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. "

Comments

Color, people, is vital with proper timing

[JoeShmoe]

(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???)

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

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-