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They sold out to MS because the idiots at Palm couldn't find their butt with a flashlight and both hands. Seriously in 2001 the CEO of Palm stood infront of a crowd at CES and stated our users don't want color, sound etc. It was the beginning of the end because by the time they figured out that yes. Not only do users want color and sound they also want the ability to multitask. Something that POS (Notice that Palm OS and Peice of **** share the same acronym.) STILL to this day doesn't really do. Well it sort of does it in a craptacular manner. My point is Palm doomed them selves because they had management who didn't have a clue or simply didn't have the resources to really revamp the OS from the ground up. I'm willing to bet there is legacy code in POS that dates back to v1. Because POS never had its OS X its Windows 2000. It never had its rewrite. All Palm has been doing is slapping on a new addition to the house and calling it NEW and improved!
It isn't. It sucks and the Pocket PC or Windows Mobile (ick I hate that name.) kicks the living snot out of POS right now in pretty much every way imaginable. Heck Palm is so lost that they are trying to pull an Apple. they purchased some *nix company in China that has experience with mobile versions of *nix and right now is trying to migrate POS over to a *nix flavor of OS.
Unfortunately unlike Apple its too little, too late.
Palm went to Windows because they didn't want to stay stuck in the mobile equivalent of DOS.

This is one of those times where, if MacRumors.com had a Karma Points system (and if I, in turn, had some Karma points) I would Karma-bump the heck outta this post. It's so true, and it's so absolutely dead-on in it's critical analysis of the situation that there's little, if anything, to be added to it.

Apple went to "something else", starting with the Copeland project, because they realized even way back then in the B.S. (that is, Before Steve -- hey, lookie, another awesome acronym!) that Mac OS Classic was a technological cul-de-sac. It was exactly as SilliconAddict has described PalmOS -- er, I mean POS. (You know, I really, really, really have to remember that one. God, I'm still laughing over it as I write this.)

Even Microsoft went to "something else", although unlike Apple they chose to go with their own in-house-developed successor, since DOS 8bit, Win8, Win16, and Win9x code was essentially an obsolete OS technology.

So here we have Palm, arguably one of the greatest innovators (though not really a pioneer, as the kudos and credit for that goes to Apple's Newton development group) of PDAs ever, going down the same hole into the same quagmire that plagued the likes of Commodore, Sony's BetaMax, etc. You'd think with all the MBAs and other college-educated people they've hired over the years that this would be abundantly obvious *and* fundamentally core to their business operational mindset. However, it's quite clear that it isn't.

Thus go the way of all who do not study history and learn from it.
 
All this talk about Palm needing to modernize their OS, or it is outdated, or needing to re-write is absolutely hilarious.

On a phone, I want to use its features quickly and easily. When I have to schedule an appointment, I want to enter that appointment as easily as possible. When I want to add something to my to-do list, I want to do it easily and quickly. And first and foremost, I want to be able to look up a contact and dial it as quickly as possible.

A phone is not a personal computer. I couldn't care less about multitasking, rewriting, "modern" OSes (whatever "modern" means). "Modern" features and look is just eye candy and/or toys. A mobile phone is a gadget of convenience, and it should be convenient to use. Even PalmOS 1.0 was convenient. It was just as easy to use its contact and calendar features as any so-called "modern" OS is today.

I would really like to know how "modernizing" the OS on my phone would help me look up contacts, dial contacts, enter to-do list entries, and entering calendar entries any better that I could today.

Again, I repeat: a phone is not a personal computer. There's no point in treating it as such.
 
To illustrate your point, PalmOne (if that's what the PalmOS Group is called this month...) is doing the aforemnetioned ground-up rewrite of PalmOS now (it should be available to devs soon if they're on schedule) and it's based on Linux. Stable, massively featureful, full PalmOS 5 backward-compatibility, and futureproof.

Yet the hardware arm of Palm has said it might not buy the new sytem from the software arm. I have to imagine this has to do with posturing/playing the good little beoch to Microsoft. We know what happens to companies which partner with Microsoft... that they have proves prima facia that they're unequipped to run a company.

I hate to keep dragging my personal employment history into the discussion here, but this is *hardly* the first time this kind of factor has been in play.

I worked for what was, until (talk about timing!) April 1st of this year, a fully-Sony-staffed technical support facility. We provided tech support for Sony computers, monitors, CLIÉ PDAs, WebTV, Satellite tv, TVs, DVD players, VCRs, phones, all the Business and Professional stuff, etc. Yet (with the exception of B&P), our facility competed for tech-supporting our products with other tech support agencies out there, including our own out-sourced tech support partners.

