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Snow Leopard Drops Palm OS Sync
adeelarshad82 writes "It's been just a little over a month since Apple blocked iTunes sync with Palm Pre, and now Apple takes that strategy one step further by blocking Snow Leopard sync with Palm-OS powered smartphones. Even though Palm has officially retired Palm OS and is now focusing hard on its next-generation WebOS in the Palm Pre, the company is still selling Palm OS-powered smartphones; two current models are the Treo Pro on Sprint and the Centro."
s/blocking/dropping support for/
Nothing, IIRC, is stopping Palm from doing the heavy lifting required to support their devices in OS X except Palm.
I'm really not happy with this interplatform bitching.
There should be laws against this kind of thing: the recent Google Talk blocking by Apple and this is an example of trying to maintain a monoply in my opinion.
We all have a go at Microsoft for lock-in but why does Apple get away with it?
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Palm dropped support for this YEARS ago. You can hardly blaim apple for not taking over support of a product that the manufacturer declared dead.
So why would Apple spend time developing a feature for it? Especially since all 3 of the people still using Palm OS devices can purchase an app that does the same thing. Looks to me like the press is making a mountain from a molehill.
Support for legacy technologies gets dropped all the time. It sucks, but it opens up new opportunities for enterprising developers. Besides, Palm themselves stopped making Palm Desktop for the Mac ages ago.
Obviously there is lingering demand. So, in due course there will be an open source solution to sync from the Mac OS to the Palm OS. After all, it's not rocket science.
So there you go. Competitiveness is restored.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Before anyone gets down on me, let me say I am a big-time Apple junkie. I have an iPhone, an iMac, a Macbook, hell, even an Apple TV. I code in Perl and Objective-C.
That said, this is totally unconscionable. Apple has an obligation to its users not to break things that used to work for no good reason, and suddenly killing Palm sync support with no good reason other than a big Nelson Muntz "ha-ha" is kind of a red flag.
Anyone who had a serious Palm jones already used The Missing Sync anyhow, but this is seriously irresponsible.
Palm Desktop stopped functioning years ago, so Apple finally dropping support for it is not a bad thing at all. I'm sure Missing Sync for Palm OS will be continue to function or be updated to function in Snow Leopard. I know I had to use it with my Centro since the decrepit Palm Desktop didn't work for it. Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices also rely on third-party software to sync in Mac OS X. Apple dropping support on their side is a non-issue.
Is there a special place in hell for morons like you who just bash MS?
Windows 7 is a very good operating system by all sensible accounts.
If Palm want a way to sync on OS X they should write the software themselves. Oh wait, they did and discontinued it.
Just install Free Software and GNU/Linux and forget about all these stupid games! Take control of your computing with an platform created by the people, for the people. Use something which is designed to enable you, rather than restrict you - locking you in and exploiting you for cash.
Jesus, Jobs, have you no heart? First you killed off the floppy disk drive. Then you wiped out serial ports in favor of USB. Now you're blowing out syncing technology that barely anyone uses any more in order to streamline your OS... shame, shame on you.
Sorry, I'm having a real hard time getting worked up over this, or even seeing a nefarious scheme behind it.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
It's a feature.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Sure, but there is a difference between legacy as in hardware, legacy that requires lots of code and legacy that is relatively small. My guess is Palm OS sync isn't that big of a program, nor does it need constant updating. So either A) Release it as a downloadable update, B) Or include it as an option when installing. Taking it out though, that just screams anticompeditive.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I wonder if Apple was licensing the software that allowed PalmOS syncing... possibly from Palm...
Nothing is being blocked. Apple is simply discontinuing their own support for Palm devices. Palm itself stopped officially supporting Macs years ago. There's nothing preventing users from running third-party software to sync.
Apple drops support for legacy stuff from time to time. This might be a retaliatory move, but it's more likely they just don't want to waste the time and money on something a tiny fraction of their userbase needs, especially when it's something a third party (or Palm, you know, the makers of the OS in question) could write a sync app for.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
Legacy?
This sync method was the foundation for a lot of devices beyond palm. The fact that Palm is moving on is not germane.
Its just code, code that has already been extensively debugged, widely deployed and is still in use by many people for many devices.
This isn't about legacy.
Its about that child running Apple, and his petty tantrums.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Personally, it streamlines most of my home computing tasks quite nicely over XP or Vista. Its faster, more responsive and has a couple nice features that both vista and XP lack.
I don't see myself putting it on my netbook, work computer or server any time soon, but it seems to be a step in the right direction for personal use.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
There is also a special place in Hell for people who traffic in unnecessary hyperbole.
As it happens I have been running Win7 since shortly after RC1 came out, and I stand by my opinion that it is an abomination.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
I'll just put Windows 7 onto my MacBook instead of Snow Leopard.
There is a special place in Hell for people that put that abomination on good computers.
Thats why he's putting it on a MacBook and not a good computer....
One wonders why you have been running it with such apparent fervor (it's not out yet, nobody's making you...).
In your view, what kind of obligation does Apple have to support other vendors' products, after the other vendor has made it clear that said product is on the way out?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Win7 RTM is out for MSDN and TechNet subscribers (which, of course, means that ISO images have long since been leaked to TPB and elsewhere).
The only one that didn't want Palm products to succeed was Palm. Horrible products. Support EOL for all their products were the day they shipped. Rarely got any sort of bug fixes, never any additional features. Palm Desktop for Mac is still a PowerPC only application (runs on intel via rosetta). Why bother trying to support something the vendor has no interest in supporting? I'll never make the mistake of buying another Palm product (I've had 2, Palm Pro and Palm T5). I've never heard anyone say a good thing about their Treo so I never went there. I don't expect anything will change with the Pre. I also don't understand the Pre hype, it's not bringing anything new to the table.
