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Palm Teams With Microsoft for Smart Phone
UltimaGuy writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that Palm Inc. is teaming up with Microsoft Corp. to launch a Windows-based version of the Treo smart phone, marking the first time the handheld computer pioneer will sell a device based on its former rival's software. 'In terms of the level of importance, this would be - in this space - the same thing as Apple announcing they were going to be using Intel processors.'"
I hope they don't stop develping their Palm OS and start focusing to much on Win Mobile. Palm OS is a great platform, and its dead would be really bad.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
shouldn't be "same thing as IBM announcing they were going to be using Intel proc
the same thing as Apple announcing they were going to be using Intel processors.
no.. more like if apple announced they were releasing a windows-based computer; or a wma-only ipod...
my question... will phone calls to windowsupdate be free? or will package minutes apply. i might need to up my plan.
I've heard over and over from people who've done some programming in this area that, although alternatives to VS exist they are either with far less features or buggy.
Mod me troll but I believe that VS IDE is probably the best development environment around, and it might me possibly one of the reasons why many programmers are still coding for windows.
Bye, bye Palm then and hello to being a Microsoft OEM on phones where there is absolutely no money and you're over a barrel all the time. A lot of Microsoft's competitors take it like a bitch all the time, that's the problem. No doubt Nokia will do the same and integrate support in for Exchange etc. and once that support is in Microsoft will use it to strong-arm Windows Mobile into the fray. Idiots.
I liked the Palm OS because I learned Graffiti when the original Palm came out. It really was a nice, no-nonsense OS, it did everything that I wanted it to do and left out features that I didn't need. I think that sadly many users don't care about the actual functionality, but want to have stupid bells and whistles; just look at the cell phone market today... people own phones that record video, record audio notes, have specialized ringtones, have flashing lights, have changeable faceplates, and can play games, but most of the time they can't get service inside a building... shouldn't that problem be addressed first?
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Palm building WinCE based handheld which will be distributed through Verizon.
Essentially Palm is going down (stock wise and tech wise). With Linux Zaurses becoming popular and new products like the Nokia 770 coming out, there's not much room between Linux and WinCE for Palm to build a niche market.
Microsoft helping might be a good thing for Palm, but in that terms Faust really got a deal for his soul too.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Palms market share may have faltered recently , but 18% market share is defiantly not crushed . ,which has a great many contenders .
.. they just have a great deal more competition these days
It makes them one of the top 3 major players in the market
I believe Blackberry at the number one spot with 20.8% and just after palm comes HP with 17.6.
So they are not crushed by any means
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I think the real problem is bells and whistles only get you so far. I think that's the reason most sell manufacturers are struggling for new ideas and having to go to things like iTunes; there are simply not enough devices they can cram into a cellphone and market anymore.
Sadly, Palm was one of the few companies that was trying to innovate cellphones. Though the Treo is clunky, it has real functionality that I would honestly use, and could be a lot better with compatibility with other devices. Though I think that the cellphone was a terrible addition for a PDA (why can't they be seperate devices and communicate with BlueTooth, is it really that hard???), I think that Palm made a proper job of trying to connect the two devices in a sensible way.
And yes, I agree with you on the antenna/amplifier part. There is really no excuse for cellphones being so bad inside of buildings except battery life might not be able to keep up with the devices, especially a SmartPhone that has an entire operating system including a huge power consuming LCD to drive. Hopefully as OLED prices come down it will help with the power constraints and the cell manufacturers will bring the quality back to where it should be.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Noooooooooooo!
Arbitrary sig
As much as I like my standalone palm, I could not deal with my cell phone crashing daily. If WM is more stable than POS (which shouldn't be too hard), then this may be a good move for treo.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
I don't know about you guys but I have developed quite many applications to Microsoft Windows Mobile Smartphone platform and also used the phone quite a lot and it is STABLE and fast. Nothing to cpmlaoin about. The windows that is in the device is huge improvement over their desktop version. As the Embedded Visual C++ is totally free of charge, then it is absolutely logical to develop the program to the smartphone platform. The effect works also oin the other direction: as developers coose smartphone platform, then there are lots of programs available and therefore customers prefer those phones as well. Add to the picture the fact that Microsoft will make the single operating system release for both PDA and Smartphone (Windows Mobile 5.0), the user gets familiar interface and also does developer. By releasing the EVC for free, microsoft basically killed the competition. There is no point to develop to Symbian as the API is totally different and same is with Linux. Smartwhone with timetested Win32 API rules the mobile world, like it or not. I as a developer have experience and I like it. The Windows Mobile is another masterpiece from microsoft, far from what they provide to the desktop.
