Color Palms to Debut in February?

Kevin writes "There's a story over at CNET talking about the future release of color Palms in February. Palm Computing's IPO is expected to coincide with the release. The article states that simplicity is a major part of the PalmPilot's design and that the implementation of color screens may not correspond with the ' so-called Zen of Palm principle,' keeping devices as simple as possible. "

Comments

And the expected form factor is...?

[dmorin]

What I find interesting is that despite the apparent popularity of the V, that they are churning out so many variations with the III footprint. It's almost like they're saying "Ok, we made it as small and sleek as we could for the executives, but if you want it to *do* anything, you need this here workhorse-sized doohickey."

Ya got yer III, IIIx, IIIe. The VII is based on the III form factor. Soon you'll have the IIIc which I can only presume will be like a III (if not bigger!), and there's no reason not to think that the IIIxe won't be the same as the III sizewise.

I'm reminded of a device company I used to work for. A scientist sat in our weekly meeting and announced that the device would only produce acceptable results if measurement X was within something like 10 microns. Upon which the manufacturing manager demonstrated to him that by the time you got to measurement X you had to put together measurements A,B,C, each of which had a tolerance of 15 microns in the first place, so there's no way he could get what he asked for. He shrugged, apparently oblivious to the reality of the physical universe, and said that in that case, just wouldn't work.

Seems to me like people want it to be small (PalmV sized sounds nice), with a bigger screen and bigger writing area (huh?). More memory, please (16M would sound like lots now, but I'm sure it won't in a year), but I want to stuff a few MP3s on there so I'm going to fill it up quick anyway. Please add color and voice recognition, but don't make the batteries any thicker. Make them last longer.

I like my IIIx. I am hoping that, unlike the V/Vx, the IIIx will have an upgrade for that 8meg.

This outta make meetings better

[God I hate mornings]

With color it will help make my meeting go faster as I play IR Battleship with another person. Although the PHB's don't like it when we yell 'You sunk my battleship you TWIT!"

Dev on color palms

[Paolo]

The one thing that having a color lcd would do to confuse the "zen of Palm" would be having two different versions of programs, one color and one monochrome. Hopefully Palm would be able to figure out how to incorporate "old" app support with new color apps.

The second concern of mine, besides the fact that my Palm III will be obsolete, is that currently Palms can run for almost a month on 2 AAA batteries. That is not going to be true for Palms with color screens.

They have to do this ...

[Augusto]

... I love my Palm V and I could care less about color, but they have to do this to compete. Sooner or later the Wince devices are going to catch up in price, battery life and form factor/weight.

It's good that Palm is keeping up, and don't forget, this doesn't mean all new Palm models will be in color. I'm sure they'll still provide the old black & white Palms until color has been proven to be cheap enough.

Re:Color makes sense.

[dmorin]

I don't understand how people say that color is so important. Let's look at some of the things people use a PDA for:

• Download and read news. No color needed.
• Track dates and addresses. No color needed.
• Read/send email. No color needed.
• Exchange business cards. *Maybe* color would be nice if you want your biz card to look exactly like it does in real life. But necessary?
• Surf existing sites. Any argument here is the same as dealing with Lynx. What are you more interested in, the information on the site, or the pretty pictures? If the argument is "Yeah, but the web exists now, with color, and I want to see it", then why didn't that same argument stand up in the gopher vs. www war? "www can do color." "Yeah, but gopher is text only, so the web needs to be text only too." There's a big difference between things that *can* perform a certain function, versus those that *should* or *must*. Whether or not a PDA *can* be made to do color, I don't really think that it either must or even should.
• Surf sites specially intended for PDAs, that have been AvantGo or WML enabled. No color needed.
• Play games. Color hasn't been needed thus far, but I'm sure it won't hurt. But do I want to add to my price and halve my battery life in order to see red hearts and black spades?

I fully expect one day to have a PDA that is the size of a hearing aid. I will talk to it, and it will talk to me. It will be completely wireless and be able to get my news and email, as well as handle an address book and date book. I will be able to always have it with me. It will use minimal battery power (heck, I might even be able to power it with a rechargeable battery in my shoe).

d

Simplicity is a two-edged sword

[Kaa]

The correct form of the KISS principle is:

Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.

I think Palm is becoming too simple. Palm made a virtue out of necessity -- they are using at least three-year-old technology without any major changes (I tend to view the wireless connection as overpriced gimmick). Thus they HAVE to be simple -- they cannot manage intelligent complexity. That is OK as long as their target market is suits -- suits, after all, have never been known for the ability to deal with sophisticated devices. But for me Palm is like Microsoft's DOS -- very simple, but not necessarily up-to-date. I'd rather play with flashier toys and tinker with more complicated things.