I'm fully aware of that. I didn't say that it's in beta, I just pointed out that it's very definitively at the "you have to care to get it" stage. It certainly didn't come preinstalled on his Dell.
When you expect the brand of computer you use to convey status upon you, this is the price you have to be willing to pay.
And Windows 7 works great on my Macbook Pro.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The point is, if it's "an abomination" why run it at all, over say XP, or Vista... if it is clearly better than the other windows versions, and you need windows, then calling it "an abomination" is rather short sighted.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Who decides what technology has become "legacy"? Apparently, Apple believes that all technologies that they don't sell you themselves is "legacy technology".
You have to really have Apple's dick in your mouth to defend this type of behavior from a corporation that has benefited so much from customer loyalty. At some point, one has to realize that Apple does not have one's best interest in mind, no matter how cool it makes one feel to display their nameplate.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Some people need something to feel superior about. Vegans and people who really care whether a program is open source are just two sides of the same coin.
....Its about that child running Apple, and his petty tantrums.....
Why should Apple not be allowed to have its walled garden? Only those who pay Apple are allowed to enter. They are not like Microsoft, where for the longest time there was no alternative to Windows. If you do not like Apple products, nobody forces you to buy them. Vote with your wallet and stop complaining.
All theory is gray
I've killed like about 1500 Snow Leopards now and I'll I've got is an arse load of Tiger Meat, a metric fuck-ton of Sharp Claws and some useless blue cloak pattern that gives Frost Resistance. Lucky bastard.
Why should Apple not be allowed to have its walled garden?
Because they'll lose customers.
And customers are always, ALWAYS allowed to complain.
....There is a special place in Hell ...
So far, I have mostly heard good things about Windows 7 and I will likely buy a copy to put on a VM on my Mac alongside with Windows XP. I have also tried VISTA, but compared to XP it is slow even on my Mac Pro With 2 GB of RAM allocated solely to the VM.
All theory is gray
I have been running Windows 7 on my MacBook and I hardly boot into OSX anymore. The HFS drivers coming in snow leopard will be welcome even though it is read only (supposedly to prevent the mac partition from being messed up by viruses.
...And customers are always, ALWAYS allowed to complain...
Complaining customers are OK if they are really your customers. In the case of a Palm, they're somebody else's customers and they they should be allowed to complain as long and as loud as they wish to and be ignored.
All theory is gray
If Palm want their devices to work with OSX then they are perfectly capable to write their own software, in fact they did and then discontinued it, so don't give me any of that rubbish. In fact, there is absolutely no reason for them to be leaching off iTunes either, other phone makers seem perfectly capable of writing their own sync software that uses the iTunes library, but for some reason Palm feels they don't have to do that and they have to make the Pre fake as an iPod. And Snow Leopard IS about legacy.
Except the only universal praise ("all sensible accounts") is that it's better than Vista.
Compared to XP, it's not so clear a winner.
Just about all the PalmOS users still out there use Missing Sync anyways. It's the only Intel-native sync to begin with, since Palm themselves never bothered releasing an Intel version of their Desktop for Mac.
If Palm doesn't care enough to support it, why should Apple? There's not exactly a lot of PalmOS left out in the market nowadays - the Pre is the only Palm-branded phone that sells at all and even it's a virtual pimple on the body of iPhones and Blackberries.
(Blackberries that, by the way, are about to have their own native Intel-compatible Mac sync released)
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I've read the article. It's definitely a different case to Google Talk.
I think one of the reasons they did this WAS because the Palm is now discontinued, they deliberately crippled functionality to maintain the purity of iTunes/iPod. They do not want other companies exploiting their software out of their control.
Palm used essentially an undocumented hack to trick iTunes into thinking it was an iPhone. This should go on the dirty code frontpage article. It saved Palm from having to write their own software and it allowed them to claim iTunes compatibility.
Even worse is probably that knowing how to pretend to be an iPhone proves that they may have been digging into the internals of the iPhone filesystem which they probably want to keep secret.
I still no hardware developer should prevent me from the software I use with my hardware though. Apple wants a monoply over its hardware and software and that's understandable from a business POV.
The summary is a little misleading...They didn't block, they just removed the carpet from under their feet, knowing full well it would cause an incompatibility.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
....They block people from using their services ....
However, there are plenty of other people's services and devices which you are free to buy and enjoy. Apparently though, enough people are using their services and products, that their profits are higher than any other computer maker during this recession. Buy some Apple stock if you can still afford it because it will go up.
All theory is gray
So if they buy a copy of snow leopard, they're apple's customers, but if they also have a Palm, they automatically stop being apple's customers ?
Nice logic there smart boy.
If I already own a Palm handheld and an Apple desktop or laptop, whose customer am I? (Hint: it's not "somebody else")
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
The Palm connector, maintained by PALM, has languished for years. It suffers from TERRIBLE limitiations on Mac OS X, and it always had (you can only sync ONE address per contact, etc.). It was broken and really not updatedy by Palm as long ago as Mac OS X 10.4.
If you want to sync a Palm device, buy "The Missing Sync" and you're good to go. Works fine. Sure, it's extra $, but that's what you pay for that boat anchor.
Who decides what technology has become "legacy"?
Fairly often it is Apple - for better or worse. They're not always the first but when Apple decides something is no longer worth including in their computers, other PC makers often follow suit. They really were the big influence that finally got everyone to drop 1.44MB floppies even though everyone knew for years that they were a technology well past it's prime. They also were ahead of the curve on eliminating 1.2MB floppy drives, DB9 and DB25 serial ports, and a number of other ports. There are other examples besides. Apple isn't always right and not always first, but they are almost always influential.
What about MP3 players?