I'm just glad to see that Microsoft has learned it's lessons
about monopolistic practices......
Engadget has pics of the new Windows Mobile Treo: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000867059961/
Recent press reports make this sound as if Microsoft had devoured its one and only contender to the smartphone crown - and we'd all have to start clicking tiny Windows icons (and the reset button) on our cellphones, forever, really soon now. Curiously, almost all of these reports seem to forget how Symbian/Psion (and Linux itself) make a great platform for a smartphone OS while having many years of extremely loyal following by both countless customers and the mobile industry giants.
I've said this before and I'll say it again - this is great news. There are many, many people who grew up with Palm OS. I have been using it since the Palm III days and in that period I went on the desktp from Mac to Windows to Icewm to Gnome (version 0.7) to KDE to Gnome and back to Mac OS X. I write faster in grafitti than on pen and paper. I have several Palm OS add on apps that I use everyday, several times a day. The Treo is popular because of the Palm OS not Palm (which why, as others have noted, the Apple analogy is way off - its the Mac OS X experience that people love, not PowerPC chips).
Palm as a company has grown to suck big time (it began with the 3Com purchase and it has been downhill ever since). When I had a choice, I avoided Palm products. The only decent Palm since the Palm V is the T3, but Palm support is less then useless (lot's of horror stories here).
Now that Palm has become just one more Microsoft OEM it will die a long, protracted painful death. But its customers like me, won't have to endure the death rattle. We will be able to go out out and buy Palm-enabled or rather ACCESS-enabled devices. And there is a great likelihood there will be many of those from multiple vendors and with multiple options.
Here's why: Let's face it - the PDA market is dying, and the cell phone market is rapidly on the rise. Does Palm/Microsoft really think it can compete with Nokia, Motorola, Sony/Erricson, Samsung and China Inc? How many cell phones do those companies sell? How many does Palm sell, with all the success of Treo? How many of the latter companies are using Microsoft's WinMobile? How many of those companies do/plan to sell embedded Linux phones?
In case you don't know the answers to the above rhetorical questions, it is likely the case that by now Motorola has shipped more embedded Linux phones in China alone than all the Treos out there. These phones will soon be available outside the US. Isn't it likely that these companies will add ACCESS as a feature/add-on to entice millions of Palm customers like me? When that happens, how many TreoNGs do you think are going to be sold? All of you can count on one hand.
So yes, Palm is dead. But fortunately, Palm OS has just been reborn. With it's old master dead it will take off even more rapidly.
Either way, though, this marks the end of Palm. I've never seen a company thats managed to 'cooperate' and 'codevelop' with MS without getting really messed
Apple: One of the Mac's biggest and most popular software programs is Microsoft Office. MS even went so far as to bail out Apple in the mid 1990s.
Adobe: Ever notice how Adobe works so well with MS Office? Indesign reads DOCs, Acrobat installs a custom Office PDF writer, etc. All due to cooperation between the two giants.
I swear, Palm is absolutely on crack.
First, tons of bizarro name changes. After some years, it's Palm again - what was so wrong with that in the first place that it was worth all the churn and confusion? Why make people who hit the front door of Palm's site choose what company or country they're really trying to reach?
Next, why make it so Palm has to pay to use its own OS on your its devices (re: PalmSource)? I'm never going to figure that one out.
Finally, why, oh why can't they put the whole thing in one package? My nice, fast T3 can connect wirelessly to the internet via "Any Bluetooth Wireless Access Point". WTF?
Took Palm years to come up with the SD WiFi you could already get for Pocket PC. And it works on what, 2 Palm devices? Meanwhile, they actively prevented Sandisk from developing working WiFi for the Palm line.
