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Handhelds Operating Systems Software Windows

Palm Teams With Microsoft for Smart Phone 162

Posted by CowboyNeal from the strange-bedfellows dept.
UltimaGuy writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that Palm Inc. is teaming up with Microsoft Corp. to launch a Windows-based version of the Treo smart phone, marking the first time the handheld computer pioneer will sell a device based on its former rival's software. 'In terms of the level of importance, this would be - in this space - the same thing as Apple announcing they were going to be using Intel processors.'"
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Palm Teams With Microsoft for Smart Phone

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  • And Palm OS? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Simon (S2) ( 600188 ) on Saturday September 24, 2005 @08:29AM (#13637470) Homepage
    I hope they don't stop develping their Palm OS and start focusing to much on Win Mobile. Palm OS is a great platform, and its dead would be really bad.

    • Re:And Palm OS? (Score:4, Informative)

      by FidelCatsro ( 861135 ) <fidelcatsro@gmaDALIil.com minus painter> on Saturday September 24, 2005 @08:46AM (#13637557) Journal
      Palm split into two separate companies a couple of years back .
        Palm Inc. (previously Palm one) does the hardware and Palm source handles the software side .
      Palm inc. are still making PDAs using PalmOS but they decided to move their phones to Windows mobile.
      I really hope the trend does not continue on to their PDAs , I do have high hopes for the Next versions of PalmOS( with a linux core) .

    • Re:And Palm OS? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mok000 ( 668612 ) on Saturday September 24, 2005 @08:48AM (#13637564)
      You can hope, but PalmSource, the developer of Palm OS, was recently sold to a japanese company. It looks like a total rollover to me...
      See This link [internetnews.com].
      • But Access (the purchasers) paid something like 200% more than the "value" of the stock (though I guess things are worth what someone is willing to pay. Palm did make a bid for PalmSource [palminfocenter.com], but they were outbid by too much and decided that it "just didn't make sense".

        So I'd say the palm platform is far from dead, Palm is just diversifying. I mean, they're just a hardware maker now, and if someone wants to buy your handsets with winmob on, you give it too them.

        1. Listen to customers
        2. Give them what they w

    • Re:And Palm OS? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by timeOday ( 582209 )
      Is PalmOS really so great? I've been using it since before the start of the century :) and while it's a nice simple little environment, my latest Clie with camera and wifi really seem to have outstripped the capabilities of the PalmOS. Now that Palms can run more complex software, they badly need memory protection so a single app can't crash the whole thing. And though I almost hate to say it, handwriting recognition on the PalmPC seems several generations ahead of Palm's. And after all these years, Pa

      • Re:And Palm OS? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by aussie_a ( 778472 )
        Is PalmOS really so great?

        It's better then Windows. Palm doing away with PalmOS would allow the software giant to gain more of a hold on the PDA market, decreasing the need for Microsoft to compete with it's software features in it's PDA's.

        Competition is a good thing, as it fosters development. Another company losing it's OS department and climbing into bed with a competitor doesn't foster development, and the people that lose out are the customers.
        • I think the reason PalmOS is better than Windows is that it focuses more on doing the PDA thing simply, and well.
          Of course, the market is a chrome-and-tailfin race. WinCE, or whatever they're calling it now, is the "SUV" approach, in contrast to PalmOS's "basic transportation" attitude.
          Because it's just not a /. thread without a tedious car analogy, no?

        • Re:And Palm OS? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by TrekCycling ( 468080 )
          Competition is indeed a good thing, but Palm OS has festered and been neglected for years. I know it's elegant. But that doesn't matter. Microsoft caught up to them in terms of reliability and features and then lapped them. I use Linux as my desktop. Have done so for 5 years. But recently when faced with a dying Palm M130 I chose a Pocket PC instead. The OS hasn't gotten any better and the hardware has gotten much worse.
        • Competition for the sake of competition is pointless.. There WAS competition in the marketplace and Palm lost it.

          The weird thing is how Palm Source was just taken over at a big premium by another company. That looks like a horrible deal for the purchaser...
      • and after all these years, Palm notepad is still limited to 4096 byte messages? That's just pathetic.