What about them? Apple is the dominant player but they aren't by an stretch a monopoly like Microsoft has with Windows. Might get there someday but they sure aren't there now. Frankly the dedicated MP3 player market has probably peaked and will slowly but steadily decline. MP3 players are going to get increasingly integrated into cell phones. As popular as the iPhone is, Apple has no where near the pull in the cell phone market they do in the MP3 player or even PC markets.
The iPod and iTunes don't exactly play nice with other software or hardware.
And there are plenty of other options available so that really isn't a big deal. ITunes is nice but hardly the only way to sync an MP3 player with your song collection. Apple has to be careful. They've gone too proprietary before with their PCs (resulting in 10% marketshare) and it would be easy to make the same mistake with their music businesses.
Nothing like anticompetitiveness to turn me off.
You seem misinformed, which is understandable given the misleading blurb linked to in this story. Here's what happened. Apple made iSync and told phone makers to use it to synch with OS X. Palm ignored them and continued to use a really, really old Palm Desktop program as their officially suggested method, but refused to support it. Apple, not wanting PalmOS phone users to be dissuaded from using Macs and thinking Palm's unsupported solution was crap, took it upon themselves to write iSync plug-ins for PalmOS. Now Apple has dropped those plug-ins. That's not even close to anti-competitive.
It's sad, too. I was considering getting a Pre...
The Pre doesn't use PalmOS and so is not affected.
It is not heavy lifting either. Requirements for developing Sync support on OS X is as follows:
1) Mac Mini (as in cheapest Apple and good developer machine)
2) OS X Install DVD (has developer tools)
3) Double Click Developer tools and install them
There are examples included, debugging tools specifically designed for iSync and even some packager. Of course, if Palm decides that PalmOS devices should act like iPhone and sync with iTunes, it is their decision and insanity :)
1) This doesn't impact the Pre. Summary even mentions that.
:(
2) Palm itself pretty much dropped Palm sync. They retired it. I still have a Palm PDA and looking at Activity Monitor right now that is an outdated PowerPC task. Since they are dropping Power PC, I think it has a lot more to do with that than trying to edge out Palm. After all, they would be targeting the Pre and not their older smart phones and PDAs if that was the goal.
I guess I could be wrong, but this mostly just reads like some bad FUD / troll article and it seems based on the commends so far people are buying into that
?
Its not a niche market, its every single palm phone except the absolute most recent one. Every single palm sold before June 6th, 2009 is affected.
Even Palm does a crappy job providing integration with computers for their own devices and has for years so I don't see why this is Apple's fault. I dropped my palm years ago because they fell WAY behind the curve on keeping their software modern and it was a pain to communicate with my PC. Unless I happened to use Outlook (I don't) or the near useless Palm Desktop I couldn't sync the address books which pretty much made their PDAs and phones useless to me since there are plenty of smartphones on the market which are much more capable and modern than the Treos. (I'm not about to tie myself to some third party integration tool either) Furthermore Palm themselves declared PalmOS dead. If you purchase something which the maker itself is telling you that it has a limited future, that is just dumb.
Apple is run by a guy who saw employees staring to legendary macs and decided to "throw them away" to computer museum saying they should look to future instead of past.
Like or not, that is the attitude and in fact, if you ask me, it always pays off.
Just an entry from my system.log
" Warning once: This application, or a library it uses, is using NSQuickDrawView, which has been deprecated. Apps should cease use of QuickDraw and move to Quartz"
In Apple land, if you ignore it enough time, one day your application will simply won't launch or crash (informatively) and of course, that time, blogs are open handedly waiting for your whining and slashdot submission :)
"Palm has officially retired Palm OS and is now focusing hard on its next-generation WebOS in the Palm Pre, the company is still selling Palm OS-powered smartphones; two current models are the Treo Pro on Sprint and the Centro."
Considering I have 14 Sprint Treo PRO in my phone fleet, I can tell you someone didn't do their fact checking - The unit DOES NOT run on PalmOS - it's Windows Mobile Pro 6.1
http://nextelonline.nextel.com/NASApp/onlinestore/en/Action/DisplayPhones?phoneSKU=PTR850HK
Way to go, Appscout.
I don't guarantee anything but, as Leopard which you boo boo is a Unix 03 compliant operating system with entire toolchain to support open source software, Fink Project and Macports did considerable amount of work to make automated package management.
I know Fink and it has some Palm related software but I have never,ever saw a Palm in my life to begin with so I can't guarantee anything.
http://www.finkproject.org/ (official site)
http://pdb.finkproject.org/ (Package Database web interface)
So, no need to go Linux just to have Palm support. While people buy OS X, they also buy UNIX.
I know one way or another, you can get Sync support under snow leopard but let me tell you something. If I was a Palm owner, I would be having very nice and polite communication with Palm Inc. over this. They should spend money to hire couple of Cocoa/OS X developers rather than renting some astroturfers and shady blogs.
(Actually: They bought a piece of software Apple discontinued in the late 90's*, updated it a bit, then discontinued it themselves about 5 years later. Which is around 5 years ago at this point.)
*Claris Organizer, if you are interested.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Eh, I'm not so convinced. Apple has been very quick to abandon technologies, both created by them and others (they were among the first to stop having floppy drives, first to have firewire, and their ADP port lasted maybe one generations of Macs). Apple is trying to constantly push for higher standards and better interfaces - sometimes this is in your best interest, sometimes its not, and sometimes they miss the mark completely.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
I have a Palm OS device, a Sony Clie, and there was no support for it in iSync on any version of OS X I used (10.2 through 10.5). When Palm declined to update Palm Hotsync for Intel I switched to Mark/Space.
So what is this mysterious component? What did it sync? Was it something for the phones only?
