“Palm Inc. has revealed that it will release a 32-bit operating system and devices next year, and that it is gearing up for a fight against Microsoft Corp. to maintain its lead in the enterprise.” It seems that Palm is going full speed, with the help of the Be engineers and the Be IP they bought recently from Be, Inc.
Palm Plans To Create 32-Bit OS
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Hmm… i’m not very surprised. However it’s good news!
the PalmVilla running BePalmIA ?
Sounds like BeIA is coming back quick, I don’t think they would have time to do a ground up or even heavy rewrite in this amount of time. What do Palms run for a CPU, and how long did it take Be to do the x86 port, a week? (don’t hold me to this but i think i read it a few places). Sounds like palm could be plotting a quick turn around with their new property. Course boxing up BeOS R6 and selling it for 100 bucks and sell a million copies could make some quick money to.
… Palms ran on some form of ARM or StrongARM RISC chips. Supposed to have a lot of bang for the buck, considering their relatively low power consumption and clock speeds.
I wonder if Palm has had this 32bit OS in development for some time, and has hauled in the Be engineers to put the finishing touches on it? Somehow, that doesn’t make sense … if you ever read “The Mythical Man Month,” it talks about how throwing more programmers or engineers at a project doesn’t necessarily increase speed or quality, and can in fact mess up a project.
If they’re bringing in the Be engineers for a porting job over to the Palm chipset, that could be interesting. Can’t remember the exact details, but BeOS was ported over to x86 pretty quickly; something like a month or so. They had some Intel engineers to help them, too, which was handy. (back when Andy Groves was still chairman of Intel, and was touting BeOS as a wonderful example of showing just how powerful their chips were)
Who knows? If Palm comes out with a color handheld that’s BeOS-based, and they can (ha! somehow!) throw in voice-recognition, I’ll buy one
They would rotate the screen 90 degrees. I want a wide display…
so does this in any way that beos r6 or an os to that affect could also be released??
I figure, I don’t care how BeOS/BeIA are implemented or used, as long as they continue to be used and improved. If Palm comes out with a better device, via BeIA/BeOS, great… anything to knock Microsoft down a notch in their endless quest for total supremacy.
I bet this thing is not even based on BeOS/BeIA, though perhaps inspired by its “modern” features.
The older Palm devices run the Motorola Dragonball processors. The new ones(M500/505, etc.) run an (Strong)ARM processor.
the Palms use the Dragonball Z (16MHz) or the Dragonball VZ (33MHz) in there handhelds. However, the Compaq iPaq uses a 200MHz StrongArm (of course they need that much to run Microsuck). If Palm is going to bring out a 32 bit OS I would imagine that they would completely redesign the board design. If that includes a new kind of processor, does that mean that legacy Palm devices (like the new m500/505 units) will not be compatible with new OS? I would imagine that they would try to extend the life of the Dragonball, but that is pure hypothesis. I would be interested if ELQ has any info on that?
Sean O’Rear
Feylen on BeShare
Would that OS happen to have a 64bit journal file system?
I have no links to back this up, but I’ve read that the more recent ARM cores have support for 68K quasi-emulation. From what I understand, it’s really just a few extra instructions that make emulating 68K based CPU’s (like the dragonball series) MUCH faster. With this, they are going to provide binary support for the old palms on the new palms. Which is a damned elegant way of doing it when you look at WinCE’s multiple arch strategy and lack of fat binaries.
Those models and the newer m125 use the DragonBall VZ chips. PalmOS 5 will be the first version to support the ARM processor designs.
Next year sounds right if Palm is going to cook up new hardware running BeOS (Or something like it). After seeing an ARM/RISC Acorn box, I had always hoped ARM/RISC would have made more of dent. The only big name I ever saw try to do something on the descktop was IBM.
I wish Palm Inc. the best of luck, and I hope they put out something that doesn’t suck. Powerful desktop computing doesn’t really need a lot of electric, throw a lot of heat, or use cases with a large physical footprint.
is there a dragonball gt chip?
ok palm making a 32 bit os… wonder if it will be handheld territory
or (also?) desktop market….
I cant see any reason why Palm would want to release a Desktop OS, its not thier core business and it has to be one of the most cut-throat businesses there is, why should they risk it?
I cant see any reason why Palm would want to release a Desktop OS, its not thier core business and it has to be one of the most cut-throat businesses there is, why should they risk it?
Who said they were? – They are (or will be) releasing a new, updated 32bit version of PalmOS for handheld devices. This will most likely not look anything like BeOS, not act anything like BeOS, and generally not be BeOS – It’s going to be a newer version of PalmOS, possibly with a few media / internet centric features of BeOS/BeIA built in.
“Daryl Dudey” said:
“I cant see any reason why Palm would want to release a Desktop OS, its not thier core business and it has to be one of the most cut-throat businesses there is, why should they risk it?”
Here are a few reasons that come to mind.
1. They are splitting their Hardware and OS business into two seperate companies.
2. The new “OS” company will do ONLY “OS” stuff.
3. If they are making an OS ( basically BeOS/BeIA with compatibility for PalmOS apps ), then why not also release a Desktop version?
