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@surur: I like the Seymour app you posted there. I can only think of a couple situations where I would use that...but I must admit that I really would like to have that WHEN I needed it. Mainly, it would be nice if I could have both my outliner and Word Doc available at once. Waiting for WordToGo to boot every time I switch gets a little old.
@Hackborn: Thank you for joining us! I must say your comments about your hardware constraints add a little light. Let me see if I can summarize properly (and correct me if I'm wrong):
You are unable to truly program for the high-end devices because Palm still wants the new OS to run on the economy devices. Hence, your comment about putting the Linux onto a 16RAM/16Flash device.
I really hope I got that wrong, because you are about to get rained with all kinds of comments about "holding back and crippling" the high-end devices for the sake of the economy devices. The fact that the Zire21/32 series actually uses POS5 is still a mystery to me. They have lo-rez screens, so compatibility is out the window, anyway. They should've been POS4 devices, so that POS5 could have been programmed for the big guns. You have a T5 and a Life-Drive. You should be programming to max out THOSE devices. Let the cheapies run on yesterday's OS for now. People who get the cheap stuff aren't looking for latest & greatest.
Whoa....way off topic. My apologies. Back on subject:
I do agree that some programs don't need to run in the background (addressbook, etc). Once again, does the load go to the developer or the user? A part of me would like to have something akin to the "nice" function in Linux: let me set the background priorities of apps. However, that feature itself would take a load.
Cooperative task-switching is great for squeezing the most performance out of a device, but it relies on all the programmers playing nice with each other. Multi-tasking has a high overhead cost. Remember how PPCs had a much more powerful processor, yet seem to run the same speed of POS4 devices? That's why.
Apple Computer use to do threaded task-switching, etc up to MacOS9. It made for a very fast system. However, many programs and extensions were starting to not play nice with each other. Stability was going down the tubes. Programmers were whining about how difficult it was to program for the Mac. Things had simply become too complex. Once the hardware became powerful enough, Apple switched to a robust, multi-tasking, protected memory system (OS X). Sure, it was a massive CPU-drain, but the new processors could take it, and now the user had stability and customized multi-tasking.
I love OS X on my G4, but it would have been silly to try to put that on my old PowerPC. When PocketPCs first came out, I saw it the same way: their design concept was stupid-silly.
But now we have the Hardware. I don't give a flying zip about your 16MB devices. Let the PowerPCs run MacOS9, and let the 16MB devices run POS5 or POS4. I want the LifeDrive running full-bodied, mutli-tasking Palm-Linux, not some diluted OS that was designed for a Zire31.
Okay, I'm done (for now). The PalmSource guys have done some great magic in the past, so I know they have some magic prepping for the future. I'm mostly fearful that PalmOne will mess up the hardware and force PalmSource to streamline and cripple their upcoming OS.
- Jim
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