There's already a solution, in Missing Sync for Palm OS, which already handles synching to more recent Palm devices (Centro and Treo) much better than Apple's legacy support. I don't know anyone who has a Mac and a Treo and /doesn't/ already use Missing Sync anyway over Apple's grotty and outdated legacy Palm code. I would guess that Apple yanking Palm OS support from iSync and letting Missing Sync fill that particular slot in the Sync Services food chain is an acknowledgment of that fact.
--Rachel
Taking it out though, that just screams anticompeditive.
No, as Palm themselves dropped support years ago, these cries scream unfounded BS.
AT&T + ( iPhone + iPod ) + Mac OSX
Are any one of those allowed to mess with the business of the each other's competitors? AT&T + iPhone may be more obviously collusive by crossing company boundaries, but Microsoft's taught us that desperate product lines used in collusion can still get you in trouble ( I.E. is a minority web browser ).
Sure, OSX may be completely innocent in dropping PalmOS support for age reasons. The article also comes across as dramatic. But as a curious bystander it still looks a little funny. While Apple may have a minority OS, they certainly aren't minorities in the phone or music player business. In light of the Palm Pre-iTunes issue and now Google Voice/iPhone debacle (also apparently "a supportability/customer experience issue") Apple certainly isn't making itself look too friendly. Compared to their usual "i'm a mac, what me worry" public face, anyway.
.... whose customer am I?....
You're clearly an Apple customer, but does that obligate Apple to support every piece of hardware that a customer might get? It sounds like you need to switch to Microsoft, which somehow feels that they have to support every piece of shit hardware ever made. If it is important for you to connect a given piece of equipment to your computer, then go to the manufacturer of that equipment. If they cannot be bothered to support your computer, you have the choice: get a different computer or a different peripheral device.
All theory is gray
Comparable and better in some respects than OS/X, however, is. Besides, there was very little wrong with vista, post SP1. Just mongoloids who bitch about it because they think it makes them cool to whine how it wont run on their 7 year old hardware.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Agreed. I have a Centro and have never gotten it to sync with my Mac, at least not natively. It does sync with the Palm Desktop application, or at least it would if I knew what I did with my sync cable.
But the point is, no Apple-native app would sync. I had to use Yahoo or something to import my address book from iCal to the Palm app, and then sync it. It didn't totally work either. Very clumsy.
Taking it out entirely is not a huge issue. Hopefully the Palm desktop will still work, in which case it won't be any worse than now.
Sig for hire.
"No, as Palm themselves dropped support years ago, these cries scream unfounded BS."
Umm, they blocked the pre. They now don't support any Palm prior to this year, which I believe the Pre is really the only new release.
iow, this year alone, they've phracked with every Palm device ever made. This seems pretty established, so I think you mean something else when you chose the word unfounded. It's directly anticompetitive by definition, as it eliminates or hinders another products viability on their platform for the time being.
Apple has no obligation to support or help Palm, is the way I look at it. What they did is legal anti-competitive behavior, but unhardly contradictory to the anti-competitve claim--that is the fundamental nature of business.
Someone smarter than me can maybe elucidate this breakdown further, but I had to respond given your comment was mod'd a +3 insightful for some odd reason.
...but if they also have a Palm, they automatically stop being apple's customers ?....
Of course not! However if the manufacturer of the device refuses to support a given operating system, then you have to find a third-party application that may work or get an operating system that will work with your device. If your gadget is very popular, which apparently it is not, Apple might support it or get the manufacturer to support it on their computer.
All theory is gray
If you are using 64-bit Windows you can forget syncing by USB. Some individual apps like pocket tunes (pTunes) will still sync since they identify as a different device altogether. If you sync by bluetooth, infrared, or serial (even through a USB converter) everything will work fine, but slowly. Palm is not updating their software and drivers to work on 64-bit Windows and the official solution is to use either Bluetooth or Infrared to sync. 32-bit Windows up to and including Windows 7 will work with the Palm Hotsync software, but with 64-bit there is simply no USB driver. I don't think Palm will discontinue the Centro anytime soon, nor any of their standalone PDAs that still use Palm OS. They need to re-write their software to support 64-bit Windows and Mac OSX on Intel in both 64-Bit (and if necessary 32-bit).
sudo mod me up
There is probably no hell.
*Claris Organizer, if you are interested.
No wonder I actually liked it. I still like the interface of Palm Desktop better than the iCal/Address Book combo. Too bad I haven't been able to sync my treo in years.
Missing Sync works pretty well. I've been managing 10 centros on leopard for quite a while with few issues.
Acquiescence leads to obliteration
Or it could be that the Palm Sync was largely PPC code running in emulation on intel machines, and the cost of porting it to intel was not in the interest of Apple, given all of the other work they had to do with making the entire OS x86 compatible, plus the availability of a better product (The Missing Sync), plus the fact that the manufacturer no longer supports the OS.
Nah, you're right. It's all about Steve, and the fact that he would rather you get an iPhone, rather than an aged device with an ancient OS. Which is a valid reason for a business as well.
Maybe I don't know, Palm could write their own Mac stuff instead of relying on Apple to do it for them ? I don't see how this is anti-competitive, Palm OS is not a Apple product, they don't have to support it, write software for it or update legacy code to work with their new OS.
Palm can do the work themselves if they think it's worth it. Apple isn't stopping them from downloading Xcode and writing a Cocoa based app to sync with their own hardware.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
I had the same thought - has anyone bothered to enable Rosetta and see if anything changes?
1.) Apple updates OS, modernizing and streamlining the codebase.
2.) Some legacy app that hasn't been maintained in 4-5 years breaks.
3.) Apple must have deliberately broken the software in an anti-competitive move.
I'm an ace at logic.
Actually, the summary is wrong, they haven't done a thing to the Treo Pro, 800w, 750, 700w/x, or 500v.
