My credit card is suffering from swipe fatigue - Mageek
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Palm OS is no more
PALM HAS FORMALLY DECIDED to kill off its Palm OS after a turbulent life which changed the PDA world forever.
In a meeting with investors yesterday, Palm President and CEO Ed Colligan confirmed that the Palm OS is now officially binned after 12 years. The outfit will now concentrate on WebOS.
The proprietary Palm OS appeared in 1996 to widespread acclaim. It was far better than Windows CE or Windows Mobile. The only problems it had were adapting to other devices. It was jacked under the bonnet of the Palm Pilot PDA which became an icon.
In January 2002, Palm set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to develop and license Palm OS called Palm Source.
This was later turned into independent company on October 28, 2003 and while Palm used it, it didn't control it.
Palm Source was bought by Access but in December 2006, Palm gained perpetual rights to the Palm OS source code from the new company. From 2007 Access killed off the name Palm and renamed the software Garnet OS.
The general feeling, however, is that the Palm OS was really a bit too clunky. The PDA fad faded in favour of smart phones and more style than substance gizmos like the iPhone.
Palm also started to get more buddy buddy with its old rival Microsoft with more Windows components on board.
WebOS is more of a modern operating system with all the that most punters come to expect from a smart phone operating system. It has a touchscreen-based graphical user interface and shedloads of applications. Using XHTML, JavaScript and CSS it does not require developers to learn a new language for them to create applications.
It is also Linux based rather than being too proprietary. Above all it is a lot more developer-friendly which means that more applications can be pushed out to punters.
Still, there will be a few people that remember their Palm Pilot fondly and mourn the OS's passing. µ
L'Inq
Ars Technica
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I gotta say, I never got used to PalmOS (to "learn" how to write in order to make the lil' thing understand that I wrote "Home" and not "Bone" was a pain) yet, it seems that whenever you can find something to re-use, then do.
Congratz to Access to use Linux as base for its new OS, It'd be great if it had Opie as part of its design.
The king is dead.. let's hope the prince lives long enough to become king!
"El gato"
My T3 don´t Wifi, the leader cover really look bad, but it works every day without complain, my friends know that without this litle machine I´m lost.
Such a shame to see a design classic go the way of the dodo... but inevitable with technology.
...when the Palm Pre is available in the GSM version. I still rely in my T3 daily!
Is the WebOS based off the IP from BeOS that Palm bought a few years back? BeOs was great, and so fast, would work really well on a PDA/phone I would think.
There is a good article on the Palm situation on this blog He predicted this: http://amccright.blogspot.com/2009/01/palm-tells-current-customers-to-get.html
Yeah, I'm one too. I'll be old and gray before I read all the e-books I downloaded in iSilo format on my Palm. Wouldn't do without it.
I don't WANT my organizer to also be my phone. I HAVE a phone. I HAVE a netbook. I need a computer I can put in my pocket. My T|X is perfectly good and works beautifully, thanks...
Planned obsolescence FTL.