“When PalmSource, Palm’s operating system unit, previewed the Palm OS version 5 at the PalmSource conference in San Jose earlier this year, participants got a chance to see a test version of Palm’s next-generation OS in action.” Read the rest of the story and the comparison chart of PalmOS at ZDNews.
Taking a Sneak Peek at Palm OS 5
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Eugenia Loli
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Okay, Palm stumbles around for awhile, releases OS 4 just before the BE acquisition, and then, scant months later has a new OS in place.
And the capabilities seem familiar to certain other multimedia appliances……
ya, that was the point of buying Be, wasn’t it?
You may also note that the Palm OS 5 is smaller and faster than the competition, and truly preemptively multitasks and manages memory properly and automagically (meaning when you quit apps, they quit and stay quit and you get your memory back not ‘smart minimize’ them onto a stack). In one presentation, David Nagel (CEO, Palmsource) boasted that PalmOS 5 with a few, basic apps can still fit in 4 MB of ROM.
Also, Palm OS 5 marks the BEGINNING of standard multimedia APIs (including graphics and sound).
Let’s just hope they don’t inherit the original Be net_server. 😉
–JM
(They won’t, PalmOS has had its own networking services since version 3.5)
PalmOS never had a real file system because they’re used to doing everything in a small amount of RAM, which would make a file system wasteful.
Unfortunately, storage cards and gigabyte micro drives make it sort of necessary…perhaps in Palm OS 6…
–JM
Maybe now it’ll be worth getting a Palm OS device! (hasn’t been for me, in the past)
“High-resolution 320 x 320-pixel screens are supported.”
I hope that isn’t the highest resolution it can achieve. Perhaps I spoke about the viability of a Palm device.
Oh well, some people can put up with them, more power to ’em!
The last item in the comparison chart intrigues me: PalmSource will provide a new, standards-compliant browser for OS 5.
I wonder if it’s a new browser, or an even trimmer, yet updated Net+.
And i thought palmsource would stay in “stealth” mode until they died. Seriously though, what are the chances that Palm OS 5 is some scaled down variant of BeIA/beos?
That bid about paying 11 million to hire 50 engineers seemed far-fetched to me, not to mention the idea of using palm OS as a future foundation when you own beOS/Beia. But then again, saying little or nothing when MS and Symbian are constantly making noise is not the sharpest thing either.
…is an updated BeOS. Palm, however, seems too busy following the well-worn path blazed by Netscape, Corel, and Novell.
I want one of those cool things. it sounds like they wil have a nifty interface.will they get a word processor with a tourch screen keyboard so i can use 2 styluses and tap away like on the iPaq?
Psion had most these features(and all core features) locked down in their Epoc32 OS in the Psion Series 5, ages ago. I’m putting my money on future Symbian systems, which is based on Epoc32 and has matured through several years of development.
-Knut
I own a Palm. I like, mostly. I consider it a glorified address/date book/ calculator. I think multithreading is overkill for a device like this. I wish they would just get hot-syncing to a reliable state!
Well, duh. Palm OS is very gimpy, and it needs to be brought into the 20th century. EPOC wasn’t the first system that had these features. Why did they waste their time implementing it for the Psion series? The Newton was way beyond EPOC or Palm OS, but it doesn’t mean that the whole world should just stop, and not bother creating a PDA OS at its level.
>>PalmOS never had a real file system
not true: palmos 4.1 has filesystem support (for sd, mmc cards,)
>>get hot-syncing to a reliable state!
whats the problem with hotsyncing? I never heard of any hotsync troubles for years (except that m505 cradle problem)
flo
I don’t have $150-500 to spend on an overpriced daybook+calculator. You seem to have that kind of money, and that’s fine. If that’s all I wanted, I’d spend $60 on some nice paper-based daybook and a TI-32. But I do want a handheld computer. And as people get more and more used to the idea, it seems others do as well.
Palm devices look pretty crude compared to PocketPC and Symbian devices, and regular consumer-types are starting to realize this. They want multimedia. They want real internet access, not just something cheesy like AvantGo. They want a screen that’s big enough to use for more than entering names and dates. Can’t say I blame them. Programmers want multitasking and multithreading to bring all of these useful and fun features to them.
If anything, it’s overkill to have a Palm OS device for nothing more than a “glorified address/date book/ calculator.”
for such device you don’t need multithreading, you’ll need if you want it playing ogg when typing an e-mail, but nothing much, if you are taking notes you can’t at the same time do calculation or setting an appointment, you always do these in separate times.
Less common places please
One of the things that was keeping Palm in business was that they had devices that were affordable to the average student/joe. Some of us can’t afford a 500 or 600 device. Will PalmOS 5.0 still allow hardware cheap enough to be had for $150?q
instead of putting more and more feature, they should keep palm function very basic and work their ass on having this smaller, cost less and use less power. Then , long time after, start to include new feature.
There’s no reason a StrongARM powered device still can’t be inexpensive. I bought an new iPAQ 3150 with a CompactFlash sleeve for US$165. That includes greyscale 320@240 screen, 16 MB of RAM and a 206 MHz StrongARM processor. That’s quite a bit of power compared to what Palm currently offers at that price. There’s no reason Palm can’t offer a PDA with a 133 MHz StrongARM, greyscale 320@240 screen, and 8-15 MB of RAM for under $150.
No, you don’t *need* multithreading. But you don’t need a Palm device at all. Or any handheld computers.
In using my Newton MP2100u or iPAQ (running Dynapad) I often multitask. But I don’t just use it as a hideously overpriced daybook.
A very common senario for me:
I’m on the bus, going to class. I am listening to some mp3s, reading a web page, and working on some code. By the time I get to class, I stop the music, and open up Notes to take notes during lecture. But I don’t stop working on the code or closing Scamper, the web browser. During the lecture, the prof gives us a homework assignment and a test date. So I open up Dates to add the test date, then Todo, where I write down the homework assignment and due date. I also have a running game of Tetris that I go back to when I’m bored.
Under the current Palm OS, I couldn’t do this. Every time I wanted to go back to reading that web page, or writing some code, I’d have to start all over again, finding my place in the web page, trying to figure out what I was coding, or load a saved Tetris game. Now, under PalmOS, a lot of programs save their state when you open a new program, but not all of them.
This may seem unrealistic, but it happens a lot more than you’d expect, once you get used to the fact that you’re not being held back by the gimpiness of the OS.
Again, you’re not going to miss multitasking if all you do is enter the occasional name and date. But there are those of us who actually want to use their handheld computers, rather than just waste their money on a mostly useless calculator.