        Good thing that it's also wrong, then! :)
        • Really? It's been that way on my Palm III, Palm V, Palm m505, and Clie TH55.
          • I guess Sony hasn't been keeping up with the OS, then. The 4k limit is gone on any model which has the "Memos" app rather than the "Memo Pad" app; I believe this happened in about 2003 (admittedly, that's far later than it should have been, but still)

      • Now that Palms can run more complex software, they badly need memory protection so a single app can't crash the whole thing.

        One of the things I was surprised to learn when I started writing Palm OS apps is that Palm OS does have a form of memory protection. It has existed from day one, even on the old 68k machines that didn't have a built-in MMU. It's not the same as the memory protection you see on, say, Unix, but it is a form of memory protection.

        The way it works is this: RAM is divided into two

        • That's interesting because it explains why, though my Palms have been fairly succeptible to crashing and requiring soft resets, they usually do not get their databases scrambled and lose all my data. So some sort of protection is better than none.

  • same thing as Apple ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by xlyz ( 695304 )
    ... announcing they were going to be using Intel processors

    shouldn't be "same thing as IBM announcing they were going to be using Intel proc ... AH! never mind ...
  • As embedded operating systems go, I will really miss PalmOS. It was the OS X of the handheld computer era; slick, easy to use, if you liked it you loved it and if you hated it, you really hated it.

    Now that Windows is on the Treo, it won't be long until PalmOS is completely phased out, I feel. I wonder what will happen to PalmSource (weren't they just bought back by Palm?).

    • Re:A deathblow for Palm OS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jessecurry ( 820286 ) <jesse@jessecurry.net> on Saturday September 24, 2005 @08:37AM (#13637515) Homepage Journal
      I liked the Palm OS because I learned Graffiti when the original Palm came out. It really was a nice, no-nonsense OS, it did everything that I wanted it to do and left out features that I didn't need. I think that sadly many users don't care about the actual functionality, but want to have stupid bells and whistles; just look at the cell phone market today... people own phones that record video, record audio notes, have specialized ringtones, have flashing lights, have changeable faceplates, and can play games, but most of the time they can't get service inside a building... shouldn't that problem be addressed first?

      • Re:A deathblow for Palm OS (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Saturday September 24, 2005 @09:01AM (#13637611)
        I think the real problem is bells and whistles only get you so far. I think that's the reason most sell manufacturers are struggling for new ideas and having to go to things like iTunes; there are simply not enough devices they can cram into a cellphone and market anymore.

        Sadly, Palm was one of the few companies that was trying to innovate cellphones. Though the Treo is clunky, it has real functionality that I would honestly use, and could be a lot better with compatibility with other devices. Though I think that the cellphone was a terrible addition for a PDA (why can't they be seperate devices and communicate with BlueTooth, is it really that hard???), I think that Palm made a proper job of trying to connect the two devices in a sensible way.

        And yes, I agree with you on the antenna/amplifier part. There is really no excuse for cellphones being so bad inside of buildings except battery life might not be able to keep up with the devices, especially a SmartPhone that has an entire operating system including a huge power consuming LCD to drive. Hopefully as OLED prices come down it will help with the power constraints and the cell manufacturers will bring the quality back to where it should be.
        • why can't they be seperate devices and communicate with BlueTooth, is it really that hard???

          My old palm m505 and my about as old Ericsson (yes Ericsson, its from before they joined forces with Sony) t39m do this quite fine, so its not hard and they did it like half a decade ago already.

    • Now that Windows is on the Treo, it won't be long until PalmOS is completely phased out, I feel. I wonder what will happen to PalmSource (weren't they just bought back by Palm?).

      Nope, that's what virtually everybody was assuming would happen. It seemed logical, once PalmSource had been spun off and once it had started to tank, for PalmOne to just let it slide for a little while until it lost a lot of its value and finally buy it back at the end for a bargain to get the intellectual property rights it

  • not quite (Score:2, Insightful)

    by sdnoob ( 917382 )
    the same thing as Apple announcing they were going to be using Intel processors.

    no.. more like if apple announced they were releasing a windows-based computer; or a wma-only ipod...

    my question... will phone calls to windowsupdate be free? or will package minutes apply. i might need to up my plan.
    • Hrmmm.

      I think I have your problem solved.

      I give you... the mini usb cable!

    • my question... will phone calls to windowsupdate be free? or will package minutes apply. i might need to up my plan.

      Verizon packages an unlimited data plan with its smartphones so data doesn't use minutes and the phone will always be connected (as long as there is a tower near you).
      • Almost. It doesn't "count against" your minutes. It still has to connect to Verizon's network, however, by dialing (I think) #777.

