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The Palm OS Ends With a Whimper
PetManimal writes "Computerworld reviews the Palm Treo 755p, the last Palm device with the Palm OS, and concludes that the OS is going out not with a bang but with a whimper. The article says there are some useful improvements (better integration with Exchange and IM, limited speech recognition, etc.) but 'nothing that will make you sit back and say "wow."' Palm already has at least one device with Windows Mobile (the 700w) and soon will make a big push to Linux devices, maybe by the end of the year. But the Palm OS, which was top dog for a while back in the 1990s, and is still used by many people who own Palm Pilots or Treos, is going to quickly fade, it seems."
Palm already has at least one device with Windows Mobile (the 700w) and soon will make a big push to Linux devices, maybe by the end of the year. But the Palm OS, which was top dog for a while back in the 1990s, and is still used by many people who own Palm Pilots or Treos, is going to quickly fade, it seems.
Ok, but what will the interface for those Linux devices look like?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I never could get it to sync with OS/2 anyway. Long live OS/2!
PalmOS is just changing the kernel. It's anything but dead.
How, exactly, does software go out with a bang?
Doesn't "bang" imply success, and therefore, not going out?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
BTW, I never thought Windows would be taking over the mobile world the way it has. But I admit, even I prefer it because I find it familiar. I avoided the whole PDA thing until they merged PDAs with cell phones -- because I never wanted to bother carrying around both. Now that I've waited, I've discovered it's a Windows-based world.
To anyone who owns a modern PDA, how fast can you write? I've went through two Palms (no pun intended) and two handspring visors back in the late 90's and I loved them - but more importantly, I could enter text at least twice as fast as anyone I knew who had a WinCE device.
Has that changed?
Part of what made Palm successful was the ability to write applications and expand it. Will they continue this ability on their linux phones? Have they considered including a palm emulator in the initial versions so people can bring their apps with them? I haven't been following the market closely enough, but the little I've seen is companies putting linux on phones as a replacement for another embedded OS, but without the ability to expand what's there. I'm hoping palm can change this with a truly open mobile development platform.
The whole point of palm OS was that it delivered what was needed with simplicity, and no bloat, like it's rival at the time Windows CE.
A simple to do list, contacts, calendar, a memo pad was the core of the experience, and allthat you needed a PDA to do.
This news is somewhat depressing, I have to say. Though not at all surprising.
I've been using Palm devices for over ten years, and while it's been pretty apparent for a while now that Windows Mobile (or Pocket PC) has quickly grown to include more features and better integration with computer software, I personally don't like it at all. I think it's sluggish and poorly laid out. It can take several seconds to open the simply calendar, or the media player (during which time parts of the screen update before others, which is tacky), while the Palm is almost always instant. While that's obviously because the Palm OS is simpler and less graphically intensive, I have no problem with that. I like things to open the very instant that I tap on them, and this is always the case with my trusty Treo. My iPAQ, my friend's Dopod, and the various other Windows Mobile devices we have at work are all the same... slow and frustrating. They also crash a lot, which the Palm rarely does without the help of poorly written third-party applications.
I will mourn this unfortunate change.
Palm had an OS? Who knew? Was microsoft in on this secret also?
I recently had my Zaire die and tried to find a replacement but nothing availible came close. Instead of getting better the line has largely stagnated. I loved my Zaire so I guess the next move is iPhone. I just hope they add in more desktop apps soon. I have high hopes on the second generation. The Palm OS was a landmark OS and for many years it was the best. For the people that loved the devices it's definitely a time to mourn it's passing.
Honestly, should anyone really care? If the next-generation Palm operating system is based on a Linux kernel but has the capability of running Palm OS apps in an emulation mode, should we care about what code base it runs on?
OS's aren't like people or pets. They're tools. When you've outgrown them, you can either upgrade them or find a new one. Obviously Access has no interest in updating the PalmOS, so Palm has to go its own way. I personally hope that they deliver new capabilities on Linux while retaining the simplicity of the Palm interface.
