that was never implemented on a retail device.
3.) They released version 6.1 late last year, and again, nearly a year later, there are no devices running it. Again, big problem.
Too bad the mutual admiration society that exists in Palm senior mangement was blind to their basic business folly.
remember a time when it was only Palm and they were on top. what happened? well, even though they were really entrenched, they didn't develop their OS infact, in many ways it is very similar to what it was like 10 years ago. Now compare that to the current state of the upstart newcomer, windwos CE.
This is an interesting outcome. It shows that regardless of how intrencehd you are, you can be killed off by a better product. I wonder if longhorn will be an example of this.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
They have a near perfect marketing opportunity right now. Indeed, it would be fantastic for them to release the source code to BeOS. Doing so could very well make Access a "household name" in the open source world. And considering the massive size of the OSS community these days, that can translate to vastly increased sales and recommendations.
I for one would be very inclined to financially support the company that provided us with the source code to BeOS, especially if under the BSD or MIT/X license.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I cannot say either way if this is accurate, but the few people i know who "nerd out" constantly over the newest and greatest pda/phone stuff.. all agree the various spyshots of the new treo running Win are authentic.
;) I can't say with certainty.
I have seen a few of these shots, and they look authentic to me, but since i'm not the ub-erphone-nerd (just a casual Treo600 user
Engaget (linked from TFA) has another FA that says it's real tho.. here.
I just picked up a dell Axim x3i with Windows Mobile 2k3 and I love it. Haven't had a problem with it yet, and I'll be starting a .Net CF project for it in the next few weeks.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Oh Noez! We'll all have to switch to Pocket PC! @_@ In the meantime, the sky is falling guys.
...how much do they want for it? I'm sure that a lot of people would be willing to pay for BeOS to be open sourced. I would pay $200 for the BeOS code to be released under a BSD license. How many more people do they need to pay the same amount before it becomes worth their while, financially speaking? I doubt they actually wanted BeOS when they bought PalmSource, after all.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
For christ's sake where did /. find Zonk and will they please get rid of him? I have worked in the media and in news reporting and NEVER would this moron be tolerated in even the lowliest jobs.
/. needs to get back to NEWS! I have never watched a big site implode so quickly and at the hands of one or two people in my life. A true shame.
Each and every day the guy posts "The End of..." someone or some company. EVERY DAY!
There is much more to news than the end of this or that, or the obligitory post about one console, then another, then the other all in one day even if nothing new is said about the second two. Just tell the big story. You don't post 12 news articles about other topics just to make sure you tell every side, it is lunacy.
Seriously something needs to be done. Zonk needs to be given his pink-slip and
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Does this herald a new age of Palm becoming another licencee of Windows Mobile Technology? Check out this link http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=8
Any of my fellow /.ers like to predict the future for Palm?
It's really too bad. Palm was a great company, with the right group of people -- actually alot of disaffected Apple folks, who had left when Jobs was pushed out. Plus the original brain trust of Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky. Those 2 recognized that Palm could not really be the nimble company they would need to be to survive if they were tied down to 3Com. They asked permission to take the company solo, and were denied by the 3Com brass -- so they started Handspring.
Then (IMHO) really just to spite Jeff and Donna, 3Com did indeed spin off Palm. The problem was with Jeff and Donna gone, leadership was missing. 3Com installed Carl Yankowski, and man who had run giant companies before, but never a nimble tech company. Carl didn't know how to run a company of 500 employees, but he did not how to run a company of 10000, so his goal was to get to 10000 as quickly as possible.
This meant massive hirings and acquisitions. Palm had had a damn fine IPO (Yankowski knew how to do that too) so they had alot of cash on hand. And they started hiring like crazy. And when I say like crazy, I mean they put no thought at all into who got the positions, merely that they filled them. This was 1999/2000 pre-bubble-burst, when anyone with half a brain in silicon valley was already working. As a result, Palm was "forced" to hire people with only a quarter of a brain. Bythat I mean managers who thought they could function as engineers, and people who knew how to play the company game.
Intense corporate infighting began betweeen divisions. When one division looked like it was gaining "power" other divisions would sabotage them. The "managers" that Palm had been able to hire were only interested in making sure that their group looked better than any other group. As a result, incredibly promising ideas, such as 100% VCal/vcard complaince got killed. Palm was going to host a free public database with vcard/vcal entries, so when you updated your info in your palm, it would spread to everyone else when they synced (I know it's *sortof* been done -- but not well by anyone, and certainly the data is not publicly accessible via soap). Palm's internet strategy was completely sabotaged by "executives" who weren't part of the internet group, and really didn't undertand anything about it.