        Thus, you will be connected on demand (and disconnected when you're done), and this may or may not send your incoming phone calls directly to voicemail (most do).

  • Visual Studio.NET (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rd4tech ( 711615 ) * on Saturday September 24, 2005 @08:34AM (#13637491)
    I've heard over and over from people who've done some programming in this area that, although alternatives to VS exist they are either with far less features or buggy.
    Mod me troll but I believe that VS IDE is probably the best development environment around, and it might me possibly one of the reasons why many programmers are still coding for windows.
    • Agreed. The IDE takes a bit of getting used to, that's for sure. But it is such a productivity booster... .. the only downside. So much is hidden from the user by default. Someone can get themselves into trouble and not understand what is happening. If you do not have a foundation into how things work, it will remain a black box to that user. It is dangerous to turn over the keys to those developers...

    • Re:Visual Studio.NET (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Doktor Memory ( 237313 ) on Saturday September 24, 2005 @09:13AM (#13637655) Journal
      Agreed. People got very distracted over the whole "browser war" circa 1998-2000 because it was an obvious, visible instance of Microsoft abusing is monopoly power, to the point where I think a lot of people forgot how MS got its monopoly power:

      Visual Studio on the development side, and Office on the applications side.

      In a lot of ways, MS got very very lucky: if Borland, Novell, Lotus and WordPerfect/Corel hadn't spent an entire decade shooting themselves in the foot over and over again, the competitive landscape in 2005 would be a very different place.

      • how MS got its monopoly power: Visual Studio on the development side

        No, Visual Studio came much later and isn’t really as nearly a monopoly as the OS and office automation product lines. The monopoly comes from MS-DOS times, specially during the transition (via MS Windows) to the current NT product line.

        • Visual C++ 1.0 shipped in 1993 [iseran.com]. True, it didn't get rebranded as "Visual Studio" until much later, but that's, well, branding.
          • Visual C++ was never rebranded (except for the addition of the .NET stuff). It's still Visual C++ . Visual Basic actually predates the release of Visual C++ by 2 years. Visual C++ and Visual Basic are now a part of Visual Studio along with C#, J# etc. You can still purchase Visual C++ or the other components separately (they all use the Visual Studio IDE and the splash screen says "Visual Studio").
          • Visual C++ 1.0 shipped in 1993

            So what? By that time MS had already stabbed IBM in the back by rebranding MS OS/2 3.0 NT as Windows, got their fraudulent licensing deals with OEMs, and estabilished its monopoly. All that with little more than MS DOS, Windows, Office and utter lack of ethics. Visual C++ played very little a part on all this.

    • Which IDEs have you looked at? Delphi? Eclipse?
    • Let's just pretend eclipse doesn't exist. Every time this topic comes up all the VS geeks go on and on about how there is nothing even close when in fact eclipse+java or IDEA+java or Netbeans+java is far superior to VS in too many ways to list.

      • I do like Netbeans+Java and I am playing with eclipde CDT right now but not everyone develops under java.
        I would really like an IDE for C/C++ that is as good as netbeans or or VS.
        Please have it run under Linux.
        BTW Kate is not a bad little editor. Not in the netbeans or VS class but a good tool
        • If you don't like Kdevelop and eclipse then begging the community to give you something probably won't work.

          Don't confuse your dislike of kdevelop or eclipse with "there is nothing that even comes close to VS". Both are "very close" to VS if not better.

          Not that I expect any MS shill to admit that.

    • Our product ships on pretty much every nix out there (32 and 64bit versions of: x86 linux, sun, ibm, hp, etc.) and so is quite portable.

      I still develop in Studio b/c I agree with the poster about it being the best dev.env out there.

      Of course, I schlep the code over to unix for testing before checkin, but i still spend most of my time in Studio [in a vmware windoze session running on my linux box, btw].
  • Even if "PalmSource sale won't kill Palm OS" [com.com], that OS now has competition as Palm has a free choice. Maybe they couldn't wait for PalmSource/Access to finish its Linux-based project?

    That Linux offering needs to be compelling since the low end of the market is coming out with more Linux-based devices, like the GP2x [pinoytechblog.com].
  • "Microsoft understands the back end and Palm understands the front end, and the two of them -- if they can work together -- they can do some incredible things," Enderle said.