I have owned various PalmOS devices for over a decade, and still use my Treo 650 daily, but I'll be happy to see the old OS go. It's unstable (a null pointer access will reboot the whole device), has no OS-level support for multitasking (applications have to hook into timer interrupts to run in the background), the memory management system is a monstrosity to code for, it has no ability to launch apps directly from a removable memory card, and even its strong suit, the UI, has some serious problems (try replying to an SMS message when you're in the middle of doing something else; when you're done sending the message it will take you back to the app launcher rather than to what you were doing.)
A new Linux-based core will solve many of those problems inherently. Plus, one hopes, it will be even more hackable. So I say good riddance to the old OS.
I need something fairly stable, to manage contacts telephones and calendar, but that's it. It should retain its memory when the battery runs out (the later Palm devices had it), and should be simple.
None of the newer PDAs satisfy this criteria, IMHO, but I could be wrong.
Any suggestions?
I have a Cassiopeia E11, Windows CE from 2000 right beside me, and it has a 320x240 display.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
With Palm using Linux, is there any word on people being able to develop 3rd part programs to read Secure eReader books? I'd love to be able to migrate my secure eReader books to eBookwise without downloading illegal copies.
First sentence should have read "Palm OS would've died sooner if Windows Mobile supported 320x320 prior to the just-released Windows Mobile 6." The Treo 720p is 320x320, which Windows Mobile 5 did not support. I have the Sprint/Audiovox 6700 from December 2005, which is 320x240 and Windows Mobile 5.
My company recently gave me a Treo 700wx. Much to my horror, this proved to be much like Win95 on a very small screen. Except it was interfaced via a touch screen that required you to pull out "the stick" to do anything usefull. So I went to Best Buy and played with the PalmOS version of the same Treo 700. I was in love - the whole thing worked the way I would expect from the keypad or via big fat buttons on the touch screen. No stick required. But my company said "No, we are a Microsoft house". Curiously, they were also willing to let me go back to a real mobile phone / email device and I changed back to a Blackberry. I've never looked back.
. waterwingz
I started with a Pilot, moved to a III. I flirted with wince devices for a while and have now come back home to the IIIxe. When it breaks, I'll buy another one, they're cheap and plentiful.
It doesn't play movies, mp3s or emulators but that's what computers are for.
--- Do you believe in the day?
I'm a palm user of over 10 years as well and happily keep my phone and PDA separate for a variety of reasons.
The biggest problem I've had with it is the lack of a Linux Palm Desktop. I really miss it having moved to Ubuntu and while I'm getting by with Jpilot I have lost a lot of functionality (specific to my behavior) having switched. Not to much joy with wine (due to a lack of knowledge on my part no doubt) either.
I hope that if/when they finally (2nd/3rd time lucky?) go linux we'll see a desktop released for that OS, or at least enough published to enable Jpilot and others to jump on board better.
While they're at it, perhaps they'll realize that wiki-fying their base menu system (address/memo/to-do/calendar) apps will make for a simple and enormously useful improvement in functionality.
--- I've completed diagnosis of your problem and can classify it as a YOYO...You're On Your Own
i find the Blackberry Pearl a more than suitable replacement for my Treo 650. Not sure if it retains memory when then battery runs out (the treo didn't) but a re-sync gets it back in shape. Plus, the Java apps (esp Google Maps) are much better than the palm software.
Good Riddance, Palm OS.
The treo 700p was great when it didn't have much data on it. However, when you load it up with a few hundred contacts, appointments and about 8000 emails ... it fails apart. Switching between applications results in a white screen for 7 - 10 seconds. Common lock ups, at least once a week. To top it all off, Palm didn't respond to any of these problems. Numerous support requests and calls got ignored. That pissed me off more then anything. The only answer I ever got was to do a hard reset.