Three years ago Palms were great. Now they look more and more older. Leaving aside the horrible user interface of WinCE, look at the latest Casio model (E-100/105) -- it is color, it plays stereo sound, its accessories include a digital camera, a hard drive (340Mb in your handheld -- how about it?) and a ton of other goodies.

I think that Palm is outdated and only the deficiencies of WinCE keep it at the top.

Kaa

Re:Simplicity is a two-edged sword

[killbill]

As I have said before, complexity is like a liquid, non-compressable. All those gimmicks would be fun toys, but my palm is forever attached to my hip because it stays out of my way and does what I need when I need it, not because it is the uber-geek-toy-kitchen-sink-device (although with my modem, a vt100 emulator, and a shell account I HAVE run emacs on a Palm Professional...).

If I want an MP3 player (which actually, come to think of it, I do) I will go pick up a diamond Rio, or similiar device. It is more portable, more durable, more flexible, and less expensive then adding all that capability to my PDA.

That being said, I just ordered a trg pro for $329, and this device includes an upgraded speaker (so the palm can finally dial for me) and a compact flash slot.

This means that you can now spend $600 to add a 340mb IBM microdrive to your palm pilot, if you were so inclined. On the less silly end of the spectrum, you can add a 32MB cf card for about $70, which is a more reasonable price point for a palm, and 32MB will store an AWFUL lot of palm data...

Actually, now that I think about it, the one thing I would like to be portable is the compact flash media. It would be nice to be able to swap these things between my laptop, digital camera, MP3 player, and TRGPro Palm OS device depending on my needs at the moment... (that is, once I can afford a laptop, digital camera, and mp3 player :)

Bill Kilgallon

Where's all this supposed demand for color?

[Bearpaw]

Ok, maybe Palm's done some market research and has found there's a real demand for color, rather than just a "Gee, wouldn't it be nice". But for most current Palmers that I know, color is way down on the priority list.

When they can do it without taking a massive hit on battery life, and when they can do it without the price jumping way up, yeah, color would be nice. Until then, it's just flash, and they risk shooting themselves in the foot.

Yeah, when they get to the point of real wireless web access, color might be useful. (Though that reflects more on the ubiquity of bad web design than it does on the usefulness of color on the web.) But I'd much rather have real wireless connectivity without color, than color without wireless connectivity.

bah.

[Zurk]

whats really important is :
[1] Memory protection for the pilot in the OS - paperclips suck, resetting sucks.
[2] Better security for the databases - one application can rewrite *all* data right now 0- that sucks.
[3] Easier API's, more access to documentation and better testing
[4] A full web browser
[5] Faster CPU, better battery, slightly larger screen (and less reflective), less scratchy screen, more rugged construction.
Adding color is just a waste of resources - improvements need to be made elsewhere.

In defense of color

[mattdm]

Probably a lot of people are thinking "what do you need color for? Isn't that just fluff?" Actually, on a 160x160 screen, color is incredibly useful. It adds a whole new way to fit more information in that tiny space. For example, entries on the calendar can be made different colors to indicate types of events or days. Sure, you can do this with icons, but there's only so many 8x8 2-bit icons that are distinguishable from each other.
As it stands now, the month-view is basically useless. Color would change that.

Bright red in the todo or memo list is a quick visual cue that something is important. Or, toxic yellow could indicate work-related items, without wasting screen real-estate.

And of course there's things like maps, which barely work at all in black and white. The added information conveyed by color can fix that.

(Note that UI elements shouldn't _depend_ on color, since a lot of people are color blind to one extent or another. But that doesn't mean it can't be useful to others.)

--

There's a very good use for color, you know...

[golden spud]

Color is something that is much more immediately visible and discernable than words or numbers. Consider, for instance, someone that regularly uses the task list. Perhaps this person prefers to prioritize their list by importance. With a black and white screen, she would have to look carefully at the numbers to the left to determine what priority certain items were, even if the list were sorted by priority. (Perhaps she has them sorted alphabetically, with a certain code at the beginning to categorize them differently)

In this case, color -- even 16 colors, would be very useful. She'd press her todo key on her pilot, notice that there were two red items above several blue ones, and know that those red items were of high importance immediately. She'd be able to read them quicker if they were colorized than if she had to look at the priority number assigned to each item.