Sony frequently would not include their own subsystems (CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, writers, etc.) in their own products because they wouldn't (some say "couldn't" but I don't buy that) let themselves have their own inventory cheap enough in a lot of cases. Heck, for that matter, it wasn't until sometime in early 2004 (basically 1 year and change before we all got kicked out) that they switched from 500MHz P3-based Hewlett-Packard desktop computers as our actual "agent workstations" to 3.2GHz P4-based VAIOs. For that matter (and yes this is a rant, but it's also pertinent to this aspect of the discussion) it wasn't until like the last year-and-a-half, maybe not-quite-two-years of our operations that they managed to get more than a handful of current-model Sony computer products into the building AND into the hands of those of us doing the tech support. (The reason for this largely relates to the fact that we as the "tech support" division were the red-headed step-child, and basically a money pit, and we had to actually *buy* our own products at regular retail prices from our manufacturing divisions, instead of them sending them to us.) Now, make of that what you will.

I go into this to basically say that it doesn't surprise me to see any company playing the "house divided" strategy. The only problem is that it is a losing strategy. Whether religious or not, people should at least look *this* up in the Bible as a basic, common sense 101 lesson on how not to run your personal life or your business. Ah, but I digress...
 
hahahaa... ROFL...

this guy is a fool...

i wonder if creative said the exact same thing back in 2001 reguarding mp3 players?

And so was then-Sony head Nobuyuki Idei, who turned down Steve Jobs' business proposition to bring them aboard on ITMS. No, Sony frackin' insisted on going with Connect.

And so was Commodore back in the 1980s when they so arrogantly believed they didn't need to advertise or honor their cooperative advertising agreements with their dealers, or really help to grow and support their dealers, since "We are Commodore! People will come to *us* for computers!"

So many stupid people... so little time...
 
i hope apple comes out with a shoe phone, something the pink panther or inspector gadget would use.

Would you believe agent Maxwell Smart?

shoe_phone.jpg
 
Apple could very easily set up their 'own' cell network.. the same way Virgin Mobile, TracPhone, and several other cell phone companies have done.

Not by building towers and cell sites.. but by buying blocks of numbers from an existing large carrier and rebranding it as their own.

Of course, for voice and text usage, this gets expensive for the customer.. but for things like downloads of video and music files, they could simply tack on a 'wireless' surcharge.

For instance, a particular iTunes song could cost say.. $2 if downloaded with a computer.. but $2.50 if downloaded 'direct to iPod'.

It would work very simular to the way those 'pre-paid' cell phones work. You buy the iPod from the store, no contract to sign, no comitments. Take it home and 'activate' it for wireless access, then pay for what you download, and pay nothing if you never use the wireless features.

iPod wireless. Don't talk. Listen.

Send me a free 17" MacBook Pro and you can have that slogan, Steve!

That makes perfect sense to me. Especially since the data center Apple just bought would be the perfect rig of the increased download demand, as well as billing for such a service.
 
All this talk about Palm needing to modernize their OS, or it is outdated, or needing to re-write is absolutely hilarious.

On a phone, I want to use its features quickly and easily. When I have to schedule an appointment, I want to enter that appointment as easily as possible. When I want to add something to my to-do list, I want to do it easily and quickly. And first and foremost, I want to be able to look up a contact and dial it as quickly as possible.

A phone is not a personal computer. I couldn't care less about multitasking, rewriting, "modern" OSes (whatever "modern" means). "Modern" features and look is just eye candy and/or toys. A mobile phone is a gadget of convenience, and it should be convenient to use. Even PalmOS 1.0 was convenient. It was just as easy to use its contact and calendar features as any so-called "modern" OS is today.

I would really like to know how "modernizing" the OS on my phone would help me look up contacts, dial contacts, enter to-do list entries, and entering calendar entries any better that I could today.

Again, I repeat: a phone is not a personal computer. There's no point in treating it as such.

The same point could largely be made about cars, but I don't think either of us would want to be driving a Model T or Model A Ford these days, would we?

The term "Modern" as applied to operating systems has little to do with the interface per se. It primarily concerns the underpinnings of the OS and how forward-looking and/or open-ended it is. Older operating systems, if you want to look at it in this way, were very geared to the hardware of their times, and every time you added a new hardware feature or some new kind of technology came out, you wound up making this big patchwork of an OS, in which you had either an out-dated or obsolete "core" around which was stuck, somewhat unglamorously, lots of crap to allow it to do stuff it wasn't really designed for. Then, you wound up having to write patches for the patches, etc., ad infinitum.