Then the hardware disaster. One of the new Palm's was scheduled for release, and was in the final round of testing. Handspring released their new device and it was Shiny. The Palm marketing team, without really consulting with engineering announced WHILE THE DEVICE WAS STILL IN TESTING that the new Palm would be out next month. Sales of current Palms stopped cold while everyone waited for the new device. And then a showstopping bug was found. The vibrate alarm in the new device was too powerful, and after x number of alarms it shook loose something in y number of devices. So the new device was delayed. And all that time, very few Palms were being sold, because everyone was waiting for the new device. 3 months with no sales is a bad thing.
In a last ditfch effort to calm the infighting, Palm spun off the software division into Palmsource, but it was too little too late. The heart and back of a great little company had been broken.
I'm glad to see Palm still alive, and I'm actually glad to see this sale, I kept my equity this long, at least now I'm forced to get rid of it.
I believe the company has shrunk back down to a small enough size that they've attritioned off the morons acquired at the turn of the century -- unfortunately they lost alot of really good engineering talent too. Palm was more than a hardware company at one point -- now they are just a hardware company. And I don't believe a hardware company can be globally competetive if it's based in the U.S.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
PalmOS hasn't evolved in a meaningful way since it was launched. It still has no memory protection or multitasking, and the interface looks like something out of 1994. It either needs to be updated to modern computing standards, or die, and it looks like they're choosing die. Good riddance.
I've been a Palm user since the Palm III first came out, but I recently bought my first Windows Mobile device (a Dell Axim x50v), and I love it - I finally have a PDA capable of running modern applications on a (reasonably) modern OS.
Heise.de (Sorry, german):
Translation: Acces offers/plans to offer 18,50 Us $ per Share - relatively much, considering the Share gets 10$ on the stockmarket. The whole deal would cost 352'000'000 Us$. The Shareholders and the boards of both companies have still to accept the deal.
I remember Palm bought out the remainder of BeOS and what was to be used in their devices, the BeIA software.
I'm still hoping to see some "Be" technology in these devices. For its time, it kicked some serious ass and even now, I'm damned impressed with it.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Now here is something Slashcode can help with. From the UnZonk-HOWTO:
/. main page click "Preferences" (top left), then click the "Homepage" tab. You'll end up somewehere like here. At right hand side you see a list of authors. Uncheck the bottom one (called "Zonk"). Then scroll down and press "Save".
/. page!
From
That's it: you've fired Zonk from your personal
Glad to have been of assistance.
As I stated in my blog "traditional" Palm OS development is being done by Palm (then palmOne). PalmSource is focused on Palm OS on Linux and providing an API to improve navigation of Palm OS-based applications on non-touchscreen phones. Recent management moves had them ripe for a takeover. Access has some pretty sharp minds, which is what PalmSource is in deperate need.
Before we start rumors of Palm moving to Windows Mobile, remind yourself of the Apple migration from Classic to OS X.
s .html.
Would Palm risk loosing customers trained in PalmOS with loads of applications to keep and migrate to Windows Mobile/CE?
I doubt it.
There was a post on some palm news blog recently (Palm Addict afaik) where Palm was trying to recruit Linux guys. Logically they would be going for the Palm Linux port, but who knows, does POSE come to mind? Loads of apps still run on OS 4 and even the original OS 3! (and maybe OS 3.3 since that was free)
PalmSource press release: http://www.palmsource.com/press/2005/090905_acces
Palm OS is OK for small solutions, but unfortunately the development has accelerated away from it. Today it's better to use Linux or Windows CE (or whatever M$ calls it today).
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I had read somewhere that the PalmOS might move to a Linux base. That would be great since I'm currently working on some Linux-based Qt GUI projects that run on the Sharp Zaurus. If I could port these over to a Tungsten so much the better for getting my sales force to adopt it!
Palm had such a nice OS. It was such a friendly, crisp, easy interface...so much better than the attempts to scale shoehorn in the Windows desktop that WinCE was pursuing.
I still love my Sony Clie...320x320 screen, good battery life, nice UI. (On the other hand...the 4k memo limit and even smaller clipboard ALWAYS seemed gratuitous to me.)