They don't run Palm OS, they run Windows Mobile. Then again, I don't know if Mac OS supports ActiveSync...
Although, Palm Desktop doesn't support Vista or Win7... so, no current version OS will have official support for Palm OS devices (everything in Linux distros is unofficial,) unless you count XP Mode in Win7 Pro/Ultimate.
.... whose customer am I?....
You're clearly an Apple customer, but does that obligate Apple to support every piece of hardware that a customer might get?
Of course not, but that isn't the argument being made. The point is, it seems, that some Palm owners are running OS/X and it works. Now, if they upgrade, it will no longer work.
Of course Apple is free to do this. Their reputation will suffer if:
a. This affects a significant number of people (i.e. enough Mac owners also own Palms and find their devices no longer function) or
b. People begin to question their motives and lose trust in Apple.
For b, it comes down to whether people give Apple the benefit of the doubt. Microsoft would have a hard time getting away with something like this because they've fostered enough ill will in the past that it automatically looks suspicious. The only reason, IMO, that this has garnered attention at all is that they have recently broken iTunes syncing with another Palm device. This begins to look suspicious and might lead one to wonder what else Apple will break or drop support for if it is convenient for them.
But then Apple fixed the problem by simply cloning the entire Palm and calling the result the "iPhone".
Palm? Oh right, they're the company that cloned the entire Apple Newton and called the result the "Pilot." ... just illustrating how idiotic your statement was.
One of our people wanted a pc notebook to replace his dead macbook.
Since I don't deploy notebooks with less than 4 gig of ram, that left few options.
I've decided to bypass Vista, and the driver support for xp64 is sparse.
After testing win7 on a trash box, I gave it a shot on the new notebook.
The gui doesn't follow exactly the same design choices I'd make, but it's adequate, and the performance is better than xp or vista, especially running memory hog software.
So, in the end, it's an incremental overall improvement over xp, and supports my strategy of jumping over vista.
There is a special place in Hell for people that put that abomination on good computers.
You mean putting Snow Leopard on a MacBook right.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
Of course not, this is Slashdot after all, bitch first, RTFA later (if ever) and bitch more. Bonus points (bitch points?) if they do not own a Mac or a Palm device.
There is support for Vista here: http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/32859_en.html
I mostly agree with you, but ADB made it all the way from the Apple IIgs [1986] and IIc+ (6502/65816 CPU with Apple II OS), Mac SE (68000, System 5 or later), up through the beige PowerMac G3 [1998]. That's about a 12 year run. Even beyond that, it apparently was still used for internal keyboards on laptops until the Intel switch.
-30-
Comparable and better in some respects than OS/X, however
OS/X? Assuming you mean OS X (I don't normally nitpick, but your sig implies you should know better), your statement is only true because you added the clause "in some respects". Hell, "in some respects" Win 3.1 is better than [your favorite OS goes here].
Besides, there was very little wrong with vista, post SP1
Except for UAC, spyware, systray overload, can't drag-and-drop documents into the taskbar, slower than XP in most cases, software/hardware compatibility issues, DRM (WPA in particular), and the other million little papercuts compared with using other OS's.
Now, you might not care about these things or whatever. No big deal. But for most people, "there was very little wrong with Vista, post SP1" is not an altogether accurate statement.
Just mongoloids who bitch about it because they think it makes them cool to whine how it wont run on their 7 year old hardware.
Try three year old hardware.
And mongoloids, really? Racial slurs against people who don't like Vista?
everybody including normal Apple users loathes Apple fanbois. You're one of them. Sane people think that the more devices a web app like iTunes can connect to, the more useful it is.
As for me, I'm voting with my money against a business practice I don't like. You can buy all the Apple products you want to. I hope you bought an iPhone and the AT&T calling plans, but that's only because I don't like you, either, and I don't mind in the least knowing you've been burned.
Tech Public Policy stuff
You stand revealed as an idiot, or a Microsoft bumboy. Vista sucks in so many ways it would take more time than I have at the moment to enumerate them. I have to fix that fucking garbage OS just about every other week for a friend's father...and he's running a Core 2 Duo with 2G of RAM. It isn't state of the art, but it should be more than adequate to run an OS without grinding.
If you aren't already jacking off in your mother's basement, then you're jacking off in a Microsoft cube farm somewhere.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Who decides what technology has become "legacy"? Apparently, Apple believes that all technologies that they don't sell you themselves is "legacy technology".
You have to really have Apple's dick in your mouth to defend this type of behavior from a corporation that has benefited so much from customer loyalty. At some point, one has to realize that Apple does not have one's best interest in mind, no matter how cool it makes one feel to display their nameplate.
From your diatribe you seem to have Microsoft, Linux and IBM's dicks in your backdoor.
A friend of mine recently got a Mac. He is a longtime Palm user and has a Palm Treo 680. I assumed that iSync would support the Hotsync and thus all devices powered by Palm OS.
I was wrong. If you take a look at this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2824
You will see that the Tungston and Zire family of phones is supported. No Treo at all. According to him (I only had him on the phone) iSync didn't sync to his phone. He has a roommate who is a Mac fanboy (main reason for the Mac, because he is not a computer geek and onsite support at home is pretty cool) who initially set up everything so I suppose he would have set up iSync if it had worked. So Apple support for Palm seems to be rather spotty at best. No Centro or Treo Pro like the website/blog that Slashdot links to were supported anyways. How can Apple drop support for something they never supported in the first place?
Palm has a very good PIM (actually used to have unfortunately, since developement seems to have stopped). So good that I used to give it to people looking for a simple PIM for their computers who never heard of Palm. They also have a version for the Mac:
http://www.palm.com/europe/en/support/palmdt4_mac.html
Hopefully this will run under Snow Leopard, or maybe Palm will put another revision out if it doesn't.
