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Color PalmOS Screenshots
Echoloc8 writes "PalmStation.com has posted two screenshots of a color-enabled PalmOS running in a PalmOS emulator. Authenticity of the shots has NOT yet been confirmed. The site is heavily loaded already, but the shots (referenced from PalmStation's index page) make for excellent viewing. "
Really, though, other than as a status thing, how does having color really benefit you from a personal organizer standpoint? I like my Palm V because it's very very direct about getting places and doing things, really easy to use and because it fits neatly into my pocket (wallet-sized!). I can generally have an appointment set up with an alarm to remind me before the CE boys have managed to get their date book applications to launch.
I can think of one good use for a color screen, however: A faces database. It would be *really* nice to be able to enter a few basic facts (eye color, hair color, skin, etc) which would pull up a bunch of photos to choose from the next time I can't remember the name of one of my clients. Of course, it would be a memory hog, but I'll bet that the average palmtop will have hundreds of megs of memory within the next few years...
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
If color icons is all I get out of a color Palm I'll pass. Unless somehow they can make it not eat batteries for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and until I see a real application that actually uses the color for something useful, I'll stick with my black & white (or black & green I guess).
I still haven't heard of a handheld app (and nobody needs to run Photoshop or Paint on a handheld as one person suggested in another forum) that would actually benefit from color. The closest idea I've heard is a datebook that color codes appointments and that's not even close to useful enough to make up for the size/power consumption increases.
If you have an idea for a useful handheld app that uses color effectively, please post it here as a reply. I'm really interested if there is one.
Supposedly the shots are from the POSE (PalmOS Emulator) and alpha ROMS that 3Com seeded to developers at PalmSource...
Too bad the site is Slashdotted...
if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
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Colour would be very cool, but I'd be happy if they'd just put a backlight behind the damn silkscreen (the area where you draw graffiti, etc). It's really hard to find in the dark!
The screenshot looked like they might have actually done this, but since it's just POSEr and not a real device it's hard to tell.
/peter
Here is a different shot that I saw when I originally submitted this story yesterday. Guess Slashdot didn't think my post was good enough. :-P Anyway, I've got to admit that I find the resolution a bit disappointing. The color's still not too shabby, though.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I don't run Slashmirror, I've just seen it used here, and as I managed to get the pictures from this article, I put them up on Slashmirror:
o r-1.jpg
o r-2.jpg
ftp://128.253.254.56/upload/pose30-palmos35-col
ftp://128.253.254.56/upload/pose30-palmos35-col
Enjoy.....
Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away. -Rob Malda
Having owned a variety of Palms over the years, I'm all for color with a few conditions:
a) Don't make the devices any bigger or heavier
b) Don't reduce the battery life appreciable (granted, not a big issue with the V and Vx, but I always seemed to only be able to find one fresh battery when I had to replace them on my old Palm Pro.)
Other than that, I'm always for better tech just for the sake of having better tech.
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They don't just make Ethernet cards, they were the first networking company in history: Bob Metcalfe (3Com's founder) is acknowledged as the *inventor* of Ethernet. For those too young to know, Ethernet in its very earliest days was supported by three companies: Digital, Intel, and Xerox. Sometimes in very old Ethernet documents you can find references to DIX Ethernet, which standardized the AUI connector. (Some AIX or RS6K documents contained references to DIX until about 1994, at least...)
:-)
Oral history alive and well, educating the newbies...
P.S.: If you haven't worked with 3mbps Ethernet, you're not really a network old-timer. (Yep, it was 3 mbps for a short time before they moved to 10. If you ever get to see a Sun 1 up close (they're antiques now, and fairly rare), look at the back - they usually have a plate/sticker there showing they've been upgraded to support 10 meg Ethernet.)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
don't hurt me
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
These are screen shots of a new Mac hosted version of the Palm OS Emulator running an early developmental version of PalmOS 3.5. They were shown in a public demonstration by a Palm employee on Tuesday at the PalmSource developers convention. The presenter suggested that some licensee may come out with a unit that uses this OS possibly in the first half of 2000.
/.ed already :-(
Sometimes I think checking out the links in the Older Stuff section is like calling my old ex girlfriend.