Personally I thought the writing was on the wall once they had to switch to Graffiti 2...I've only dabbled with it, but for people accustomed to Graffiti (an idea it took me a while to warm to) it's jarring. And tht Xerox "unistrokes patent" lawsuit was SUCH CRAP...Graffiti is so much better than those stupid squiggles that didn't even look like any human alphabet.
Feh. Hopefully when its time to upgrade I can find some kind of Palm work alike. And hopefully whatever I switch to can import Palm data; I love that I have my schedule going back to 1997 riding around on my hip, not to mention assorted memos, contacts, and todos...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
no, just stalk her until she gives in.
...they're moving to Linux, not GNU/Linux.
As devices get smaller, the PDA functions will migrate to the phone so look to phone manufacturers to set the trends.
You have been such a geeks friend through the years. I guess my Palm Tungsten E will be my last Palm. GPRS/EDGE connections are coming down in price, and affordable for mortal people like us. I'm betting on Symbian, it has some neat features.
This acquisition of PalmSource by Access should help keep that transition going. But, I expect it to be somewhat disruptive and add some time to their roll-out schedule. That's not good, especially when everybody and their mother (except Microsoft) is jumping on the Mobile Linux bandwagon.
PalmSource had a chance for Palm OS to be the clear frontrunner for mobile/handheld Linux. Now it looks like they risk being an also-ran. Too bad. :-(
As the owner of a Treo 650, let me say, when I purchased the device, I pretty much knew that Palm OS was dead:
- PalmSource has halted development on Garnet (the version of Palm OS that the Treo runs)
- Palm's Treo 670 will probably run Windows Mobile
That said, I don't really care:
- My previous device, the Danger Hiptop2 / T-Mobile Sidekick II, was far less expandable and far less usable than my Treo is *today*, even assuming that Palm development ceases tomorrow
- I already have an SSH client, IRC client, web browser (two of them, actually), email client (with IMAP sync and IDLE support, even when the phone is off), MP3 player, Bejewled 2, and a lot more.
It does far more than the Sidekick ever could do or ever will do. As nice as the Sidekick is, it, like many smartphones, is a closed platform. I can't add features that aren't already there. With the Treo I can.
That said, Windows Mobile is a much better platform in many regards. The UI isn't as good, but it can multitask, has a real filesystem, has more web browser choices, and doesn't have stupid heap size limitations.
I maintain that Palm has never really done a good job at much of anything and that their pinnacle was the release of the Palm V.
... and then they found out that all Treos have a shielding problem that cause them to start buzzing!
Microsoft's inability to compete with a mobile OS that worked well on low-spec hardware, and the WinCE hardware vendors' inability to make good portable hardware really was the factor that kept Palm alive so long.
Palm's ability to release new versions with differerent amounts of ram or different case colors can hardly be considered as innovative.
Palm's inabliity to bundle wireless sooner is inexcusable.
Palm's purchase (back) of Handspring for the Treo 600 just proved they didn't have a good new product.
The fact that Palm has never released a real successor to the Tungsten T|3 is painful to all longtime faithful Palm power users.
The PalmOS6 fiasco... It must have been even worse than I could imagine because even Palm didn't want it.
The LifeDrive. Never has a machine with a 416mhz cpu seemed so slow! Hey, let's make all I/O go through a hard drive and let's not include an effective disk cache! I'm sure people won't mind waiting 3 minutes to reset, and I'm sure our power users won't mind STARING AT A FRIGGING BLANK SCREEN FOR 40 SECONDS WHILE THEY TRY TO SWITCH APPS! It makes me feel like an idiot for having purchased your product every time I switch apps.
Palm, I was your best advocate, and I don't know how you could have disappointed me more.
Let's hope that someone else can succeed where you failed.
I took some of my proceeds and decided to invest in the hand that fed me, so to speak. I bought 200 shares each of Palm (PALM) and Handspring (HAND). Shortly after I bought, Palm decided to do a reverse 20:1 split to bolster their share price and buy Handspring. My 200 Palm shares became just 10, and after they bought Handspring that left me with 15 Palm shares and a fractional share in cash, which I was paid about $10 for.
Palm then split to PalmOne (PLSO) and PalmSource (PSRC) and my 23 PALM shares turned into 8 PLMO shares. Again, I received some fractional share payout. Today I hold exactly 8 shares of Palm, Inc (again PALM) that I won't sell because I don't want to take the $15 or $20 eTrade comission hit.