    Really, Microsoft crushed them. The above statement may not be the right reason. Now whats in it from business standpoint for Microsoft to team up with Palm.

    • Palms market share may have faltered recently , but 18% market share is defiantly not crushed .
      It makes them one of the top 3 major players in the market ,which has a great many contenders .
      I believe Blackberry at the number one spot with 20.8% and just after palm comes HP with 17.6.

      So they are not crushed by any means .. they just have a great deal more competition these days

    • Really, Microsoft crushed them. The above statement may not be the right reason. Now whats in it from business standpoint for Microsoft to team up with Palm.

      It seems so obvious I hardly want to say it. Without this agreement Palm continues to make exclusively Palm OS machines. With this agreement, Palm makes a mix of Palm OS and Pocket PC machines. Unless Palm's market share suddenly dramatically increases, this means Palm OS now makes up a smaller percentage of the handheld devices out there.

      So,

  • Bye, bye Palm then and hello to being a Microsoft OEM on phones where there is absolutely no money and you're over a barrel all the time. A lot of Microsoft's competitors take it like a bitch all the time, that's the problem. No doubt Nokia will do the same and integrate support in for Exchange etc. and once that support is in Microsoft will use it to strong-arm Windows Mobile into the fray. Idiots.
    • I do not believe that Nokia will ever start shipping Windows phones.

      The absolute ugly-broken-ass nature of Windows mobile/PocketPC doesn't compare to the creamy goodness of symbian OS, whether it be series 60 or series 90.

      Symbian looks and acts the way Palm OS *should* have been working by now. Lets hope they have enough market share to keep going.

      Nokia phones always have an elegant/sophisticated interface. I've never seen a Windows mobile phone that came close.

  • Death of PalmSource (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gopal.V ( 532678 ) on Saturday September 24, 2005 @08:38AM (#13637522) Homepage Journal
    Palm building WinCE based handheld which will be distributed through Verizon.

    Essentially Palm is going down (stock wise and tech wise). With Linux Zaurses becoming popular and new products like the Nokia 770 coming out, there's not much room between Linux and WinCE for Palm to build a niche market.

    Microsoft helping might be a good thing for Palm, but in that terms Faust really got a deal for his soul too.
    • Essentially Palm is going down (stock wise and tech wise). With Linux Zaurses becoming popular and new products like the Nokia 770 coming out, there's not much room between Linux and WinCE for Palm to build a niche market.

      You speak as if the next Palm OS wasn't already going to be linux.

      Rumors about a WinCE Treo have been flying around for months. Rumors about a "windows Palm" have been even longer-lived. And, you know what? It isn't going to do jack against PalmOS. All it does it let a very well-design
  • ...Apple announcing that Windows Vista will be an OS option for their Next Mac.

    This could effectively kill off the Palm OS. Especially it this treo sells like hotcakes. I hope not since my kyocera 6035 is getting old and I'm looking for a replacement.
    • Re:it's more like... ...Apple announcing that Windows Vista will be an OS option for their Next Mac.
      Uhm, so how did you enjoyed being under that rock for the last few months?

  • Vader's take (Score:3, Funny)

    by DoctorHibbert ( 610548 ) on Saturday September 24, 2005 @09:01AM (#13637614)
    Noooooooooooo!

  • Palm OS killed Palm OS (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CarrionBird ( 589738 ) on Saturday September 24, 2005 @09:02AM (#13637618) Journal
    The current version is just too unstable to trust on a cellphone. The "Cobalt" version is suppsoedly ready, but Palmone wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Even palmsource gave up on it and decided to go to a linux core, all that should give you an idea of how bad the codebase had become. (espically since palm usually has no reservations in putting out badly flawed products and patching later)

    As much as I like my standalone palm, I could not deal with my cell phone crashing daily. If WM is more stable than POS (which shouldn't be too hard), then this may be a good move for treo.

    • Windows mobile is *NOT* stable.

      My cousin uses an MPx220, my father used to use an iPaq 6600 series pocketPC phone, and both sucked. Royally.

      I've never played with a Palm Phone, but I can't imagine they were worse. I do find that the new Symbian series 90 is an absolute pleasure to work with.

