Is Palm OS losing its Mojo?

[Alexander Turcic]

Palm lovers, get out your hankies. According to this CNet article, the Palm operation system might be losing its appeal to software and system developers due to lack of recent updates.

"They've been stuck at (Palm OS Garnet) for two-plus years. It's a pretty ancient operating system that can't handle multitasking, can't handle protected memory, and doesn't have great security, all the things that Cobalt was supposed to deliver," Gartner analyst Todd Kort said. Protected memory helps prevent applications from crashing the entire device, and Cobalt was supposed to have built-in support for authentication frameworks that would allow VPN (virtual private network) connections.

Related: Why PalmSource May Be Right About Multitasking, Credible hints that Palm Inc is planning a new generation of Linux devices, What Palm Inc's Linux OS might look like

[via Palm Addicts]

[Laurens]

Gartner, blah, blah.

[rmeister0]

People still listen to the likes of Gartner and Forrester?

Frankly I wish I could sit in my office all day and pull predictions and projections out of my butt and charge customers large fees for it. I've been reading their crap for over a decade and their batting average sucks.

Palm OS has weaknesses, but my Z22 does what it is intended to do just fine.

[Dick Tracy]

Does WM5 deliver perfectly what Cobalt was supposed to? Not.

[cure]

Does anyone still read c|net any more? When was the last time you read a story that broke on that site first?... just my opinion though....

[dister]

With the new Windows Mobile Software and the build in support for the Visual Studio Development platform for mobile devices Microsoft has made a big step in the right direction.

With the free available Express Editions developers can easily create software for PDAs. Palm is loosing ground, I'm pretty sure about that.

[Laurens]

Do the Express editions allow WM development? I'm pretty sure that for VC++ you need the Standard edition. The Express won't do.

[dister]

Hello Laurens,

Originally Posted by Laurens

Do the Express editions allow WM development? I'm pretty sure that for VC++ you need the Standard edition. The Express won't do.

You are right, just looked it up. You need at least the Standard Edition, which isn't free. My fault, sorry.

Dirk

[Laurens]

There's still the older Embedded VC++, which actually is free.

[Snappy!]

Yeap, there is still the older Embedded Visual Tools that works. I still use them to write apps for HPCs and PPCs. For the most part, you just need the newer SDK installed for the Visual Tools to compile for the newer platform.

My own app is more or less cross platform from HPCs to PPCs all the way to WM5 devices. The only difference for my app between HPCs and PPCs version was the resource file and a bit of GUI code. Other than that, its just a recompile for the platform and cpu.

EDIT: Oh and about PalmOS (which is what this thread is about right?) ... its kinda good news for me. My Palm app which was written 3 yrs ago still works on the latest greatest Palm device and the same binary works from PalmOS 3.1 to PalmOS 5.1 (or is there 5.2?). Hopefully, when they release newer OS, they continue to provide backward compatibility.

[Pride Of Lions]

Originally Posted by rmeister0

Palm OS has weaknesses, but my Z22 does what it is intended to do just fine.

That's the point. Palm OS PDA's aren't completely useless to people who use them as appointment minders and contact info. holders and relatively simple stuff like that. It's the heavy lifting that Palm OS hasn't kept up with. No mobile OS is perfect, I'm sure. Windows Mobile has don'e a better job of being more powerful going forward than Palm OS has.

I just wish that Dell would make an Axim x52v with built-in GPS...