I'm only satisfied in the fact that I knew going into this that it was a risky investment and only played with money that I didn't mind losing. If there's a moral to this story, maybe it's that Palm may yet stage a comeback, but this is not a good company to invest in.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Hand-writing recognition, perhaps - if a next release of the OS changes APIs, and the driver needs porting, the cost might not justify doing it.
But as far as phone companies locking things down, these are normally done as a firmware modification - some Motorola phones with dumbed-down Bluetooth (no OBEX, only contact synchronization) could be brought back to full functionality by hex-editing one byte in the code!
Given the burgeoning market for smartphones, crippling the OS instead of just the specific phones makes no sense.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
...quick OPEN SOURCE BEoS!! Wait..this isn't OsNews.com, is it?
Good, maybe they'll finally change it now. Palm OS is becoming incredibly outdated, even as they add new features. I don't have much time to rant on about it, but I will say that the lack of a user-accessible filesystem is ridiculous. No, drive mode doesn't count.
PalmOS's database/object model (wherein everything has to be either a database or an object) was an excellent idea back when PDAs had
I'd really like to write more about this, but I've got to go to work. Anyway, hopefully this means they'll modernize PalmOS a bit.
You sure it wasn't alittle? Maybe you're right. Maybe it was alot.
Adding features like threading should have been done years ago and it could have been done without making a heavy OS.
Microsoft is evil, but the current crop of WinCE devices have really advanced. Very nice.
It just goes to show how far Palm's market share has fallen and how many of Slashdots readers PDA's run Windows mobile! Come on this is Slashdot!!
I had thought that PalmSource was going to be bought back by Palm, and that new OS development was going to be built upon Linux [tail wagging excitedly], but now I'm left wondering as to what this hardware manufacture will do next.Maybe this is good thing for PDA/Cellphone market. Maybe with money and talent Access can produce an OS that will whip Symbian and MS into second and third place in the race for market share, and slashdotters will enjoy another area of computing where M$ doesn't have dominance.
the hard thing will be to utilize the power management of the Be-Like OS.. I don't know how well the Be kernel handles things like that.. the battery power could last a long time, or it could last a short time.. Remember the Zaurus?? you can get a good 30 minutes of battery power if you use the back-light along with a compact flash wifi card.. hardly worth it in my opinion..
basically, i'm sure Palm went through quite a bit of development with their operating system just to get a good power scheme going on.. after all, the OS was designed specifically for handheld devices.. Linux is great because of how universal it is, but wether or not it can handle power well, is another question completely.. I simply compare BeOS with Linux simply because there hasn't been much power development as of current.. so hopefully we'll see some innovations made to the BePalmOS.. hell, they might not even go that route.. the Be software could of been thrown away months ago for all we know..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Palm was relevant years ago, and they're still okay for basic PIM functionality. But without multitasking and other modern features, they've long since dinosaured. I don't blame anyone but Palm.
And of course us early-adopters are still pissed at Palm for failing.
Ironically, yesterday I just got an Axim and swapped it out with my Palm. Despite some minor annoyances, the OS is polished and multitasks extremely well. It has Wi-Fi, modern browsers, instant messenging galore, VNC, RDP, and does 640x480. After adding Missing Sync for OS X into the equation, I have a perfect syncing solution.
So PalmOS is doomed to suck as much as their NetFront browser?
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
PalmOS reminds me of amber unix dumb terminals.
You might not get a lot of features and looks old but you can really get work done.
Palm OS was good for little organizer called Pilot. It totally sucks for multimedia device called Zodiac. I have used Windows CE 2.11 and 3.0 Pocket PCs (Casio Cassiopeias), Zaurus SL-5500 and Tapwave Zodiac. Zodiac hardware is very cool and sleek, but the OS was just killing it. Palm OS deserves to be die. Did I mention the programming model? For ARM based Palm devices? With stupid armlets, and endianess conversion? This is insane!
Die Palm Die!
this references an older version, but might help (and it did work on my IIIxe a couple years back):
http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/rees/pilot/
legal. fun. profitable. pick two.
Palm used to be great devices.
:-)
I've had 5 palms and I've liked them less and less
Palm V - great device, excellent monochrome screen, long battery-life (16hours), superior pim
I'm amazed how much I managed to put into its tiny 2MB memory.
Clie Peg S300 - 8MB and memorystick, but blurry screen. Battery-life not so long as Palm V.
A cheap plastic device that didn't last long.
