[Voice_of_Reason]

Originally Posted by BobR

Thank you for your post TVoR. And I personally want to thank you for the more polite tone. I've followed some of your other discussions, and while you obviously have a lot of knowledge about these issues and some very interesting things to say, I've also noticed that you have a very animated and spirited style at other sites! That can be a bit too harsh for the friendly discussions we try to foster here at MR, so we greatly appreciate your considerateness concerning the style of your posts here. (It doesn't take much for us to edit or delete a post here if it becomes harsh, because the tone of the discussions is very important to us.)

Harsh? Moi? You must have me confused with some other Voices you're hearing.

Originally Posted by BobR

I think we agree here. It's central to the functioning of advanced devices. But isn't this all stuff that Cobalt can handle?

Possibly. Cobalt can do multithreading. If handled correctly, from a user's perspective this can potentially be almost as good as true multitasking. Depending on the implementation + the resources required of running apps + the resources available, there will be restrictions on what apps can run at the same time. Your buddy, Ms. Hackborn suddenly became silent (unusual for her ) when pressed for details on what Cobalt can really do IN PRACTICE rather than IN THEORY.

Originally Posted by BobR

I think that we also agree here. In fact, Dianne H had acknowledged that even Cobalt still falls a little short in this area so far because it's the internals that have been the primary focus and the UI improvements that depend on some of that infrastructure is coming next. I'm interested as to why you think the stopping and starting of apps is a burden to the user, though. If programs are written properly, isn't that transparent to the user as long as there are separate threads handling the background work like internet connections?

I was actually referring to the inability of PalmOS 5 to perform multitasking.

Originally Posted by BobR

A lot has changed over the years. Isn't it to be expected that people with vision are going to see valuable directions before it is safe enough to be right for a company to bet its future on it? I don't know anything about those discussions, but from what I've heard so far, I'm glad that we are headed to Palm for Linux. BTW, I know Dianne personally, and find it hard to believe that she berated you unprovoked! I know there seems to be some history there between the two of you, and that you tend to butt heads here and there, and it's very interesting to see different sides of a discussion, but please remember that all discussions here MUST remain polite! (If I sound a bit paranoid that the discussion might turn ugly, well.... I am! Because I've seen it go that way too much. So just be aware that things have to stay polite here. I don't want to lose out on anyone's thoughts, but I have to insist on politeness. )

Innovate or die. Palm has failed to innovate over the years, preferring to rest on their laurels. While not spending the money on R + D/thinking ahead saves money in the short term, this "strategy" also leaves a company dead in the water when the market changes. Hardware is slowly catching up to the intrinsic inefficiencies of PPC. On the other hand, hardware bypassed PalmOS way back in 2001. The writing has been on the wall for years, but only recently has Palm started planning for the future. Any company that fails to employ people with vision who's job is to push the envelope is a Dead Company Walking™. And before I get too self-congratulatory about my own visionary skills, in reality anyone who knows anything about PDAs and cellphones could see that PalmLinux was needed at least as far back as in 2000-2001. The problem at that time was limitations of the Linux kernel. I don't think there was even an ARM Linux project for PPC until just a couple years ago. The bottom line is Palm (a.k.a. the "completely separate Palm Companies™") is not some Mom and Pop corner store and has no excuse for the OS stagnation we've seen. They got lazy and greedy selling $400 Palm Vx that cost $50 to make and failed to innovate both their hardware and software. Now they're paying the price.

Ms. Hackborn's savage attack on me was completely unprovoked. I only gently prodded her with a stick once or twice. While she was sleeping.

Please note: I'm always polite.

Originally Posted by BobR

The move to PalmOS for Linux is definitely a challenge for PalmSource. Both making the move and getting devices rolled out with it. It's no walk in the park, but it's something they are committed to, so we'll just have to watch and see how well they execute. That's something that I asked Michael Mace about, and he said that execution is the most important thing for them now as they try to accomplish some significant things in the next few years. And they have to keep their focus and not try to do everything at once with their limited resources. But I really haven't heard them hyping Palm for Linux too much, nor promising any dates. They showed us the roadmap in San Jose, and they made it very clear what was done, in progress, and just projected. They also said it was a roadmap and a plan, not a promise. I don't see any reason to doubt them right now (they seem to have performed pretty well with the move to Garnet and the move to Cobalt, except for the lack of products on the market yet). But whether they roll out Palm for Linux in June 2006 or June 2007 probably doesn't determine the fate of the company. They would lose a lot of momentum and revenue, but I don't know that it's life or death for them as long as the existing Cobalt is viable.