And if I want to spend money with Palm and get a nice Treo phone? Can't get one that's anything like as fast or capable as my several-years-old T3. Screen is tiny by comparison. And WiFi? The Treo 650 can "Connect with Bluetooth wireless devices." "That's odd, the lights are on, but there's nobody home!"
Can't buy an upgraded Palm OS for your older device anymore either. Might as well not matter 'cause each OS upgrade breaks a bunch of stuff that used to work fine, and there's not enough money in PalmOS software for developers to support their products and rewrite for the new OS or support multiple versions (in general). And since you can't upgrade your OS, they will need to support those multiple versions for a while. And as mentioned above, Palm owns a nice new OS that runs on exactly zero devices.
So now: Linux! NO! WAIT! Windows! NO! WAIT! The Treo 800 will be the ideal embedded controller for nuclear power plants and mission-critical homeland defense applications! And it will connect wirelessly to the internet via any Bluetooth Access Point!
Honestly, think of the dumbest thing they could possibly do, and I guarantee: it's in the business plan.
"...the same thing as Apple announcing they were going to be using Intel processors..." I disagree. Most people don't give a rat's ass what processor is inside of a Macintosh; the thing that makes it unique is the operating system running on it. The Apple transition (if done right) should be seamless, with the OS running as it does today (or faster) and most existing apps continuing to work as today. Palm is doing essentially the exact opposite. They are changing the OS, changing the look and feel of the software on the Treo, and breaking compatibility with all existing Palm software. As a current Treo owner, I'm pretty sad about the transition.
(Okay, I accidentally hit "reply" in the wrong fucking tab so this comment is actually posted in the "Developers: RMS Previews GPL3 Terms" story.)
I was planning on getting a Treo and setting it up with a Socket Communications barcode reader to explore that kind of functionality in a PDA. I hope they don't outright kill the Palm OS on their devices but rather carry both. I'd like to have an alternative to Microsoft when trying out those kinds of device setups. I keep coming across hardware I want that only works with Windows, like mobile phones and sheet-feed scanners, and it is frustrating.
Years ago, I had a top-of-the-range Toshiba laptop that came with Windows 95. When I upgraded to Windows 98, all of a sudden, the power management got all screwed up. To turn the machine off, I had to Shutdown, wait for it to hang, unplug the AC power adaptor, and pull out the battery. This was extremely frustrating, considering it wasn't exactly an obscure brand that was unsupported. Because of those kinds of experiences, I would really like to use another company's product.
Yes, there were things about their products that I did like. Despite the major security problems that came with it, I did like the whole COM thing from a development perspective. Being able to use the same controls in Access, Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Internet Explorer did have a nice consistency. And I don't recall having problems with my Palm on Windows the way I do now on OS X. If anything happened to your computer, all your PIM data was backed up on the Palm, so all you had to do was re-install the system and hit a button to restore it on the computer. But on OS X, I've had the computer wipe the data from my Palm when I did clean OS upgrades. They also managed to include programs along with their main products that helped you do more, like a graphics application that came with Office which was useful for web design. On the Macintosh, it seems like it costs much more to do really basic web design compared to Windows.
But that power management thing was really a bitch to deal with. I couldn't believe that any company would be so incompetent as to cripple a computers ability to simply turn off. The security problems were also unbearable. Allowing remote code to install itself on your computer automatically was just pure brainlessness. I can recall that there was an exploit in which an attachment could open itself up automatically in the preview pane in Outlook Express, and I had read about it as a proof-of-concept security hole possibly a year or two before virus writers actually started using it. The fact that a company would allow a common-knowledge exploit to go unpatched for so long was ridiculous. I've seen friends who's jobs depended on their computers lose all their data because of exploits like that.
So in the end, I opted for a more expensive computer setup that had less third-party hardware support, but could turn on and off like a television and actually allow me to do other things instead of having to constantly patch and implement work-arounds for newly discovered exploits. I got a computer I could use rather than one I had to maintain. Maybe things have been different since, but I think that it is just a fundamental issue that consumers have alternatives when piecing together computer systems.