      Best PDA phone on the market? Nokia 7710.
      Best reception.
      Nice features
      Decent software library.
      Best screen
      Best camera.
      Happy Nokia Goodness ;P
      • Its just too bad that after that long phonecall you will have run out of power for all those functions.. and I am still wondering why people (other then some teenies) want a camera in their phone. Does none of you people have a job that includes going to places where cameras are not permitted? (that is basicly every large company building out there)
      • That thing was so bad, Alex Bell is spinning in his grave. I had one for all of a week before exchanging it for one that was just as bad.

        Worst. Phone. Evar.

    • You couldn't pry my PalmOS powerd phone out of my cold dead fingers.

      If there is a God, and we get stuck with Windows Mobile and it's shitty user interface as the replacement for PalmOS, even Garnet, it's undeniable proof that God hates us.
    • I've used Linux as my sole OS for almost 5 years now. I recently switched from an old dying Palm to Pocket PC because, frankly, the Palm hardware sucked. Minus the Treo (I already had a cell phone) the new hardware sucks. The screens are either painful to look at or they produce this high pitched whine after a couple months. They're really not made as well anymore. Which is indeed sad, but I think all technologists should be pragmatic. And I made the pragmatic choice to give up on Palm, because they've ceas
  • Gosh this sounds like SO much fun =) Puts a whole new meaning to Phreaking...

    ...and yes, I do agree, I'll call you back - my phone just crashed =)

    - Trisha
    http://spreadingthought.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

  • Actually stable (Score:5, Funny)

    by wigry ( 899492 ) on Saturday September 24, 2005 @09:10AM (#13637647)
    I don't know about you guys but I have developed quite many applications to Microsoft Windows Mobile Smartphone platform and also used the phone quite a lot and it is STABLE and fast. Nothing to cpmlaoin about. The windows that is in the device is huge improvement over their desktop version. As the Embedded Visual C++ is totally free of charge, then it is absolutely logical to develop the program to the smartphone platform. The effect works also oin the other direction: as developers coose smartphone platform, then there are lots of programs available and therefore customers prefer those phones as well. Add to the picture the fact that Microsoft will make the single operating system release for both PDA and Smartphone (Windows Mobile 5.0), the user gets familiar interface and also does developer. By releasing the EVC for free, microsoft basically killed the competition. There is no point to develop to Symbian as the API is totally different and same is with Linux. Smartwhone with timetested Win32 API rules the mobile world, like it or not. I as a developer have experience and I like it. The Windows Mobile is another masterpiece from microsoft, far from what they provide to the desktop.

    • Re:Actually stable (Score:2, Informative)

      by xpeeblix ( 701114 )
      Before you take the parent seriously, keep in mind it was modded +4 FUNNY.

      As the Embedded Visual C++ is totally free of charge...

      This too shall pass....
    • Well it's really funny :) Embedded Visual C++ is totally free of charge and pain in the ass to use. .Net compact is a lot better but is not free. About Symbian - parent correct, Symbain is fragmened into two GUI (s60 and UIQ) and several version of the OS, which are supposed to be completly binary compatible, but in reality not so compatible. And starting from v9 big part of the API closed for unregistered developers. But Symbian market share still growing. Though 83% Symbain users don't use any Symbain fea


  • I'm just glad to see that Microsoft has learned it's lessons
    about monopolistic practices......

  • Pics of the Treo 700w (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Engadget has pics of the new Windows Mobile Treo: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000867059961/ [engadget.com]
  • I started out on Pocket PC. And guess what?

    Like most other MS products, they suck. My iPaq 4315 was underfeatured and overpriced compared to similar Palm models.

    Either way, though, this marks the end of Palm. I've never seen a company thats managed to 'cooperate' and 'codevelop' with MS without getting really messed up.

    • Re:*cry* (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Planesdragon ( 210349 ) <slashdot@castles ... .us minus distro> on Saturday September 24, 2005 @10:48AM (#13638081) Homepage Journal
      Either way, though, this marks the end of Palm. I've never seen a company thats managed to 'cooperate' and 'codevelop' with MS without getting really messed

      Apple: One of the Mac's biggest and most popular software programs is Microsoft Office. MS even went so far as to bail out Apple in the mid 1990s.

      Adobe: Ever notice how Adobe works so well with MS Office? Indesign reads DOCs, Acrobat installs a custom Office PDF writer, etc. All due to cooperation between the two giants.