Clie NR70V - great 320x480 screen, but fragile clamshell design. broke in less than a year.
Battery approx 10hours, very slow in highres-mode
66MHz MC68EZ060
T3 - Superior design, a bit heavy , fast but
terrible battery-life 4hours of typing and it was dead, max 2hours video with lowest intensity.
Despite the battery it is a great device. The digitizer broke after one year. I can still use it but there is about 1cm error when I point. But it is the last device capable of running grafitti1.
This is a great device watching video on, but
I need to have the charger close.
LifeDrive - Ha, the HD startuptime is killing its use as a PIM device. Many times I've started it up and when the app is ready I've forgot what I was going to do. I regret I didnt buy a T5 or even a PocketPC device. And it crashes a lot. A soft reset takes 3minutes and a Hard reset 15!!!!!.
On T3 it takes ~10sec. And everytime the readheads on the HD is moving, you get noise if you listen to MP3. The screen is wonderful, but all the divX movies I've tried jags heavily although they run smoothly on T3.
Palm seem to put all their money into treos nowadays. The Lifedrive should surely need a prom upgrade to fix most of the crashes.
Hopefulyl their nex linux devices will be great, and I'll be fooled to buy yet another device
This is a peer to peer sized transaction, so I don't expect this purchase to be a buy-and-bury move. I expect that Access will come out with a business as usual announcement quickly. Martin Tibbitts
According to this link, ""The existing deployments of Palm OS, including Palm OS Garnet, will continuously be supported. The purpose of the agreement is to maximize the synergy between the two companies. We really don't expect any changes in the relationships that we have with licensees."
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Might I say it was a good ride from 1999 fellas.
PalmOS just doesn't make sense anymore with the proliferation of devices with unique behaviors. Unlike the PC industry, which consolidated on a set of H/W upheld by standards, the mobile device industry got out of hand with proprietary IP and features. And Palm hacked in these features leading to PocketPC quality, hence lower customer rating due to snafus resulting.
Java/J2ME was a holy grail, but it was too late. Fortunately, inside track (and from talk with Sales Engineers) has it that PalmOne will resurrect Java soon. Looks like very soon after this news.
Let just look back and savior the fact that PalmOS had its day. And that it should be a model for future OSes since it was way more rock solid than PocketPC and even Linux for mobile devices.
As for me, another 'well learn't language into the heap'. Out of all the APIs, I found Palm (along with Java) as one of the best thought out 'languages'.
As ususal, Zonk's headlines are totally misleading (when will we get to moderate the editors?) This is not the end of PalmOS. This is just the beginning. It's the end of Palm. Here's why:
When I recently heard that the next generation Treo was rumored to be running Windows Mobile I nearly had a heart attack. I have been using Palm OS since the days of the Palm III, my first Palm device. In the interim I have switched desktop platforms numerous times (Mac, Windows, IceWM, Gnome, KDE, Gnome, Mac OS X). But I have stuck with PalmOS through thick and thin. I love it for two reasons - the perfectly simple UI which exactly matches the nature of the platform and graffiti. Heck, I can write quicker in graffiti then with a pen. (It pissed the hell out of me that Treo's don't come with grafffiti).
Palm, otoh, is a sucky company. Except for the T3, most of their products since the days of the Palm V have sucked wind. I bought Handspring and bought Clie's and only bought another Palm (the T3) because i had no alternative. Plus, Palm has developed a "fuck you" attitude towards its customers. I bought a used T3 off their site about a year ago, only to discover Palm is the ONLY hardware vendor I know that provide NO warrenty (not the usual 90 days) on refurbished products they themselves sell.
This story confirms several things: the next generation Treo will contain Windows. PalmOS sold itself because it had lost its one remaining paying customer - Palm. The results will be fantastic. I haven't bought a Treo, because the platform is feature poor, both in terms of hardware and software. Access will sell this new Linux/Palm OS hybrid to tons of cell-phone manufacturors around the world who will be offering many new and innovative alternatives products to PalmOS lovers like me (and finally reinvigorate the platform by making it stable, secure, multi-processing and network ready with its Linux base). I wouldn't be surprised if Sony came back with with a Access OS based cell phone product.
Meanwhile, only someone brain-dead would buy a Windows Mobile based product from Palm (heck if I was in the market for that platform, there are plenty of vendors with higher quality products and better customer support and service). Which will mean Palm will go into a tailspin and suffer the ignomius death it deserves.
The emperor is dead! Long live the emperor!