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- WasabiBomb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Hey, at least Palm is finally doing *something*. It irritates me that my Treo650's OS looks just like a colorized version of the OS my old Palm Pilot Pro had, over ten years ago. I'm getting really tired of having to buy third-party apps just to get the functionality that should've been adopted by Palm years ago.
Of course, knowing Palm, they'll strip out all the useful parts of Linux and make us pay other companies for the functionality they removed. - UrbanVoyeur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14When a company keeps re-announcing what it promised to do 4 years ago, does that count as a duplicate story?
Smells like the usual shamelessly manipulative "Please God, just just a little bump in the stock price so my options aren't completely worthless" announcement - DonCarcharo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Yeah this story can be a bit confusing without the drama that is a proper Palm history lesson. So here we go but pay attention it's tricky. :)
Palm Computing was founded in 1992. Three years later the company was acquired by US Robotics who in turn was acquired by 3Com. In 1998 the people who founded Palm Computing left and founded Handspring. Not long after, 3Com spun off the Palm subsidiary and Palm Inc. was born as its own company (yet again). In 2002 Palm decided to split itself in half, possibly just for the heck of it, and Palmsource (who managed the PalmOS) was born. Palmsource focused on bringing the next generation PalmOS to market (called Cobalt) while the hardware side now known as PalmOne (yes they changed their name again) focused on merging back with Handspring (the original founders of Palm Computing and now the makers of the Treo).
But wait, there's more! So now Palm Computing/Palm/palmOne waits on Palmsource for its fancy new OS. While waiting palmOne decides to pay a few million dollars to Palmsource for the right to call itself Palm again (oh and to use that fancy OS no one is building). And then when no one is looking a company called ACCESS comes by and buys PalmSource. But they don't want that fancy new Palm OS, in fact no one does. So the fancy new Palm OS fades away while ACCESS focuses on building a new Linux OS. Around this time Palm Computing/Palm/palmOne/Palm gets this cool idea to build its own OS (kinda like the one they just lost) and base it on Linux (kinda like ACCESS is doing).
And that my friends is the much beleaguered history of Palm and the Palm OS. This would be all far more relevant of course if anybody cared. - z00k, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13"Is that a penguin in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
- arthurbarnhouse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Too bad they're not using ACCESS Linux Platform, it looks superhot.
Additionally, it's a shame they killed off the lifedrive with a linux-based OS coming down the pipe soon.
Still this is a good sign that they're at least moving forward. My first personal electronic device ever was a Palm m505. I even bought the keyboard so that I could type notes in classes, making it my first laptop for all intents and purposes. I would really like to see Palm survive with an OS besides Windows Mobile. - samuelcotterall, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Too little too late, I'd say.
- arthurbarnhouse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8In a six foot grave with its name on a tombstone.
- frogstik, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Palm bought BeOS about 10 years ago... and they never did anything with it. They should have done something with that!!!
- deltree, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Some multimedia components and frameworks from the BeOS were included and built into Palm OS Cobalt, which well vaporized and was never adopted.
- vcleniuk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I love Palm and Palm OS. But, I agree, it does need a refresh of some kind. Bring it into 2007.
I still carry my LifeDrive around -- someitmes listen to tunes, podcasts or watch dl.tv on it.
Palm is probably treading water with this announcement. I've been waiting for SOMETHING from Palm for the last 5 years.
I thought the LifeDrive was going to be it. Here's hoping for the best for Palm.
Palm's must recreate that "Oh man, I gotta have that." feeling again. Apple's been working that mojo for a while now. - Elranzer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Where the Hell is Palm OS 6 Cobalt...?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5There's a difference between Palm and PalmSource/Access.
PalmSource is the company that was split out of Palm as the company that creates the operating system. It was later acquired by Access and announced years ago that it would create a Linux-based OS.