      • Apple was screwed numerous times by Microsoft, the bailout was because Microsoft had an antitrust case on their hands, Adobe was below the radars until now, Microsoft currently is working actively on shooting adobe with competing products out of the market...
        • So, MS doesn't like it. We all knew that.

          But the parents said he'd "never" seen a company do well by cooperating with Microsoft. I named two.
    • No Palm smartphone (or PDA for that matter) lets you open an SSH session and then switch applications while maintaining that session. To me, that is the single biggest flaw in Palm-based smartphones, and it's a killer flaw if you ask me.

      To be honest, there's nothing that the Palm phone does that the PPC phone doesn't (at least, nothing I need). The PPC phone has much, much better handwriting recognition and the ability to multitask network applications. Both types of units play media, if that's your bag.

  • Weird reporting, rather than the end of the world! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by D4C5CE ( 578304 ) on Saturday September 24, 2005 @10:05AM (#13637887)
    Recent press reports make this sound as if Microsoft had devoured its one and only contender to the smartphone crown - and we'd all have to start clicking tiny Windows icons (and the reset button) on our cellphones, forever, really soon now. Curiously, almost all of these reports seem to forget how Symbian [symbian.com]/Psion [petitiononline.com] (and Linux itself) make a great platform for a smartphone OS while having many years of extremely loyal following by both countless customers and the mobile industry giants.
    • They also forget how MS raped orange and drove them into the ground the last time they went into the phone business too.

      The question is why would anybody get in to bed with a known rapist? Does palm really believe MS are reformed and will not fuck them like they fucked orange?
    • God I hope the day of the Linux smart phones comes soon. I'm still using a Nokia Series 40 phone (Nokia 3300) because I want something that will integrate with my Linux desktop like my Sharp Zaurus does, but with a good GSM module built in. I want something that I can cross-compile on my desktop then copy over to the phone and run.

  • Palm is Dead, Long Live Palm (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Aron S-T ( 3012 ) on Saturday September 24, 2005 @10:07AM (#13637897) Homepage
    I've said this before and I'll say it again - this is great news. There are many, many people who grew up with Palm OS. I have been using it since the Palm III days and in that period I went on the desktp from Mac to Windows to Icewm to Gnome (version 0.7) to KDE to Gnome and back to Mac OS X. I write faster in grafitti than on pen and paper. I have several Palm OS add on apps that I use everyday, several times a day. The Treo is popular because of the Palm OS not Palm (which why, as others have noted, the Apple analogy is way off - its the Mac OS X experience that people love, not PowerPC chips).

    Palm as a company has grown to suck big time (it began with the 3Com purchase and it has been downhill ever since). When I had a choice, I avoided Palm products. The only decent Palm since the Palm V is the T3, but Palm support is less then useless (lot's of horror stories here).

    Now that Palm has become just one more Microsoft OEM it will die a long, protracted painful death. But its customers like me, won't have to endure the death rattle. We will be able to go out out and buy Palm-enabled or rather ACCESS-enabled devices. And there is a great likelihood there will be many of those from multiple vendors and with multiple options.

    Here's why: Let's face it - the PDA market is dying, and the cell phone market is rapidly on the rise. Does Palm/Microsoft really think it can compete with Nokia, Motorola, Sony/Erricson, Samsung and China Inc? How many cell phones do those companies sell? How many does Palm sell, with all the success of Treo? How many of the latter companies are using Microsoft's WinMobile? How many of those companies do/plan to sell embedded Linux phones?

    In case you don't know the answers to the above rhetorical questions, it is likely the case that by now Motorola has shipped more embedded Linux phones in China alone than all the Treos out there. These phones will soon be available outside the US. Isn't it likely that these companies will add ACCESS as a feature/add-on to entice millions of Palm customers like me? When that happens, how many TreoNGs do you think are going to be sold? All of you can count on one hand.

    So yes, Palm is dead. But fortunately, Palm OS has just been reborn. With it's old master dead it will take off even more rapidly.

  • The end for Palm (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I swear, Palm is absolutely on crack.

    First, tons of bizarro name changes. After some years, it's Palm again - what was so wrong with that in the first place that it was worth all the churn and confusion? Why make people who hit the front door of Palm's site choose what company or country they're really trying to reach?

    Next, why make it so Palm has to pay to use its own OS on your its devices (re: PalmSource)? I'm never going to figure that one out.