Anyone here who got his Palm Treo or Centro to run with iSync? And if so, how?
That wasn't a typo, he was talking about Apple Display Port
Then whine more because the way to solve it happens to be RTFM too.
To be fair, outside of hardware support linux legacy is not exactly a marketing point, a lot of projects have basically ripped everything out to start again, only a few api have legacy emulation.
This IS a microsoft shill we're talking about.
You guys are seriously unbeleivable how you manage to crawl up apples ass no matter what decree of vile scum they're flinging at you. These guys are the single most anti-competitive, communist, and plaugerising company in I.T to this present day, they haven't come up with anything they have "invented" themselves since Woz left in 1987 and you sing they're praises as if they are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Put it this way, since the macintosh/windows war microsoft has actually invented and innovated countless products while apple have managed to rip off open source something awful. What's going on here?
Ah, my bad, it was Vista64. I take it all back, then.
Some people need something to bitch about and are quite happy to group anyone with a viewpoint different to their own as wrong.
Vegans do significantly less damage to the planet on a daily basis than non-vegans, without affecting anyone else's choices.
Open source advocates get off their asses, do something for the reward of just doing it and give you their tools for free, to do with what you will.
Both are advancements on a fragile state of mind which equates giving a fuck with showing off.
Oops, I meant ADC. I thought it was Apple Display Port, but apparently it is Apple Display Connector.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Microsoft would have a hard time getting away with something like this because they've fostered enough ill will in the past that it automatically looks suspicious.
I don't think Microsoft would do something like this in the first place, because whatever their many faults they do get that an OS has to accommodate third party apps and hardware if it possibly can. Apple already had code to interface with Palm - maybe there was a good technical reason for dropping it from this release of their OS but, as you say, it looks suspicious.
ActiveSync isn't supported unless you get PocketMac or an alternative.
Although other phones are supported, Apple doesn't do a very good job supporting Windows in general, leaving such matters to third parties generaly.
And it sucks. The days of compatibility, rare as they were, are pretty much gone, and phones are perhaps the least compatible devices we use today. The smarter the phone, the weaker the compatibility it seems.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Apple does this all the time, and without warning. They made a video update that broke many video games I loved to play. Their response? Oh, we needed to remove those color modes because they were old. Think of the future!!!
I wouldn't have a problem with things like that if apple would EOL something and let you know before you get screwed with no way back.
I don't think I've seen a slashdot post so littered with errors before. Did the break.com writers get a hold of the controls?
This sync method was the foundation for a lot of devices beyond palm.
And still is.
Its just code, code that has already been extensively debugged, widely deployed and is still in use by many people for many devices.
Code Apple wrote and decided to stop offering. Why can't palm write iSync plug-ins... like every other phone manufacturer? Apple hasn't banned them from supplying iSync plug-ins, just stopped doing it for them for free.
WTF, why are they still making an otherwise modern mouse using PS2 connectors!?
As a Certified Bean Counter my guess would be that the cost of USB still is higher that of PS2 connections. PS2 connectors have been around so long the fixed costs have basically gone to zero and the machinery to produce them is fully depreciated. They're cheap and do the job. It's probably only a few cents difference per unit, but in quantity that adds up to real money. You have to remember too that margins are quite tight. (Dell's net profit is presently around 2-3%) HP might only make $25-50 profit on the machine - possibly less.
Since HP doesn't make any money because of the keyboard or mouse but still needs to include them sometimes, some accountant probably told the engineers to use PS2 connectors because it saves a little bit per unit. That's why you almost never get a decent keyboard or mouse with a PC. There's simply no margin available to include them because few people have proven willing to pay extra for a decent keyboard/mouse. Especially on a sub $500 PC.
Now you could argue that the added complexity of keeping the PS2 ports is adding expense back and you would be right but probably it's still currently cheaper to include the PS2 ports because of the cost of including the keyboard and mouse. Eventually that equation will change but PS2 ports are going to be with us a while longer I think.
It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Apple tried to prevent them doing so.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Support for legacy technologies gets dropped all the time.
One of the reasons I switched to Mac back in 2005 is that iSync could seamlessly sync iCal and Address Book to/from my (then already) ancient Ericsson R520m phone. Note it's not even *Sony* Ericsson, just plain old standalone Ericsson before Sony's involvement. Attempts to sync data between it and my Windows PC before that were frustrating to the point of pulling my hair out.
So, I was extremely glad they didn't drop that. I don't have Snow Leopard yet, but I bet its iSync will still support Ericsson R520m. Reason? Sony-Ericsson ain't screwing with Apple like Palm does, violating the USB specification by faking the Pre's vendor ID. Make no mistake, this was political decision. Whether it's smart on Apple's part, I don't know.
In any case, Palm users aren't completely out in the cold. To continue my iSync story, I eventually switched to a Sony Ericsson W850i that at the time didn't have native sync support with iSync. Guess what, I was able to buy a 3rd party iSync plugin for, like, 2 EUR that enabled the syncing. iSync actually has a plugin architecture. So I'm sure someone will step in and fill the void - here I agree with you.
If I'm pissed at Apple for something, I'm pissed that they don't have iSync for iPhone in order to strong-arm people into a MobileMe subscription.
Sig erased via substitution of an identical one.
Said plug-ins were written for interfacing to Palm Desktop, a PPC program. I suspect that broke in Snow Leopard and rather than fix support for a platform that Palm is in the process of discontinuing. (The Centro, their only remaining PalmOS device is going to be replaced in a matter of months by the EOS WebOS phone) So they've decided to let people use third party solutions, which as many people comment, many people already do because of Palm's own lackluster Mac support.
/. summery which claims it uses the superior PalmOS :-) because Windows Mobile is not supported at all in OS X; and nobody calls that a conspiracy...)