Palm didn't talk about launching a Linux-based OS, although it was expected by a lot of people that they would do something. - deltree, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Direct linkage:
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9351/palm-announces-new-linux-based-mobile-platform/ - BrianNowhere, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6A question to the community here: I've got a Palm E2 and with it I can listen to music, store numbers, word docs, pdfs, play games and listen to mp3's and wav files and watch video files. If i want to upgrade I can even go online with a Palm and get GPS and internet.
My question is, "Why the hell are ipods so popular?" They don't do anything but play music and video. Not only that but they are way more expensive than Palm Pilots.
Is it just the trendy thing to do, or do ipods do something special that i am not thinking of. I've never owned an ipod. Haven't felt like I need to since I've got the trusty Palm. - arthurbarnhouse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The reason I don't think so is because they seem to have a clear goal and a semi-hard rollout. Neither of these were true for the platforms of the past. Their past promises were along the lines of, "OH don't worry, were gonna put out that new operating system any day now." With no confirmation of if it was even going to be relesed within a year or a month or tomorrow.
- nonanet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4well, i still use my old Zire. b&w display, no frills, just my calendar and contacts. Does it's job. Oh, did i mention 4 weeks of battery life?
- bigredgpk, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8***** Access. It doesn't support 320 x 320 screens and it is made for feature phones. not smart phones.
Long live Palm OS! - timlopez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I remember the keynote for the Treo 700w with the CEO of Palm, a fellow from Verizon and Bill Gates. Someone in the crowd asked about a linux based treo, and they looked at Gates and laughed, and the CEO of Palm kind of brushed off the question making it seem like it would never happen. I would like to find that video somewhere and see his reaction to the question again.
- SteveMax, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5An iPod nano is much smaller than a Palm, and the battery will last for quite a bit more. It only plays music, though...
To each his own. - cg0def, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3palm is hardly the first company to try this. However the problem is that noone has been able to succeed so far. I don't know what makes Palm's execs believe that they would be any more successful than Sharp was with the Zaurus linux line. IMHO Palm is about to liquidate their consumer line of PDAs. The PDA market is really stiff as it is and the fact that MS does everything possible to discourage vendors from using anything different from Windows really doesn't help Palm's position. Plus the thing with PDAs is that they pretty much do the same thing as most decent phones and I'd much rather sync to my phone since I already have to carry it with me. And the screen size is really no issue on most cases. The only advantage is that a PDA could come with a build in qwerty keyboard but then again most palms really don't have one ...
- neodorian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I dunno. Even though my treo is starting to show its age and I'd like to see them put out something new, I would hardly qualify as a smartphone-needing Windows-hater. I like the Treo over the blackjack and Q and Pearl because of the touchscreen, 3rd party apps, and shoutcast radio (not to mention the obvious web, email, IM, pda, phone, etc.) So far it's personally been my favorite design and I'd like to see them keep up with the times. They do just what I want and don't cost as much as the high end pocket PCs or the iPhone. Also I can stick with my $15/month unlimited data plan on Sprint and not pay out the ass with Cingular or Verizon.
- frogstik, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3my bad... it was only 6 years ago.
- haggie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm with you. I love my Treo. Phone, mp3 player, docs, Outlook sync, pics, video, games, touch screen, etc...
And its available TODAY! - hockeysmurf, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4My Treo 700wx plays music, Divx & Xvid movies, and the 4GB SD card is also loaded with emulators for NES, GameBoy Color, and Super Nintendo. Why the hell would I want an Ipod?!
- BionicAntboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'd LOVE to see Palm get their act together, but I fear they're turning into the Commodore of the 21st century. Great products for their day, but the business model is "screw innovation, let's sit back and milk this cow".
Palm users have been clamouring for a 320x480 Treo since 2003, and the Linux Palm rumour is almost as stale.
Good luck and all, but I'll hedge my bets. - juliocgrajales, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3good, finally some companies are actually waking up and realizing that it is much cheaper to start using at least get closer to using open source software, good luck
- Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I'm digging you down, mainly because of your incoherent rambling.
Is English your primary language? - Jagula, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I love my Tapwave Zodiac. Though it's a little outdated, I can find any program to do anything with OS5. I find myself using my Zodiac more than my Axim as a PDA, and more for gaming than my PSP or DS.