    Finally, why, oh why can't they put the whole thing in one p
    • This is exactly the problem that so many are missing. The problem isn't just the OS. Palm OS has its issues, but largely it's elegant and works well. The problem is that Palm hardware sucks. And they're virtually the only company making Palm OS-based hardware these days. So really your best bet is a Pocket PC. If only because the hardware is at least decent and you have some choice.

      • An anonymous coward initiated a number of comments that encouraged your reply. I wish to take issue with a few things he or she said but I don't reply to anonymous cowards. And then I would like to reply to your post.

        ...tons of bizarro name changes. After some years, it's Palm again - what was so wrong with that in the first place that it was worth all the churn and confusion?
        Palm has simply never been its own company. Jeff Hawkins could not manufacture the device on his own and needed a large investor

  • I started out with a Palm III and had a Visor for a while. Now I'm an iPaq guy. For the glory of what it did -- and "forget what you think a 'q' looks like, this is what I'll accept as a 'q'" really did open up pen computing -- the Palm always was the prehensile tail for your computer, while PocketPC is 3/4 a complete system. I browse the net and ssh from mine every day. I don't currently run Linux on it, but I can.
    • My "PDA usage history" is nearly identical to yours (I went from Palm III --> Palm V --> Sony Clie --> iPaq) and I couldn't agree with you more. The Palm, for me, was an awesome organizer and a great "prehensile tail" (well put, btw) for my computer, but my use of a PDA as a autonomous device really took off when I got my iPaq 5550. I'm sure the built-in Wi-Fi has something to do with it, but usig the iPaq feels more like operating a standalone handheld computer with all the trimmings where Palm

  • Crap! (Score:2)

    by vanyel ( 28049 ) *
    I was waiting for the inevitable Treo 700 to come out to upgrade to from my 600, which is painfully slow and has a crappy camera. I've always been annoyed that they left graffiti out of them, but now to find that they're putting that windoze crap on it... Well, at least the 650 will drop in price now --- I can upgrade to that to hold me over until someone else comes out with something comparable.
  • "...the same thing as Apple announcing they were going to be using Intel processors..." I disagree. Most people don't give a rat's ass what processor is inside of a Macintosh; the thing that makes it unique is the operating system running on it. The Apple transition (if done right) should be seamless, with the OS running as it does today (or faster) and most existing apps continuing to work as today. Palm is doing essentially the exact opposite. They are changing the OS, changing the look and feel of the
  • My Treo 600 crashed, DAILY. Usually it would freeze at the start or the end of a call, and require a reset. After a few months it would cut out constantly during calls. Sent it in for a replacement by warranty, plugged in my SIM card, and on the first call it freezes. I got a regular cellphone with bluetooth recently, and a Dell Axim X30. The phone never crashes, and the Axim requires a reset about once a month. Good bye Palm, when did your quality control become so poor?

  • I need a PDA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Writer ( 746272 ) on Saturday September 24, 2005 @12:26PM (#13638466)

    (Okay, I accidentally hit "reply" in the wrong fucking tab so this comment is actually posted [slashdot.org] in the "Developers: RMS Previews GPL3 Terms" [slashdot.org] story.)

    I was planning on getting a Treo and setting it up with a Socket Communications barcode reader [socketcom.com] to explore that kind of functionality in a PDA. I hope they don't outright kill the Palm OS on their devices but rather carry both. I'd like to have an alternative to Microsoft when trying out those kinds of device setups. I keep coming across hardware I want that only works with Windows, like mobile phones and sheet-feed scanners, and it is frustrating.

    Years ago, I had a top-of-the-range Toshiba laptop that came with Windows 95. When I upgraded to Windows 98, all of a sudden, the power management got all screwed up. To turn the machine off, I had to Shutdown, wait for it to hang, unplug the AC power adaptor, and pull out the battery. This was extremely frustrating, considering it wasn't exactly an obscure brand that was unsupported. Because of those kinds of experiences, I would really like to use another company's product.

    Yes, there were things about their products that I did like. Despite the major security problems that came with it, I did like the whole COM thing from a development perspective. Being able to use the same controls in Access, Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Internet Explorer did have a nice consistency. And I don't recall having problems with my Palm on Windows the way I do now on OS X. If anything happened to your computer, all your PIM data was backed up on the Palm, so all you had to do was re-install the system and hit a button to restore it on the computer. But on OS X, I've had the computer wipe the data from my Palm when I did clean OS upgrades. They also managed to include programs along with their main products that helped you do more, like a graphics application that came with Office which was useful for web design. On the Macintosh, it seems like it costs much more to do really basic web design compared to Windows.

