After reading the comments from game programmers it seems that the DirectX vs. OpenGL/MesaGL isn't exactly a lost cause in favor of M$.
1) Programmers are already constantly updating their knowledge of the APIs that are continually changing to take advantage of the latest features
2) Each new game starts basically from scratch
3) Porting is already common for companies that want to support the Mac. And
4) Hardware companies such as nVidia are still supporting/advancing OpenGL.
It seems to me that when and if there is a significant reason to change to a more open spec from DirectX it can/will be done within a generation of games.
I haven't seen much surprise from the/. community that the Palm OS didn't choose the Linux path. PDAs are getting more powerful and need a more robust OS to provide all the bells and whistles and Linux seemed an obvious choice. I envisioned a Apple-like change in OS from the proprietary Palm to a *nix based system.
However, that said, I can see that the main reason you want more power on a PDA is for multimedia and that's been the focus of Be, Inc. since the beginning. And it's closed source which is a better revenue stream. But still... putting Be's multimedia code on top of the PalmOS seems to me like turbo-charging a lawnmower.
The question is will the PalmOS absorb the multimedia expertise of the BeOS or will the BeOS be shrunk down to fit on a next-gen Palm?
I understand this news is cool from a "I remember when" point of view, but really why is the 20th anniversary special? Why not wait until the 25th? or some other number? It's just marketing.
I can see that IBM's attempting to remind everyone that they created the standard that we all use today. Along with their Linux campaign it seems that they're trying to send the message that they're back to their roots of computer development.
It's quite a PR machine. I don't know how many articles I've seen online, etc.
Anyways, I worked at the Boca Raton campus back in the early 90s before they closed it and it was pretty cool to be there at the birthplace of the PC. At one point they were pumping out millions of PCs there... I still have a poster I picked up there of the Charlie Chaplin PC ad.
If I take my cellphone, my mp3 player, my canon elph digital camera and my Palm Vx and stack them up, they don't make a very big pile. Convergence is coming in a big way. There's already cellphone/palm, cellphone/MP3-player and Fuji is making a camera/MP3-player. Who know's what's next...
My point is that Linux may be a bit much for a Palm-clone right now, but in the NEAR future when the computer that sits in your hand has a lot more power and is doing a lot more things, it'll need a robust OS to deal with it all and Unix is it.
Furthermore, I don't think Palm has what it takes to upgrade the PalmOS to do what Linux or WindowsCE can do. Even though I prefer a Palm right now, they've already lost the race to the future in my (humble) opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
After reading the comments from game programmers it seems that the DirectX vs. OpenGL/MesaGL isn't exactly a lost cause in favor of M$.
1) Programmers are already constantly updating their knowledge of the APIs that are continually changing to take advantage of the latest features
2) Each new game starts basically from scratch
3) Porting is already common for companies that want to support the Mac. And
4) Hardware companies such as nVidia are still supporting/advancing OpenGL.
It seems to me that when and if there is a significant reason to change to a more open spec from DirectX it can/will be done within a generation of games.
-Russ
I haven't seen much surprise from the
However, that said, I can see that the main reason you want more power on a PDA is for multimedia and that's been the focus of Be, Inc. since the beginning. And it's closed source which is a better revenue stream. But still... putting Be's multimedia code on top of the PalmOS seems to me like turbo-charging a lawnmower.
The question is will the PalmOS absorb the multimedia expertise of the BeOS or will the BeOS be shrunk down to fit on a next-gen Palm?
-R
I understand this news is cool from a "I remember when" point of view, but really why is the 20th anniversary special? Why not wait until the 25th? or some other number? It's just marketing.
I can see that IBM's attempting to remind everyone that they created the standard that we all use today. Along with their Linux campaign it seems that they're trying to send the message that they're back to their roots of computer development.
It's quite a PR machine. I don't know how many articles I've seen online, etc.
Anyways, I worked at the Boca Raton campus back in the early 90s before they closed it and it was pretty cool to be there at the birthplace of the PC. At one point they were pumping out millions of PCs there... I still have a poster I picked up there of the Charlie Chaplin PC ad.
If I take my cellphone, my mp3 player, my canon elph digital camera and my Palm Vx and stack them up, they don't make a very big pile. Convergence is coming in a big way. There's already cellphone/palm, cellphone/MP3-player and Fuji is making a camera/MP3-player. Who know's what's next...
My point is that Linux may be a bit much for a Palm-clone right now, but in the NEAR future when the computer that sits in your hand has a lot more power and is doing a lot more things, it'll need a robust OS to deal with it all and Unix is it.
Furthermore, I don't think Palm has what it takes to upgrade the PalmOS to do what Linux or WindowsCE can do. Even though I prefer a Palm right now, they've already lost the race to the future in my (humble) opinion.