4. The cost of releasing a Desktop version is not a lot, if they are already releasing a “handheld” version. It’s like, once you make an i-Mac, it’s not a big deal to create a “Blue” as opposed to a “Red” one, etc.
5. They are aware of who would DEFINITELY buy the Desktop version. They have a petition from BeFAQ’s of ready made customers. They would at least break even and maybe do more through community marketing. I.E. BUG’s, etc. There is no real “risk” here. They are already doing the work.
6. If they are successful in gaining a decent amount of market share, then they increase their bottom line by a magnitude. Look at Apple, they only have 5 percent of the market share for OS’s, but they have ton’s of profit and cash on hand. They are a very healthy company. You don’t have to beat Microsoft, just bite into them a little.
I disagree with #2 there, Imaginereno. A handheld OS is vastly different than a desktop OS. It’s like saying that Freightliner makes trucks, so they should be able to just change a few bits and make an ultra-compact car as well…
I do think that Palm would not be unwise to release a desktop OS. If Be could play just a little but more catch up they would be on par with even the latest releases of Windows and Apple. We all know what happens when MS get’s spooked and suddenly a whole crop of “Innovations” would spring forth preventing the Palm units from properly connecting to Windows. Outlook synchronisation would become a huge hassle and unreliable at best.
Palm could easilly release BeOS r6 and claim “Our stuff runs great on Windows, but even better in BeOS!” If r6 is as close to gold as we’ve been led to believe, then Palm wouldn’t have to invest too much to see if it works. If it fails, bummer. If it succeeds… whoa.
<hope>
4. The cost of releasing a Desktop version is not a lot, if they are already releasing a “handheld” version. It’s like, once you make an i-Mac, it’s not a big deal to create a “Blue” as opposed to a “Red” one, etc.
This is a fairly large assumption. The only way that this analogy could be correct is if they put a caseless palm into an ATX case, and replaced the screen with a monitor. The fact of the matter is that making an os run on the *millions* of possible pc configurations that exist today is MUCH harder than making a small, hardware specific, PDA version of that same os.
If they are successful in gaining a decent amount of market share, then they increase their bottom line by a magnitude. Look at Apple, they only have 5 percent of the market share for OS’s, but they have ton’s of profit and cash on hand. They are a very healthy company. You don’t have to beat Microsoft, just bite into them a little.
What good would it do Palm, inc. to release a not fully tested/supported operating system? If they tried to release a half baked PC based OS, all their sales would suffer, due to a downturn in company image. Apple is a long time player in the PC market, and make no mistake; while MacOS makes up only about 5% (your number) of desktops, Apple as a company was the largest computer seller in the world last Christmas. They are a very old, well established hardware/software company who has a well secured niche in the market.
Also, it is no secret that Office accounts for over 50% of the profits of Microsoft as a whole. Macs run Office too, otherwise they would be useless for inter-communication in (non technical) business settings.
So in short: if Palm could release a proprietary hardware box capable of running their new os (BeBox with G4
:)), then they could probably succeed at unleashing a new os into the world in a profitable way.
You can count the number of enterprise viable PC (x86) deskotop operating systems on one hand, and as the enterprise environment for which Microsoft provides allmost all desktops is EXACTLY Palm’s current customer base. As much as Palm hates Microsoft, most Palm users are Windows users, and Palm puts loads of work into making the device compatible with Windows, because they know that the way to make money is to be at the right place at the right time. Starting their own desktop os will be nothing more than a headache, if Palm chooses to navigate that route. Sure, geeks will think it is a cool new alternative, but Palm doesn’t have the OpenSource community’s backing like Linux, and it doesn’t have the hardware experience and groundwork laid by Microsoft, and it doesn’t have the niche market like Apple. If Palm attempts to produce a commercially viable desktop OS with the intention of making money, they will fail.
Although porting the core OS to PC wouldn’t be much effort writing drivers for every device would be.
>A handheld OS is vastly different than a desktop OS. It’s like saying
that Freightliner makes trucks, so they should be able to just change a
few bits and make an ultra-compact car as well…
Not at all, most businesses are cut-throat. Saab make cars, trucks and fighter jets and a few other things. I don’t suppose they do this because it’s easy.
The only limit it your imagination and will. Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t.
First of, what’s this 32-bit OS stuff? The Dragonball is a 32-bit processor so the current PalmOS could be called a 32-bit OS. It has a rather non-32-bit memory allocation scheme though…
They are most likely *not* releasing a desktop OS. Who brought that up? This is not even hinted at in the article in case some of you didn’t read it. Just because BeOS is a ‘pure’ desktop OS doesn’t mean Palm is entering the desktop space. BeIA is more geared towards embedded systems and such.
Did you note the use of the word “adopt” in there? That would imply that they are taking an existing peice or pieces of code and adapting it. The article implies that the code is BeOS. So it’s probably not a case of writing something from scratch but using Be programmers to do it.