Needless to say, I am done with Palm. I will not purchase another phone from them. Even if they solve the software issues, they have a very serious problem with their support that they need to tend to first.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Palm OS has fallen quite far behind Windows Mobile.. this is no more apparent than for a developer for these devices. The Garnet (v5) platform is hideously out of date, and Cobalt(v6) has never been released.. after years.
.NET is significantly easier than for the Palm API. And where go the developers, so too go the applications. And where go the applications, so too go the users.
Developing for Windows Mobile with
WM is not perfect, but it is better than PalmOS. My Axim X50V gets used every day, while my Tungsten TX sits collecting dust.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
All I can say is, I hope their linux systems run better than some of the nokia linux-based hardware I've seen, such as the N800 that you can brick by installing software on or looking at wrong.... you can recover them, but only by using linux commandline-only software on a desktop (that was a good waste of an afternoon).
I love linux, but just running linux doesn't automatically make things perfect. (awesome, sure, but not perfect. this is slashdot afterall).
ìì!
Lack of protected memory or preemptive multitasking on a device released in 2007? Hard to believe it's still there. PalmOS was great for 512KB devices with monochrome screen, but it's an anachronism in today's world.
Great: Windows Mobile can handle screen resolutions my Commodore could handle 20-something years ago. Ah, progress. Seriously, has anyone tried using Windows Mobile for anything serious without wanting to send their device to an untimely death? I tried a VX6700, replaced it with a Treo 700w, and replaced that with a Motorola Q, all within the past year. I eventually paid (or, in all honesty, my employer paid) Verizon's termination fee just so I could get out of the contract so I could get something else. If you want to experience Windows Mobile, take a ten-penny nail and drive it into your crotch... it's about the same feeling. I now have a BlackBerry Pearl, and - I can't believe I'm saying this - I quite like it. It's responsive, doesn't crash if you look at it, actually knows that it's supposed to charge when the power cord is attached, syncs with my mail, and just plain works. All the things a WM5 device does not.
I have found that many people do not share my point-of-view with regards to Palm OS, but I must personally say that I hated it. The interface was easy enough to deal with as a user, but as a developer, it was a nightmare. I am so glad to see Palm OS go and be replaced with Linux.
There were so many problems with the OS design. I could not understand why you would build an OS that lacked any sort of filesystem. Instead, they had a very crappy database-esque system from which you could retrieve data. You couldn't simply load a file onto the system, it had to be loaded into the database and accessed using their bass-akwards method of database access. Be aware, we're not talking SQL here.
Another thing that was horrible was their lack of long-jumps. I had previously never had to specifically arrange the order of my object files in a link statement to avoid jumps further than 64k. There were times where I actually had to create functions that did nothing but call a later function so that I could make code jumps to functions further than 64k away. That made using the STL basically impossible (some would not consider this a loss, I do).
Then you add in the ridiculousness of having to define UUIDs for programs. So, anytime you wanted to write any sort of small application, you had to register a 32-bit number (less actually) with Palm. There are better ways to do this. We don't live in the 70s anymore.
Ugh! There are so many other problems. I just had to get this off my chest. Once they do this, maybe I'll go get a new Palm. I was never able to bring myself to buy a Windows CE device, but I have longed to have another PDA. Hopefully, these new Linux systems will be what I am looking for.
Of course, it has been years since I programmed anything on Palm OS (version 5, I believe). So, for all I know, they fixed all of these problems and I will be the recipient of a massive amount of flame.
I was able to get access to a palm emulator by signing up as a palm developer (free) back in the day. I would think they would keep providing that service.
It's turtles all the way down.
Open source PalmOS.