There was a project to get Linux on it, but I don't think it got too far. - arthurbarnhouse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yeah, look how well yellowTAB worked out.
- arthurbarnhouse, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5It's a matter of quality of specialized design. I've used palms for multimedia stuff before and, I'm sorry it sucks. The iPod is designed to do one thing: give you convenient access to a high volume of music. A palm, which requires expensive storage and poor controls, does not compare.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6How about just flashing it and installing one of the many embedded Linux distros. Or are they TiVoising it.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3You think a second rate, under funded embedded OS can do more than Linux. Hell you'll be able to run OpenSSH on your PDA mun.
- mahdaeng, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i used my palm iii from 2000 to 2006. it was great all those years - and still runs, btw - but i just had to get me a t|x for the built-in wifi
- FluffyArmada, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Yeah.. When I got my lifedrive a few years ago, I had it for about two weeks, then it randomly crashed and never turned on again. They were nice enough to replace it for free, but it sure did suck after I had waited for it for so long. :-)
- mahdaeng, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i'd hate to see palm go under. i LOVE my t|x! i just wish it was a little easier to develop applications for. pocketpc's are nice - and pretty easy to develop for - but the palm os is so much more stable.
- DickBreath, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Please put that video on YouTube.
- elipabst, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@cg0def: "I don't know what makes Palm's execs believe that they would be any more successful than Sharp was with the Zaurus linux line"
Actually, I think there's lots of room for improvement for a Linux-based handheld that would make it more attractive to consumers who are not die-hard linux users. The PDA apps on Zaurus were mostly garbage and made the thing at best a sub-par PDA compared to the mobile Windows and PalmOS PDAs. Then as if they hadn't screwed things up bad enough already, they pulled the rug out from underneath the development community which was just beginning to write/port a lot of great software to the Zaurus. Their marketing and PR department were a total ***** that pissed of most of the community. - FluffyArmada, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Trust me, you'll be happier if you just block him. Your IQ might go up a few points too.
- Thataboy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3It is far beyond too late. Treo's only market is the smartphone-needing Windows-hater, and Apple is about to steal all of those people away.
If you don't want an iPhone, you can get much much sleeker smartphones now, like the Blackjack, Pearl, or even the Q.
The Treo is all Palm has, and the Treo is all but dead -- and I say that as a Treo user (biding my time until iPhone revision 2). - tommasz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I love my Treo 750p like I loved my Zire 72 and my Palm V. But there's one word that describes my future: iPhone.
- soycap, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I really want a mobile linux/unix command line. The best I can do now is ssh into my home server via the Treo. I used to use my Zaurus with OZ over bluetooth, but I can't carry (and charge) 2 devices and don't want to deal with connecting every time.
This at least gives me some hope of seeing that before I die. - superpixel, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Now Palm, just keep it up, ok? Create 8 different distro's of this "OS" each one a point-point-point shade different. PalmLinuxOS 2.3.5.7.2.5.7.3.6
Or the Palm pi !
Or the PalmSolveforX !
Lots of fun. Can't wait for Palm to disappear so I can quit mourning their slow demise. Pull the plug, anyone! - arthurbarnhouse, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I want to listen to music and I want 20 gigs so that I have variety. Why would I use a palm pilot?
- Technopundit, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I care enough to want to stay away from their products.
- ciaziraphale, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1The last two palms I've had (an E and E2) have both sucked. Palm really needs to do something about their quality control. Looks like I'll be going to Windows Mobile devices on my next PDA.
- Subcranium, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Palm won't even be around by the end of the year. Why are they planning anything?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1This is older than grandma.
- liilliil, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2Have you understood me? No?
Again: ***** their Linux - liilliil, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2yepp. cuz Linux still can NOTHING
on handhelds & on desktops too
Linux boys, drop this comment down too, c'mon - liilliil, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1Cobalt did much more 3 yrs ago…
F*ck their Linux
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