(They already have to use third party solutions for the Treo Pro, contrary to the
They are not like Microsoft, where for the longest time there was no alternative to Windows.
Um, what? There was always an alternative to Windows. It was called MacOS, it was first released on January 24, 1984. That's over a year and a half before Windows 1.0 was available in November 1985.
But I note that any blindly anti-MS sentiment on Slashdot can get modded "insightful" no matter how contrary to fact it is.
I do not have a signature
Can you still use Missing Sync though?
I actually thought the Apple Palm Sync stuff was horrid and I use MissingSync on my 10.4 MBP. It was far, far better. Also I never liked Palm Desktop, it was a pain and always broke easily for me.
~Petaris "The world is open. Are you?"
A few corrections on your errors in your post.
1. Apple did not block the Pre. Apple modified iTunes to not allow a vendor ID spoofing. Palm's low budget hack is what caused the issue with the Pre. Apple simply fixed an issue in their iTunes synch and closed a potential security/legal liability hole at the same time since a device spoofing an iPod could potentially be corrupted by iTunes when it attempts to update firmware on the device.
2. Apple dropping support for Palm synch is because Palm dropped their support of these legacy Palm devices years ago. Apple simply decided to no longer support Palm devices that Palm no longer supports. There is nothing nefarious in that decision. If there is then there must also must be something nefarious in Palm's decision not to support their own products.
3. There was nothing anti-competitive in what Apple did in either of these circumstances. In both instances Palm has showed a laziness in supporting their own products. If Palm won't properly support their own products then there is no reason Apple should do it for them.
Maybe I don't know, Palm could write their own Mac stuff instead of relying on Apple to do it for them ? I don't see how this is anti-competitive, Palm OS is not a Apple product, they don't have to support it, write software for it or update legacy code to work with their new OS.
Palm can do the work themselves if they think it's worth it. Apple isn't stopping them from downloading Xcode and writing a Cocoa based app to sync with their own hardware.
What bugs me about this story is I have no idea what the nature is of the "support" which Apple has dropped. Is it the customized USB serial driver for communicating with Palm devices? Was Palm Desktop previously bundled with Mac OS? Did Apple block Palm Desktop from interacting with their apps, thus preventing synchronization with iCal and such? I haven't used my Powerbook in long enough that I don't know what Apple had provided themselves, and TFA doesn't say what it is they removed...
Bow-ties are cool.
Open source advocates get off their asses, do something for the reward of just doing it and give you their tools for free, to do with what you will.
Well, Opens Source programmers do that. And not necessarily "for the reward of just doing it"... Open Source Advocates don't necessarily get off their asses at all. :)
Bow-ties are cool.
And one for high UID morons.
Oh, look... Anonymous Coward just slammed you for your high numeric UID! XD
Bow-ties are cool.
There is also a special place in Hell for people who traffic in unnecessary hyperbole.
What about car analogies?
Bow-ties are cool.
Apple has a monopoly on the voice chat features of its phone. It banned Google Talk to maintain the monopoly. It means you have no choice but to use the iPhone's own build in voice chat. They're purposefully locking you in, without competition. Monopoly means:
1. A company or group having exclusive control over a commercial activity.
2. A commodity or service so controlled.
Apple lets other Applications on its platform but as soon as something competes with their monopoly, they block it! Is this not obvious?
Microsoft gets into the same problems with antitrust, why not Apple? I find it funny how I was modded up to 3 insightful then modded down by the Apple fanboys.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Are you honestly claiming to have read every review ever?
Those are all reviews with praise OTHER than "It's better than vista".
In other words: [citation needed].
The only one that didn't want Palm products to succeed was Palm. Horrible products. Support EOL for all their products were the day they shipped. Rarely got any sort of bug fixes, never any additional features. Palm Desktop for Mac is still a PowerPC only application (runs on intel via rosetta). Why bother trying to support something the vendor has no interest in supporting? I'll never make the mistake of buying another Palm product (I've had 2, Palm Pro and Palm T5). I've never heard anyone say a good thing about their Treo so I never went there. I don't expect anything will change with the Pre. I also don't understand the Pre hype, it's not bringing anything new to the table.
Well, I've enjoyed my Treo 650 - though perhaps more because of the hardware than the software. The combination of a good screen and a dedicated keyboard area was just the right design for me - and the Treo was one of the first products to do that well in a smartphone format.
After the way Palm has handled PalmOS over the last several years I'm more than a little hesitant to buy any new Palm devices myself. I mean, there was the never-ending reign of PACE, followed by the adoption of NVFS (which was great, in a way, since it protected the device from data loss due to power failure - but in older revisions it could lose entire databases if your device crashed while the database was open - and it changed a fundamental assumption about how databases work on PalmOS...
Had Palm rolled out a new OS platform... I don't know... before they allowed PalmOS to degrade into a complete joke... Before it completely ceased to be a reasonable fit for the devices on which it was running... Then I would be a lot less skeptical about the stuff they're rolling out now... I'm with you on the Pre - I can't understand the hype of it.
Bow-ties are cool.
But then Apple fixed the problem by simply cloning the entire Palm and calling the result the "iPhone".
Palm? Oh right, they're the company that cloned the entire Apple Newton and called the result the "Pilot." ... just illustrating how idiotic your statement was.
Can I just say how totally ridiculous these two statements are?
I mean, the Pilot was so far from being a Newton clone... Newton was overstepping what the hardware could actually accomplish. Pilot was much less capable, but the OS was well-fitted to the hardware and the hardware was well-fitted to realistic expectations of usage and battery life. The Pilot was pocketable - and Graffiti, while it did require training of the user - was reliable and quick as a method of input. It was one of the first cases of a computer being both truly portable and truly useful.
