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Palm Pulls the Plug On Palm OS
BobB-nw writes to tell us that Palm has decided to kill their PalmOS operating system and is instead betting their future on a still mostly unknown Palm webOS. Very little is known about the new Palm webOS, but it will supposedly support HTML5 and enable a local data store so that applications can be used both online and off. All of this is rolled into a Linux framework with a message bus based on JSON. Will be interesting to see where they take it.
JSON isn't inherently insecure, it's just a method of delimiting data. Running JSON through an eval is insecure, but there are drafts for safer implementations (stringify and parse, as well as a native JSON type in JavaScript iirc). That said, always verify your data.
Not sure if it is true in 2009, but 4 years ago: Many, many medical and nursing students were required to have a Palm for running some handy med-apps.
Don't forget that Palm is still going to produce devices running Windows Mobile alongside WebOS. Having spent much time with Windows Mobile, Symbian, and a Palm VII, none of those come close to an iPhone (I haven't used the new BlackBerry Storm so I can't comment). But, you are definitely correct in that that Windows Mobile has the best SDK and development tools available, bar none. There is something said about being able to write your own apps and distribute them freely.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Palm did acquire Be Inc in 2001. After this, it get's really fucking goofy and confusing, so I'll just quote Wikipeida (article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm,_Inc.)
In January 2002, Palm set up a wholly owned subsidiary to develop and license Palm OS[4], which was named PalmSource in February[5]. PalmSource was then spun off from Palm as an independent company. In August 2003, the hardware division of the company merged with Handspring, was renamed to palmOne, Inc. and traded under the ticker symbol PLMO. The Palm trademark was held by a jointly owned holding company.
In April 2005, palmOne purchased PalmSource's share in the 'Palm' trademark for US$30 million.[6] In July 2005, palmOne launched its new name and brand reverting back to Palm, Inc. and trading under the ticker symbol PALM once again.
In late 2005 ACCESS, which specializes in mobile and embedded web browser technologies, acquired PalmSource for US$324 million.
Who knows where Be's intellectual property ended up. Nothing ever came of the Be acquisition, and most likely nothing ever will. Palm's WebOS is entirely new, developed in-house, and has nothing to do with PalmSource/ACCESS.
Probably because of confusion? Palm and PalmOS have gone together (and make sense together). Now they introduce a new device running a new OS. Next Palm announces the death of PalmOS. Unless you're techie enough to know that the Pre runs "WebOS" and not "PalmOS", it would appear that Palm is abandoning their OS.
Anyhow, I think it realy means Palm is abandoning PalmOS. PalmOS is maintained by Access and is part of the Access Linux Platform nowadays... and Access has a nice VM to run PalmOS on the Nokia tablets. Great for those of us stuck with some irreplacable PalmOS apps. (And while there's probably a billion replacements for them, they lack stuff like the speed or other things...).
You're half there.
Access owned PalmOS, and in fact PalmOS was killed in late 2005 when Access ceased development and moved to the Linux-based ALP (Access Linux Platform).
This announcement is actually just Palm admitting that they can't afford to release any more hardware that uses an OS that's been dead for nearly 4 years.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
First off, Palm don't own PalmOS. It's owned by Access, who bought PalmSource.
Secondly, PalmOS's plug was pulled back in 2005, when Access announced no further development work would be done on it.
Thirdly, Palm didn't *decide* to pull the plug; their license from Access to ship new PalmOS devices expired, so they have no choice.
I wrote about all this back in 2005 when the news went around. I guess everyone's forgotten.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Apple's so-called "API" consisted of a keynote where they recommend making web pages that looked like native iPhone apps, but ran over the Internet in Mobile Safari. Palm's API is web-based, but the HTML/CSS/JavaScript will be stored and executed on the device, and JavaScript will be extended with hooks into phone-specific functionality. The difference is apples (no pun intended) to oranges.
I used to get 5 mod points per "round". I typically 15 mod points at a time these days. I'm guessing my positive karma and semi-long (~5 years I think?) history on Slashdot is the reason for that. In any case, they definitely give out more than 3 mod points at a time to many people.
Palm failed because they performed poorly as a company, not because there is some weak market force that works to break up monopolies...
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HTML 5 has a specification for allowing a site to use a local sql database. I believe safari now supports it (the user configures how big each site's db can grow), but I haven't used anything that uses it (or tried to write to it myself).
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
They did write a new OS with the technology from BeOS. Palm OS 6, aka Cobalt, was a failure when released five years ago. No devices were ever released that used it. Part of the problem was the split between Palm and PalmSource. Palm went with Palm OS 5.4 for the Treo 650. And started using Windows Mobile about the same time. There were rumors that it was hard to write drivers for Cobalt.
The original Palm had very little memory (128KB!) and completely different design goals than the later Windows PDAs. The Palm was essentially an embedded device designed like most small embedded devices, and was very efficient with memory use and power. Whereas Windows handheld machines were designed to be a miniature version of Windows, and thus required a lot more memory and horsepower.
Of course the API wasn't standard. You should rename the functions if they don't conform exactly to the standard (Microsoft C libraries on the other hand have had plenty of non compliant functions that weren't renamed, which has confused some programmers).
Of course you couldn't use a Windows toolchain,
what self respecting embedded programmers would want to? Besides, what Windows toolchain supported M68K anyway? This was not a Windows machine, it was not designed to work like Windows or look like Windows, so why would the lack of a normal Microsoft toolchain matter in the slightest?
Phones are banned for patients and families. Clinical staff use them all the time. (I'm a medical student.)