eWEEK.com caught up with PalmSource CTO Larry Slotnick at this week’s developer shindig to get an update on the new Palm OS, forthcoming plans and how the company “integrated” the BeOS ideas into the PalmOS.
PalmSource CTO On the Future of the PDA
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Eugenia Loli
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I wish Palm would develop a desktop operating system for x86 PC’s. They have talanted engineers, and already own a solid foundation (BeOS, PalmOS, Cobalt) to start from. Boy that’d be the day. For some reason, I think Palm would be able to give Microsoft a run for thier money.
Dream on Brad.
Cook said,
“If you look at some of the stuff we’re seeing today, like the Tapwave [Inc. Zodiac], a game-centric device that does PDA well; or the Garmin [International Inc. IQ3600], a GPS that does PDA, we’ll see a lot more like that.”
And later he said,
“I have an iPod and I love it, but there‚s no way in the world I’m going to put my contacts on an MP3 player. It doesn’t make any sense.”
So it’s great to have game machine with PDA, but not MP3 player with PDA?
Palm OS is a very good and well designed operating system. I sometimes wish they had a desktop OS too. Believe me desiging software for embedded devices is a lot more challenging, sometimes fun, than designing for the Desktop environment. I think with their know how and expertise in embedded software design, they”d a great OS that runs on very cheap hardware.
And their new OS now supports multitasking and all sorts of goodies. So, the prospect of that is even more likely. Yeah, man can dream can”t he?
from the interview:
“Something like 40 to 50 percent of the multimedia graphics is Be code.”
well that settles that.
I am eager to see this thing should be interesting. I do believe they needs to push out to larger devices (say a laptop). For a great many people PDAs = useless. Laptops are more useful and i suspect a cobalt based laptop with arm processor would be awesome in power, battery life and size/weight.
Smartphones will kill the Palm, fifty million US users can’t be wrong.
re: cobalt based laptop with arm processor would be awesome in power, battery life and size/weight.
i agree. i have a windows xp laptop that gives me a measely 2.5 hours- 3 hours.
i would LOVE to have a modified cobalt based laptop with arm processor that gives me much longer lifespan yet connect with the web wireless and word process etc.
by the way since desktops are dead, and x86 is an albatross,
why bother with a desktop release? portable is the way to go.
i wonder if arm or superh is better?
Could you please go by something else, I’ve had “Brad” since the relaunch of OSnews long ago, thanks. I don’t need it looking like I said such a messed up thing. Guess I need to be more creative next time.
If a laptop was made wouldn’t the hard drive, CD drive, and big screen kind of kill the power life? The processor is not the only thing that consumes power in a laptop. Palm size computers have long battery life because of small screen size and no hard drive or CD drive.
I do not own a Palm sized computer nor a laptop so I could be wrong.
I would guess the main culprits on power consumption are going to be the the screen, the processor, and wireless capabilities.
for an example on the difference that a processor can make check out apple’s specs on their ibook and powerbooks.
I will never ever buy a PDA. I would buy a smartphone, however. The Treo 600 is definitely getting close to what would make me want to take the leap.
The Treo 600 with the Cobalt OS, high res display, wifi, and Java compatibility would definitely be my ideal. The Java part is least likely, however 🙁
I’d also like to see some improvements to user input. Text recognition isnt great. Tiny QWERTY keyboard is not great. Any other solutions?
we want a desktop OS based on palm!!!! we don’t want no embedded palm desktop either. Make some palm-based os for amd64 (x86-64) and call it some other name. people will buy someone start a petition
how would it be more successful than beos?
but in the portable sphere where batterylife and power consumption is essential, and everything is more integrated
it would be beneficial.
while the screen and lcd would use lots of power, arm risc uses less power than x86
SGI sold pentium 4/itanium workstations running NT/2000 at a huge price premium.
*yawn* how is this any different than what any clone vendor offers?
if I were SGI i would consider selling dual or quad Opteron CPU, running on a modified Palm OS6/Cobalt/Be OS, with NUMA aware OS architecture, and proprietary SGI 3d modelling software and superior sound.
I think Palm needs to change their license practicies and make it easier to license palmos, as a desktop version is possible (However, palmOS would still be embedded) .. it would also boot faster than any desktop OS. They need to be more flexible with their licenses like microsoft. Furthermore, the idea of PlamOS ported to x86-64 excites me. I use Opterons here and I must say they are GREAT. Oddly enough, i run them side by side with athlon xps, celerons and pentiums…
The big guys who make decesions are WAAAAAAYYY too conservative. They never seem to get off their asses to look out of the window. (This is, regarding PalmOS on desktop and SGI making hi-end desktop multimedia dream)
“Could you please go by something else, I’ve had “Brad” since the relaunch of OSnews long ago, thanks. I don’t need it looking like I said such a messed up thing. Guess I need to be more creative next time.”
No. Thanks.
“Smartphones will kill the Palm, fifty million US users can’t be wrong.”
I feel sick to my stomach. I actually agree with ‘blah.’
I’ve got to go lay down…
“Smartphones will kill the Palm, fifty million US users can’t be wrong.”
not true. the market for PDAs is small, always has been small, always will be small. Smart phones are canibalizing some pda sales no doubt about it by for the most they are expanding the user base.
smart phones have already passed the peak shipment of pdas, which was around 20 million units, by a large margin.
And smart phone won’t kill palmone or palmsource. Its a huge opportunity. If palmsource can produce a nice phone oriented gui (no stylus input) and price it effectively then palmsource can cash in.
Likewise, the treo 600 indicates the future of palmone which is why they purchased handspring. think of it this way, the entire pda market might be 10-15 million units this year. if palmone produces a nice smart phone, again in the mass market price range ($200-300), then palm could theoretically sell that quantity on one product.
don’t listen to whiners who tell you palmone can’t compete in smartphones. its is not true. skyworks, analog devices, infineon, broadcom, qualcomm, texas instruments, and philips semicondutor units are the ones that control the volumes and hence cost curve.
the one thing that could screw palmone is the GSM association’s monopolitic licensing fees. you thought qualcomm’s 5-10% was bad well those monopolitics gsm club mates want to charge you 20-30% for licensing.
correction
“monopolistic GSM club mates”