Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Palm Pulls the Plug On Palm OS

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the now-my-palms-wont-operate dept.

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.

5 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. About damn time by wiredog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Worst. API. Ever. EVAR!

    Bad enough that they renamed standard library functions. They also changed the order of arguments to those functions.

    Windows PocketPC, meanwhile, was programmable using the same languages and toolchain as regular Windows.

    --

    Best Slashdot Co
  2. What happened to BeOS? by Doctor+Faustus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is this going to be a brand-new start? Didn't they buy Be a few years ago to build their new OS versions around BeOS?

    1. Re:What happened to BeOS? by DECS · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No they bought the BeOS company. The engineers largely fled, with many of them going to Apple, including Newton guy Steve Sakoman and DominicGiampaolo, the engineer behind BeOS' metadata file system who ended up designing Apple's Spotlight metadata search architecture for example.

      The Egregious Incompetence of Palm

      Interestingly, Palm followed all of the armchair advice that pundits offered for Apple, with completely disastrous results:

      â License its OS to other hardware makers
      â Copy Microsoft's Windows strategies
      â Compete directly against Microsoft in IT markets
      â Split into hardware and software companies
      â Buy Be, Inc. for its BeOS
      â Adopt the Linux kernel
      â License Windows from Microsoft

      What Palm is doing with WebOS is taking WebKit and making essentially a Dashboard-oriented PDA, where apps are just HTML+ JavaScript widgets. That allows Palm to claim that it is "multitasking" while not actually running any real significant applications. That's a pretty decent strategy for Palm, but sure isn't the iPhone Killer that the media has made it out to be.

      Palm Pre: The Emperor's New Phone
      Why Apple's Tim Cook Did Not Threaten Palm Pre

  3. Palm keeps falling flat? by Dripdry · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is it just me, or has Palm fallen flat on its face every time they have something that could be big (except when they debuted the palm pilot)?
    They used to have so much caché, but every time I hear what sounds like good news it just vanishes.
    Why do people keep supporting this company if they can't get their act together? Do they offer a magical pony with every purchase that no one is telling me about?

    --
    -
  4. This is awful by laing · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I started with WinCE (on a Casiopia) and stayed through 2 revisions despite the crashes, slowness, and rapid battery drain. I switched to a Palm III (clone actually - TRG Pro) and have had 3 Palm devices since then (currently a Centro). I prefer Palm's calendar and contact database to the alternatives. My Palm currently has about nine thousand contacts in the database. Am I going to be able to use the WebOS when there's no wireless data connectivity? I don't think so. Can Palm ensure the security of my data while using WebOS? I don't think so. What happened to the rumored port of PalmOS to Linux? I've been waiting for that for 3 years now. Since they are abandoning the platform, is it for sale? Are they going to open source it? I would not like to see it die.