It might not be new to me and all my friends have already been there, but man, at least she answers the phone and shows up for dinner!
I've avoided Palms up 'till now because I just can't imagine that I could get more than a hundred dollars or so of use out of one. (I admit I'm very tempted by the Handspring however, mainly because of the price point.) I don't give a wet slap about color on it, but if I could pick a B&W version for about a hundred bucks because the colors models have taken the high end of the price range, I probably would.
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Congrats on being the first person (besides me) to post stuff to it.
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"I am a big palm"
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Oh my god! Everyone run for their lives!
=)
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
(As an aside...I find it disturbing that I see "The site is heavily loaded already" from the person who SUBMITS the article. Jeez, is that website running on a 486 with Windows 95 and Personal Web Services???)
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Anyway, color is the natural order of things. Television became color...laptops became color...printers became color...and yes, GameBoy became color. Color is ALWAYS preferred to black and white or greyscale because (drumroll) color as a feature includes both black and white and greyscale.
Think about it...if color is truly unnecessary to a program...then a color screen can always display the information in black and white or greyscale (like a word processor).
So what stops someone from using color from the get go? Answer: price and performance. If color is too expensive, people will not choose it over pure greyscale. If the color screen tears up the battery, people will not choose it over the more efficient greyscale screen.
The companies who win are the companies who add color when the time is right. GameBoy came out at the same time as both NEC's TurboGraphix portable, Atari's Lynx and Sega's GameGear. Customers flocked to the GameBoy because it was cheaper, had better software, and long battery life. The other devices failed to hold onto their place in the market and were discontinued.
Now...ten years later...there is a ColorGameBoy. Why was this not done from the beginning? Well, because ten years ago there was no way Nintendo could put a color screen in a $69 device and have it run 30 hours off two double A batteries. But now that technology has improved to the point that this is possible...it makes sense to do it.
Despite the fact that there are other color portables...like the NeoGeo portable...GameBoy is still selling better because the new color portable can run all of the existing software.
To review...Nintendo focused on growing the platform in a cheap, efficient state and then introducing color after they had proven to be a winning device.
Now look at Palm...while WinCE devices have jumped right away to color, Palm focused on growing the market in a cheap, efficient state. People obviously want handhelds...Palm is giving them a tool while WinCE is trying to give them everything.
Palm is clearly the winner...now Palm wants to make a color model and I, for one, think it will be a success. Because technology exists that can make this color Palm do everything the orignal Palm (if it had been color) could not.
Consider that the screen is only 256 colors. this pales in comparison to the 16-bit 65556 colors for some WinCE devices. Yet, it will probably be MUCH cheaper and much more energy efficient than those screens.
Consider the new injection molded lithium ion batteries. Companies can now develop their entire product without allocating any space for the battery. After they are done, the remaining airspace can be filled with a gel that, once solidified, becomes the battery. This is what is allowing Erisson to design a cell phone that is as thin as a pencil.
In summary, I think color is a necessary step and I applaud Palm's decision to hold off on color until they had gotten a lot of developers and software to support the platform. About the only thing Palm could do to screw it up is not make the color Palm backwards compatible...but since they are using the same Motorola chip family, I don't think this is a realistic fear.
Just my opinion...please treat it as such.
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
being moderated down to end up there with them. As pathetic enough as it is to AC post a "First Post!!! Yeah!", my question is, how much more pathetic is it to make that post and be third?
Anyway, back on topic. (Kind of) I dunno if I'm for color. Battery life is so critical with me as it is, and (believe it or not) I really like the color of my Palm III. Makes me feel digital, in a way. Color would actually DEtract from its beauty in this sense. ('least I think so)
Also, and this probably has nothing to do with anything... but why did the GameBoy win over all of its COLOR competitors??? Seriously, the Lynx rocked. (When I was 10 anyway. Kicked arse) How exactly did the GameBoy win? By NOT being color, and focussing on EVERY THING ELSE... Gameplay, usability, and, of course, getting games ported to it.
I only hope the PALM engineers can carry this concept with them. I'd hate to lose out on ANYTHING, in order to gain the color I don't really need.