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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.'"

4 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Visual Studio.NET by rd4tech · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:And Palm OS? by mok000 · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can hope, but PalmSource, the developer of Palm OS, was recently sold to a japanese company. It looks like a total rollover to me...
    See This link.

  3. Actually stable by wigry · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  4. Re:*cry* by Planesdragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.