The emotional online wars about PalmOS are legendary. It used to be that you could stir up an active discussion on any blog by simply saying that Pocket PC was better than PalmOS, or that PalmOS was a "has-been." Trying out Pocket PC was considered a move to the "dark side" and you were in danger of being considered a traitor. And by all means, never dare to say the words "PalmOS is dead!"
My how times have changed. It's true that much of the new perspectives are due to the fact that Cobalt was the future hope of PalmOS and it never made it into a commercial product. (But there were actual working smartphone prototype devices running Cobalt, but then nobody seemed to want it. We may never know the true story of why, but it just didn't happen.)
So many changes. Access has bought PalmSource, and the next generation of the PalmOS is going to be coming out of the Access Linux Platform, which will have a compatibility layer to run "most properly-written" existing Palm software. (That's not so far fetched as you might think... the recent PalmOS also has a similar compatibility layer called PACE, and we made it past that bump just fine.)
Further confusing things is the announcement that Palm has bought back the rights to Garnet. Now the "real" Palm company could be going in at least four different potential directions, one of which brings new hope for PalmOS: (1) Produce a revamp of Garnet to bring it up to date, (2) Create a new Linux based platform for Palm devices, (3) Create a whole new platform for the future based on Jeff Hawkins' mysterious third line of business that is supposed to be announced some time this year and/or (4) Continue to expand the product line with Windows Mobile devices.
So the whole "PalmOS" landscape is obviously quite muddied, and it's not clear which new directions will be a success, or which ones may become the undesired Cobalt of the future. With additional hot competition for creating the most popular mobile platform of the future (including other consortiums of major players, and of course Microsoft and Nokia), there is a lot of uncertainty.
But one thing appears to be certain -- PalmOS is dead. Maybe.
The Register has published
an article that basically mocks PalmOS. It not only claims that PalmOS is dead, but it claims that it is so completely dead that no one even cares to argue the point anymore. They prove this position by pointing to their
previous article about the StyleTap emulation software for Windows Mobile devices. (Whose very existence seems to prove that PalmOS will live on in some manner.) The tag line for the article was "Another nail in Palm OS' coffin." And the point is that despite disparaging comments about the death of PalmOS, people have come to accept that fact so easily now that no one bothered to complain. I guess that the old days of flame wars are over.
Personally, while I also hope for Windows Mobile to flourish, I am hoping that Access and Palm will both provide successful new platforms that carry on and extend the Palm tradition. Competition is good, the PalmOS is like a friend that you don't want to say goodbye to, and there is such a treasure trove of fantastic third party software that is still important to many users like myself.
Furthermore, if you have interacted with any of those small developers or development companies supporting PalmOS (now Garnet), you can't help but appreciate that they are doing the work for more than just a buck. I was at the final PalmSource Developers Conference when Cobalt was still thought to be alive, and you could just feel the excitement. People were not a part of this because they just wanted to make a buck. We all thrived in the delight of the whole PalmOS community.
It's amazing the effort, generosity and kindness that is shown by these developers. Grace even in the face of lots of us nasty users who sometimes seem to be able to do nothing but complain. Losing PalmOS would be more than the loss of an operating system. It would be the loss of a friend and the loss of a whole wonderful ecosystem.
But I'm not ready to give up yet, and The Register can include me among those that stand up to object to the foregone conclusion that PalmOS is dead. Okay, maybe on life support. And the name PalmOS itself is likely to be forever relegated to the history books. But the offshoots and potential green buds of a new spring are still there. There's still much hope. The potential reincarnations of Garnet from Palm, the new Access Linux Platform with Garnet compatibility, and yes, even emulation layers like StyleTap. Long live PalmOS!