I heard a few people say at DevCon that PalmLinux was expected in the first half of 2006. Here's a copy of the timeline slide from the PowerPoint presentation they gave at DevCon: http://www.palmfocus.com/images/summ...e/img_4978.jpg We're now 18 months after Cobalt was supposedly first unsheathed and there are still no devices shipping with Cobalt. Cobalt has become the spurned beta for PalmLinux. Not too many companies are going to want to pay PalmSource for the "privilege" to become Cobalt beta testers. Meanwhile, PalmOS 5 (FrankenOS™) is collapsing under the weight of all the things it's now being expected to do. Does PalmSource think PalmOS 5 can keep going for another 2 years when PalmLinux is FINALLY ready for prime time?

Originally Posted by BobR

I talked to one of the vendors working on a Cobalt smartphone, and was amazed to hear that it was actually better for them and easier to build the phone on Cobalt than Garnet. Their story was not about all the problems with Cobalt, but how it solved a lot of the problems that they would have had to do themselves if they had used Garnet.

I would hope Cobalt is easier to build a phone around than PalmOS 5! PalmOS 5 is a rickety, hacked-up kludge of an OS that wasn't supposed to still be around. Cobalt has features purpose-built for ease of use in smartphones. I thought this was a well-known fact.

Originally Posted by BobR

So, yeah, it's a challenge to get to Palm for Linux, but I guess at the moment I'm a believer that they're on track and will get it done.

Palm needs more True Believers like you. Just remember: if they wake you up one night offering you Kool-Aid, don't drink it!

Originally Posted by BobR

Yeah, that may be a bit of a blind spot for PalmSource, but it also goes back to the matter of their focus, I think. UI improvements will pick up soon. Even then, maybe not as fast as we'd like because of the huge market for feature phones that they are also after.

To not update the PalmOS UI after 9 years is beyond ridiculous. It's inexcusable that Palm has not bothered to try and improve on Rob Haitani's original UI work. I feel the UI work he and his team at Handspring performed when they hacked creaky old PalmOS 5 into the uber-slick Treo 600 OS is simply astounding. I'd rather have a polished version of the Treo 600 OS running on PDAs with D-pads than any of the subsequent buggy iterations of PalmOS we've seen over the past two years.

Originally Posted by BobR

A tabbed UI would be really cool on a T5 or LD, with the bigger screens. But I'm not sure I'd want it on a tiny phone screen. I like the idea of showing the icons of open apps, but again probably only for the larger screen devices. How about simply an icon that brings up a drop-down task/app list, and the option to switch to it or close it if it's still running in the background. Heck, maybe even pretend that recently used apps are still running and also offer to close the ones that aren't even running just so people feel more at home with it!

Icons on the DIA selectable by a D-pad and McPhling-style pop-up lists could both work well. The key to effective "Zen of Palm" UI design is minimizing the need for extra movements/taps + also minimizing the need for stylus use. The Treo 600 team understood this better than any other set of PDA designers I've ever seen.

Originally Posted by BobR

You don't really believe that it makes sense to stop developing and fix all the bugs do you? I work with development teams at my company and we all would love the opportunity to rewrite systems or work on the portions of the app that are the biggest pain in the neck to maintain. But there has to be a real business justification to do something like that. I think that's one of the fortunate things about the work PalmSource is doing on Cobalt and Palm for Linux, because they have apparently had the opportunity to a lot of the kinds of "fixing" you are referring to. It's a rare opportunity, so I hope they took good advantage of it! And, while it may not happen soon, I'm actually kind of excited to hear about the next "wild goose chase", aka "next big thing" from PalmSource. But I'm pretty optimistic, and think it might just be really neat!

Ummm... what's the point of putting out buggy, half-baked software and then rushing to put out a new version with more features before you've corrected bugs? Microsoft has been doing that sort of nonsense for years and we all pay the price for that corporate "strategy". It's a shame to see Palm adopting the same sloppy way releasing and supporting their products. I'd rather see an intuitive, efficient PalmOS that does a few things REALLY well than a bloated, buggy, ill-conceived mess that has a ton of incompletely-developed features. PalmOS is starting to sound more and more like PPC these days...

Originally Posted by BobR

I'm curious... you seem to have some significant ties or interest or inside scoop with the BeOS world. Can you share anything about your background that will help us understand where you are coming from?

Thanks again for your thoughts. You're welcome to disagree with everything I've said, but just please be nice!

You mean like am I a jilted/fired former Be employee? Was I once spurned by Dianne at a Be connference? Does Pépé Gassée owe me money from a bar bet from 1998? Am I a former Be investor that lost their shirt when Gassée got greedy and turned down the generous mega-deal Apple offered to get BeOS as the next-generation MacOS? Ummmmm... no.

TVoR