Seriously.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Windows CE/Windows Mobile was running at a huge loss, but has now broken even. Tactics like that do tend to allow you to destroy traditional competition in the long run. Linux-kerneled devices are growing faster than ever and MS does not have a recipe to destroy them.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yes, and I first had a full-sized, folding keyboard (Targus Stowaway) for my Handspring Visor somewhere around...2000. (That's Palm OS 3.1, BTW)
After a couple of Palm PDA's and now on my second Treo, I have a different perspective. First - the Palm OS is stable - I took a Treo 600 on vacation through Turkey, a cruise, Greece, and Italy for a month. Never had a crash or had to reset once - rock solid using the phone everyday, sending emails, messaging, reading books, listening to MP3s, completing crosswords. Telephone worked great everywhere - even 10 miles off a barren Turkish coast. Swapped to a Treo 680 late last year. It works perfectly - I picked it up, loaded old familiar applications and started using immediately. Last time I did a reset was probably six weeks ago. Palm OS at an end - I don't think so - it does everything an average user wants, has had for years all the functionality others are just now crowing about. Yup, the camera sucks - that's why I carry a pocket Canon. Yup, no wireless, but a cheap unlimited data plan with Cingular sorta makes that a non-issue. So what's not to like about Palm OS? Windows Mobile may be great for a developer but it stinks from a user's view. There's absolutely nothing intuitive about the user interface. Now would anyone really like to say that it's reliable. Some tell me that it's improved a lot - they only have to reset once a day now. May be great when crunching code but what about us poor button pushers. I'll stick with Palm OS.
PalmLinux will be fully backward compatible, so you can use all your old apps with no problems. They will include a 68K emulation layer just for the purpose.
I was a Palm fanboy right up until I realized that they were never going to give me Cobalt (OS6) for my T3, the last really innovative Palm Pilot. No Cobalt, no native ARM code. Every Palm since has been chock full of unremoveable bloatware, and slower than the T3 was, even with it's emulation handicap. Whoever split that company into separate hardware and software companies might as well have been taking orders from Redmond - they gave the field to Microsoft.
So Palm Os is dead then?
Would Palm be so kind as to give us back BeOs? They purchased it many moons ago, never did anything with it, but didn't want to release it in any shape or form because of IP issues associated with PalmOs (I guess they had grandious plans to port some of the technology across)
Comin' Palm, pretty please?
http://www.macworld.com/news/2001/08/16/palm/
http://www.begroovy.com/wordpress/?p=200
Long live the new Linux Mobile OS !
... if I needed more than that I'd drag a laptop along
I just hope they keep the GUI simple - and make sure the device does the basics very well. I've used both Palms and Pocket PCs -- I always went back to the Palms beause they did the basics: calendar - contacts - notes - calculator - and even basic email pretty well. And they fit in your shirt pocket or pack easily
Its not the years, its the mileage
REAL PROGRAMMERS ONLY NEED 64K.
I am bettting that if you were able to program on the palm, you were better than the average Window programmer since you were required to be efficient and understand the platform.
These "Windows programmers" don't understand what it is like to write efficient progams.
Fight Spammers!
Okay, so to make it simple, what can I tell people who are buying a PalmOS-based PDA?
For example, I have a Palm Lifedrive. (Despite the fact that the designers totally screwed that device up.) What does this mean to me? (Or anybody else with a PalmOS based PDA?)
After 27 years of computing, I got stuck in a town without any serious computer jobs, waiting for Mom to die. So I'm a security guard, and MAN, is that little old 10 YEAR OLD palm 5 a big help. I can take notes without looking, send emails that are legible instead of written reports that aren't, and it's a single sync and the night's paperwork is done and archived.
It was a good idea; branching out into hundreds of alternatives (and keeping their handwriting recognition sacred) limited the span. And just like SCO learned, charging $1,100 for a development system to create more software for your platform, there are worse things to lose than your money.
If they could just be talked into licensing their handwriting analysis code to other businesses, they just might save theirs...
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
With Dell about to roll out their Ubuntu based systems, I suppose it would be too much to ask for a Palm Computing supported Desktop sync application for Linux? It would be really nice to see something like a plugin for KDE PIM and Evolution or something that could plug in to Seamonkey...
http://www.justworksnh.com
Sorry to see a decent product like Palm OS succumb to a dismal effort like WINCE, but at least the customers still have a few alternatives to pick from.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
with a command line program you can wrap it in Tk or PyGTK and have a simple gui-based un-bricker for your N800. You can then release it and people will make it better and you'll end up with a powerful GUI-based un-bricker.