Something similar could be done with categories. Assign different colors to categories in your addressbook, and now you could view your entire address book but still be able to rapidly discern between different types of contacts. This would make it easier to use your Palm's address book quickly. Instead of using two hands and tapping the corner twice to get to the right category, you can leave it set on "All". Just use one hand to press the address book button and then use the hardware buttons to scroll through your list. Green for clients, red for suppliers, purple for personal contacts.

Color web browsing on a Palm would be neatonifty, but remember, the Palm is supposed to be simple. The examples above show why adding color will keep it simple, and perhaps make it even simpler, at least for data-retrieval tasks, which is what I (and the people I know who use Palms) mainly use them for after the "wow" factor wears off.

Color is a two edged sword

[gonar]

This may seem to be off topic, but stick with it, it applies.

The other day I walked into my bank. They had just replaced their old ATM machines with new ones. I thought "Great! now they'll be faster! and ooo, look, a pretty color touch screen!"

Well, the truth is, the new machines are slower on two counts.
1. more proccessing required for color screen == slower transactions
2. it is harder to discriminate the information that matters ( how much money do I want ) from the information I don't care about ( look, We have this new loan you can get and you only have to give us your third borne child! ) which also == slower transactions

the basic conclusion here is that there are places where color is a sensible useful thing and other situations where it is just plain harmful.

the key with the upcoming palms will be to:
1. ensure that the old, B&W apps don't run any slower on the new machines.
2. color is only used where it makes SENSE.
3. new apps still run on B&W palm pilots, without a performance/memory penalty for being compatible with the new machines.

so, the basic conclusion is that

Gotta love the name they chose

[generic-man]

First we had the Palm III, then the IIIe, and now the IIIc? Where's the IIIgs?

(BTW, I'm a longtime Palm user, and I know there have been a ton of other names and models as well.)

Technical Issues Regarding Color Palms

[Effugas]

(Disclaimer: I'm buying a Palmpilot pretty much when my paycheck clears. Merry Christmas.)

First of all, Palmpilots don't have a black and white screen. They have a black and light greenish screen--not "Spinach Green Color" as the old Game Gear ads chastized Gameboy for(but guess which system is still around!)--but greenish nonetheless.

You can't implement a color display without implementing the color white, and that's an readability increase.

The problem is, LCDs don't glow, they block. So most color screens have a consistent white light source behind the display, called a Backlight. Whereas Palmpilots can presently function just fine by reflecting the light surrounding the Palmpilot(with a very optional backlight for low light operation), Color WinCE machines generally need to tote around their light supply in order to meet the functionality expected by their users.

So that's where the battery problems come from. Of course, if a color screen can be developed that *also* operates based upon surrounding light levels, you're only talking about an increased memory/bus transfer load on the system, as it moves from animating and displaying 4 bit black and white color to various degrees of red, green, and blue. Nintendo's Color Gameboy--really a well executed piece of work--is quite small but is definite proof that a color display can be fabricated that operates on ambient light. (While I doubt it has anything to do with power usage, Color Gameboy restricts the color gamut--the range of addressable colors--to 56 specific colors, thus solving much of the speed problems inherent when you're throwing around much more data. Some crazy hackers managed to get a very high color display mode out of the color gameboy though--4096 colors, if I remember right.)

Regarding the usefulness of color, portable web browsing, photograph display, and most forms of advanced context are heavily assisted by the presence of color. We've developed color vision for a reason, and not just to tell whether fruits on the vine are ripe yet ;-)

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

"USB palm" --> visor:)

[timothy]

DGregory wrote about wanting a Palm that used USB instead of serial ... he's right!

3 months ago, I thought I would never want / need a Palm (OS / format) computer. Since then, there have been quite a few situations in my work (copy editor / proofreader / copywriter / etc) when I said "Boy, I wish I had a little Palm-type thingie!"

After that, the tempation has grown and grown, and I find myself in the bookstore wishing I could look at the notes that I scrawled to myself about a certain author the night before, but on a napkin in my other pants ....

Then the Happy Hacker Palm Cradle comes out, removing the other major problem I had with the design of Palms, which is lack of a keyboard interface, which for me is much faster than writing by hand.

But I too want USB and not serial interface. So I've decided to wait for a Visor, and the Visor Happy Hacking Cradle, and (I guess) Linux kernel 2.4.3 or something.

Now this color stuff comes out, clouding the mix again ;)

But for DGregory, a (better) Palm is available, with USB, unless you've got something against Visor. Better because the price is good, because an 8MB visor is cheaper than an 8MB palm, and because of the springboard modules. I have only played with others' of either variety, so take as many grains of salt as you'd like, but ...

timothy