And then, saying the iPhone is a clone of the Palm? That's ridiculous. What I do find very interesting and actually a bit cool is that (non-phone) PDAs in the vein of Palm and PocketPC were basically dead - and yet Apple has been quite successful in selling theirs, by marketing it as a continuation of the iPod line. But anyway... Palm from the era of the iPhone's creation was... very unlike the iPhone. At best you had the late PalmOS Treos - running an OS several years old, emulating an m68K processor, with underlying assumptions throughout the OS tuned toward the needs of PDAs from the previous decade. The Treo's web browser was pretty good for a phone in 2005, but it had all kinds of flaws. The iPhone had a much better OS and a much better web browser. To the extent that iPhone and (PalmOS) Treo are anything alike, the iPhone is far superior. If you want to think of the iPhone as a clone of other PalmOS devices, that's a bit silly, too - iPhone has a whole different approach to input (doing away with the stylus or keyboard and the notion of writing on the device) That being the case it seems silly to say the iPhone is a "clone" of Palm. It's very different and a whole lot better than anything from the PalmOS era.
Bow-ties are cool.
Blue&white powermacs (1999) have ADB as well as USB.
MissingSync for iPhone is basically an iSync plugin for the iPhone. ;)
Really, Mark/Space is the first place I check for any iSync plugin I need, as their Missing Sync line is pretty comprehensive. They've got a Palm Pre plugin -- which syncs out of iTunes without the USB hack, the approved way, so doesn't break -- and one for Blackberry, and one for Nokia, and so on. I used to use their Missing Sync for Palm, and then later Missing Sync for Windows Mobile, before I moved on to an iPhone and an Android handset. Android's about the only thing they DON'T have a sync plugin for, but another company's Spanning Sync -- an iSync plugin for Google contacts/calendar -- fills that niche too.
--Rachel
...Think of the future!!!...
That is what Apple does really well and why they are making a profit while all the other companies that are their competitors are barely making it. Apple does not usually invent new technology, but take existing new technology that others have may have developed, and make it "just work". There were a number of portable music players and many cell phones on the market, before Apple joined in and did it right. Now the others are playing catch-up.
Hard drives are so cheap these days, I keep an external bootable drive which mirrors the internal one which of course is my main drive. I always install major updates on the external first and see if anything breaks or acts funny. If everything is OK for two or three weeks, I then upgrade the main drive as well. I also read various Mac forums that discuss problems and difficulties.
All theory is gray
But you are totally missing the point... If somebody has a Palm device that currently works and then it breaks, and the only thing that changed is Apple's software, it doesn't matter whose responsibility it *should* be, what matters is what the customer perceives.
The customer often doesn't care what is right and what is wrong. They care that it works. Ironically, that is Apple's motto 'it just works', and now for some reason, it doesn't.
...They care that it works....
It is always the responsibility of a device manufacturer to make sure that it works with a given computer system. If the system manufacturer makes changes, it is not their responsibility, but the responsibility of the device manufacturer to ensure continued operation. After all, how many devices failed to work properly under VISTA, until their manufacturers wrote new drivers for them.
All theory is gray
"VM Where". I love it.
The "opens up a Windows logo thing" is actually Windows running in a virtual machine from inside your Mac OS. I really don't think that buying a Windows license to sync you Palm on a Mac is the best solution. Especially when you could just buy Missing Sync for Palm for $40 that will accomplish the same thing, without having to run a virtual OS. If you really paid $225 you got scammed, unless you have a strong desire to run Windows from inside Mac OS.
"But this one goes to 11!"
That was my intent--the first statement was idiotic, so I made an equally idiotic statement using the same "logic" to highlight it.
It's probably good you're not logged in, because it'd be pretty unpleasant to have one of the dumbest Slashdot comments ever written tied to your user account.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Supposedly it does support ActiveSync (although more than one link asserts it doesn't). Color me confused, but I'm not an Apple (or anyone's) fanboy, so that's typical.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
Just a note of caution about Mark/Space... there is no way to get a refund if their software does not work. I downloaded the demo for their Palm sync and tried it, and it worked for the parts that the demo allowed, but when I downloaded the full version, those parts (that weren't enabled in the demo) did not work and could not be made to work with my particular setup. And I was just stuck with it.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
Yes, things broke under Vista, and Vista suffered backlash as a result. That was my point.
Customers often could not care in the least whose responsibility it is. All they know is that they upgraded to Vista and things broke. Vista has a reputation for being unstable at first. This was allegedly because of drivers. Is this Vista's fault? Possibly not. Does that matter to joe user? Not in the least.
I repeat again, this isn't about whose responsibility it *should* be, this is about what customers perceive.
...this is about what customers perceive...
Apparently, Apple knows this better than Microsoft, because they created a walled garden for their iPhone. They should extend this to the Mac by not letting any applications run that they have not first checked out. People, except here on /. possibly, would love to have an assurance that there is no way they could get any nasty program running on their OSX computer ever again. Only approved and signed applications would run, except that Apple could allow the circumvention of this security by the user putting in the admin password whereupon they would be a warned that they might be loading rogue software onto their machine. They could advertise the fact that their software from their iTunes site was ironclad secure, whereas if the user got it anywhere else, there would be no such guarantee. Such a system could be a big selling point for OSX computers made by Apple.
All theory is gray
UAC = same as the OS X password box that pops up, systray does not overload if you don't install shitware, search is blindinly faster than XP, i have no compat issues with sound, hardware, DRM is not an issue if you don't use it.
I've run vista on hardware purchased in 2002 quite happily (p4 non-ht 2.4), and it works fine.
How about you use the OS for more than 5 minutes, maybe try actually supporting a business network, and then comment?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
LOL. Just keep thinking that asshat. I'm guessing you're one of the clowns who lets the guy run as admin and turns UAC off too, yes?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.