It is called patent trolling.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I bought a 680 recently, knowing it was dying. But its not about how much power your pda/phone has, but how u use it, Apple know this too. Anyway it's really nice to use and quite polished. Could do with being smaller, better phone, faster etc, but overall, I think it's superb.
I have waited years for stereo Bluetooth. My Treo 650 does not have it, the 700p does not have it, and now the 755p does not have it...
The one thing I was looking for, and they fail to ship it after years!!
i've been waiting for a fix for the palm os bluetooth fix. guess this won't happen.
when i can get a smartphone that is based on linux, i'll switch.
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
I too have used PalmOS a long time (since 1996) and am currently on my my second Handera 330 (after my TRGPro). Palm's stupid management decisions killed the OS, not any lacks of the OS itself. Palm went out of its way to kill products from hardware innovators like Handera, Handspring, Sony, Garmin, and Symbol.
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
But props to Palm for some things - considering that their first model had 128KB of RAM - yes, 1/8 of 1MB - they had to do some less-than-savory things with their memory management to make it possible to run at all. If they could have gone back in time and made one or two simple changes, the whole system would be dramatically easier to work with. Of course, they might not have been able to ship...
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Got my only Palm device, an IBM rebranded III (C20) for free in 1999. After dutifully messing with it, flashing an OS upgrade or two all the way up to PalmOS 3.5 and then back down to 3.3, after installing 3rd party hacks up the wazoo and an application that allowed me to use unused flash for applications, speeding up the system clock and EasySync versions from 2.0 up to 4.3 all of which failed, broke or could not work with Lotus Notes then using Notes export functions to clone data to the Palm Desktop app then moving that to the Palm, I finally gave up on it last year when at one point the batteries conked out (old models had AAA batteries) and I just couldn't find a good enough reason to put another $3 in batteries into my paperweight.
Palm always seemed to be progressing about half the speed the marketplace wanted them to. They split off hardware from software, bought BeOS and wandered around doing silly pointless things for years. Ultimately their vaunted stability and battery life over PocketPC just wasn't enough. Palm always remained a work in progress, a lab experiment really in search of a stable suite of business apps and a good business model. The idea that apps generally to be workable needed big chunks of RAM, that Palm never seemed to be able to deliver on the hardware in time, or, if they did it cost a fantastic amount of money was inane. Does anyone remember that the first 2MB -> 8MB customer RAM upgrades required you to take apart the motherboard and spend more than $200 for the chip?
Yeah so I not glad or angry Palm is dead. I gave up on it years ago. I think the next thing I''ll get is a Moto-Q or whatever is roughly a Moto-Q next year when Sprint gives me a discount. The idea of a standalone PDA is over. And the idea of a PDA/Phone without good enough data entry is over too. I have the first and the last version of T9 for Palm which was great until T9 decided they only wanted the phone market and abandoned Palm. I had a portable keyboard and found it clunky too. Better to have a small built in hardware keyboard on the device. In retrospect the commonsense product decisions that would have made the Palm platform a viable handheld communicator, PDA, Phone, computer, whatever always seemed to elude Palm executives.
...not just with apps, but with *devices*.
My LifeDrive rocks, but the little instabilities grate. The idea of an upgraded, backwards-compatible OS upgrade has me tickled pink.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I have a shortlist of requirements which, to me, are pretty simple, but which seem to be confounding the mobile phone industry:
I was looking at the Nokia Communicator machines (9300i particularly), only to see them withdrawn from the market the week I attempted to order one. Since I want a Windows Mobile device like I want a hole in the head, all that's left is the Treo.