    But that power management thing was really a bitch to deal with. I couldn't believe that any company would be so incompetent as to cripple a computers ability to simply turn off. The security problems were also unbearable. Allowing remote code to install itself on your computer automatically was just pure brainlessness. I can recall that there was an exploit in which an attachment could open itself up automatically in the preview pane in Outlook Express, and I had read about it as a proof-of-concept security hole possibly a year or two before virus writers actually started using it. The fact that a company would allow a common-knowledge exploit to go unpatched for so long was ridiculous. I've seen friends who's jobs depended on their computers lose all their data because of exploits like that.

    So in the end, I opted for a more expensive computer setup that had less third-party hardware support, but could turn on and off like a television and actually allow me to do other things instead of having to constantly patch and implement work-arounds for newly discovered exploits. I got a computer I could use rather than one I had to maintain. Maybe things have been different since, but I think that it is just a fundamental issue that consumers have alternatives when piecing together computer systems.

    • And I don't recall having problems with my Palm on Windows the way I do now on OS X. If anything happened to your computer, all your PIM data was backed up on the Palm, so all you had to do was re-install the system and hit a button to restore it on the computer. But on OS X, I've had the computer wipe the data from my Palm when I did clean OS upgrades. They also managed to include programs along with their main products that helped you do more, like a graphics application that came with Office which was u

      • I do believe Apple now gives away Web Objects with Tiger, which may help you with your issues in Web design. I should mention that the iTunes Music Store was constructed using that framework.

        But if you are having problems syncing with your Palm device, there are good solutions. iSync is one really good one that I am currently using now, instead of Palm's Desktop.

        That's exactly what I'm doing. And I noticed that if you do a clean OS install and you do a sync, you have to make sure "Force Slow Synchr

        • I tend to not do clean installs of the OS. I find that installing over my ol system works very well with a minimum of fuss because I keep all of my prefs, my password keychain and so on. What I do that gives me a fall-back position is to use Mike Bombich's excellent Carbon Copy Cloner [bombich.com] to clone my last known good OS to another disk. It will make that disk bootable in case of an emergency or a bad upgreade.

          I should mention that Web Objects used to sell for thousands of dollars. That Apple is giving it away n

          • I use Carbon Copy Cloner, even though I've also purchased Super Duper [shirt-pocket.com] which was Tiger-compatible first and seems to have great reviews. I'm just not sure about which script to use. I can't get Psync to work in CCC, so it just backs up the whole drive each time rather than just the changes. Super Duper is supposed to have all that sorted out.

            I like to do clean installs for upgrades because I'm under the impression that it frees up space compared to a simple upgrade. It's a bitch to manually do things like

            • We'll never be modded up for these kinds of private conversations...

              I honestly believe that, if you are either leaving your Mac running or are regularly running Brian Hil's MacJanitor [tds.net], you can recover the extra room. I think that part of the reason why you are recovering so much is because you have not truly dragged in all of your old preferences and settings and are re-creating them on the fly after you have all ready done the upgrade. The result is a system where you really didn't save much space at all

  • It sure is hard to remain a Palm customer these days.

    Not only has Palm failed to advance the performance and features of their product since the M-series days, their customer support and quality control has declined to the most rudimentary level.

    Call Palm Support and you'll speak to a shoddily trained offshore rep of dubious English skills who knows little more than how to find your PDA's hard reset button. Return your Palm under the Advance Replacement program, and you're likely to receive a worn, half

  • "Paul Otellini."

    "Paulie! Steve Jobs."

    "Stevie! How those Universal Binaries coming?"

    "They're really fat, Paul. Say -- you guys build Palm's processors, right?"

    "Sure do. What you got in mind?'

    "Well, I've been saying Apple would never produce another PDA. But I was wondering -- you could help us get a version of OS X running on a Palm, right?"

    "You bet. It'd be easier than getting Adobe to port Creative Suite over to yet another Mac platform. Ha-ha-ha ... uh, you still there, Stevie? You're not laug

  • http://www.treo700w.com/ [treo700w.com] - LOL - didn't take long for someone to register the domain name and build a site - I expect they'll be getting a nice letter from the Palm legalies sometime soon...

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