I'm not a great fan of Palm OS - in particular, I've never liked the handwriting recognition and the stylus interface - but I'm hoping that a qwerty-enabled Treo will address points (i)...(iv) for a while, until we get to see how the iPhone works out (hint: wait for second generation, people), or until Nokia get their new communicator platform (E90) up and running.
But: I'm British, so of course I mourn the Psion Organiser; I would so love to see a small, modern, equivalent.
The Palm Treo 750 also runs Windows Mobile (WM5) and is available through Cingular (*grumble*).
Palm is such a great OS for what it's designed to do. Plus it's always been programmer friendly (gcc m68k toolchain + the Palm SDK) which they distributed for free. Plus there was POSE for development and you could legally download roms for the different system from their development site for testing. Does MS do that?
So for me, this is a sad day. It was fun while it lasted and I just hope mine doesn't break anytime soon.
..palm to be the biggest lame duck company in the tech industry in a long time. how many employees do they have? how many revisions of their product have they produced? what kind of product evolution has their core technology seen in the last 'n' iterations?
they seem to excel at pissing off their key employees, having those employees leave, buying them back, licensing out their core technology, licensing it back, etc.
someone should really, really just put the company out of its misery.
they're the borland of the new century.
As far as I'm concerned, when Palm dropped Moto's Dragonball processor for the ARM, it was all over. About that same time they got rid of the original Graffiti for something that didn't use one stroke per letter. (Admittedly, this was due to a lawsuit, but the patent was eventually overturned; Palm did not return to Graffiti, however.) There's still a thriving market on eBay for the old Palm devices. I still use my m150, and have a couple of spares that are still shrink-wrapped. The battery life is still incredible. I can take it with me on week-long hikes without any worries.
Actually, there's a Palm III emulator that's been ported all over the place, including handheld versions of Windows. There's no reason why it couldn't run on a Linux-based PDA. Maybe I should change my subject: "PalmOS will never die!"
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I'm not an expert on the Palm OS, but I've owned several Palms (have a TX now) and appreciate their easy, straightforward operation. Don't know how the Windows program compares, but I think it's sad to see the demise of a very usable system. Bummer.
You should have been able to enter 'th', 'st', 'ck' and such in single strokes.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Ok, but what will the interface for those Linux devices look like?
:)
Basically a shared library, palmos.5.so or something that implements all of the PalmOS 5 functionality. There's some execution environment that knows how to take an old binary and do the runtime linking. If you're familiar with Carbon on Mac, it's the same idea, only a little better in that apps don't need to be re-compiled.
The GUI almost has to look the same, otherwise those old apps would break. That doesn't stop them from making new apps look better, of course, as in Cocoa on OSX.
Somebody put me on the list for a dev kit.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What about those of us with farily recent Palm devices?
We just screwed ' go buy a new device, have a nice day'?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For Treo users, WM5 smartphone kinda sucks. I've migrated from an old but generally reliable Treo 600 to the T-Mobile Dash (HTC S620). The latter is a sweet bit of hardware, but its WM5 software has some significant drawbacks. If the keyboard is locked and you get a call that requires you to enter dtmf tones, you can't unlock the phone to generate the tones. If you want to connect to an ssl imap server over the pop port (for firewall reasons or whatever), it gets horribly confused. And the e-mail client in WM5 isn't as good IMO as Chatter for Treo, since the latter can do imap idle (aka push). Then there is the issue of syncing my contacts, calendar and to do list. My linux desktop and WM5 do not a smooth connection make. No problem with the Treo under Linux.
The newer hardware is sweet. Good battery life. Better call quality. Agile bluetooth support. Nice displays. I'm hoping Palm's Linux push gives us a Treo that allows us old Palm fogeys to still use all our old programs and sync processes on the latest and greatest hardware.
http://www.palmtown.com/games/xgm116.php
I really wish someone would port it to the Symbian 60 OS, so I can use it on my phone (my Nokia has supplanted the Palms I used to own and sold off to friends). Excellent timekiller!