Apple tried to go the internal development route, but that didn't work because their departmental infrastructure was eating them from the inside out at the time and basically poisoned all of their new projects. They considered BeOS because it was an incredibly modern OS at the time that was very capable, unbelievably good at multitasking, memory protection, multimedia tasks, etc. However, that company was so shaky that when Apple decided not to go with them, they collapsed. One of the products which was introduced and sold and almost immediately recalled that used a version of BeOS was Sony's eVilla (you just have to love that name -- try pronouncing it out loud to get the full effect).

Ultimately, they went with NeXT's BSD- and Mach-Kernel-based NeXTStep (which after a bunch of time and effort and -- since lots of it is based on Open Source software, there were a healthy amount of community contributions to) and hence we now have Mac OS X.

I'll leave it to actual developers and/or coders here to better explain and refine (and/or correct) what I've said here, should you wish greater detail beyond what I am able to -- and therefore have -- provided above.

The whole point of going with a modern OS implemented for an imbedded market (i.e. "Mac OS X Mobile") is it gives you much more direct (and probably better implemented and/or better-grounded) access to modern technologies. Everything from basic I/O tasks that reside in the Kernel to audio processing to doing H.264 decoding to having access to IPv4 or IPv6, are all examples of things which a modern OS could do a better job of providing and/or backing.

From what I understand, PalmOS is something that was designed to first and foremost give you basic notepad and daily organizer functionality. When they wrote, as you say, PalmOS 1.0, they happened to implement a way for third parties to write software that could run on it. This has been both a benefit and a bane of PalmOS's existence. First off, they now have the same issues of backwards-compatibility and storage space and memory use/abuse that a regular computer OS has. I said it was both a benefit and a bane; but there's actually two parts to the "bane" side. The first I've already mentioned, but the second is the fact that since apps have been written which can do darn near any conceivable task, people keep wanting more and more and more. And this then goes back to the "patchwork" I described earlier in talking about "older" computer OSs.

Then people want multimedia, and color screens, and apps to take advantage of it, and they want Palm to incorporate DSPs so they can play music, and of course that brings along with it all of the extra patching to then allow for the existence of, and permit the use of, an on-board DSP. And now you want WiFi? Well, shoot, now we gotta have IPv4 as well, and support for TCP/IP, none of which was ever a part of the original concept of PalmOS.

And even if you don't want or need any of those features in your own PDA, I'm sorry but that's really just too bad. Go live in a cave if you like, but if you buy a new PDA, guess what: you're gonna get all that stuff.

And at some point, all of this stretches an "older" OS just a bit too far, or it becomes a bit absurd with all the hoops and turns and wiggling that PalmOne's coders have to go through, so then they say, "Aw **** it, let's just re-write the thing."

Apple comes to this without any of *that* sort of legacy. Doubtless there will be no Newton code on this thing anywhere, but what Apple's got is Mac OS X, which means they also have the power (albeit somewhat indirectly) of an Open Source OS -- Linux. And in case you weren't aware, there are already numerous "imbedded" implementations of Linux -- phones, PDAs, game systems, kiosks, etc. -- all of which are data points and collective experience opportunities which ALREADY EXIST that Apple can exploit.

So no, having a "modern" OS is not a bad thing. It's actually a supremely awesome thing. What you're concerned about is having something that is intuitive AND efficient AND appropriate to the world of telephone interfaces for the user interface on the device you'd go and buy yourself.

All I can say, based on past performance, is give Apple a chance.

Now, here's a larger picture thought to ponder...

If Apple goes to market with the iPhone, then this is going to open up (to some extent) the viability of a F/OSS community cell phone. And this is a really good thing as well because it represents a non-commercial, enthusiast entrance into what up until now has been a totally proprietary, locked-down OS-based product world. It has the potential to do to cell phones what Linux has inspired in Mac OS X.
 
Now, here's a larger picture thought to ponder...

If Apple goes to market with the iPhone, then this is going to open up (to some extent) the viability of a F/OSS community cell phone. And this is a really good thing as well because it represents a non-commercial, enthusiast entrance into what up until now has been a totally proprietary, locked-down OS-based product world. It has the potential to do to cell phones what Linux has inspired in Mac OS X.

There are already GNU/Linux based cellphones. And what about the iPhone implies that it would be open in a way that, say, an average Nokia isn't? I appreciate they ported GNU/Linux to the iPod, but for the most part the reason similar things haven't happened on more regular cellphones has been an issue of the amount of work involved, with it being somewhat harder to write a GSM stack from scratch and port a kernel than it is to simply port an off-the-shelf kernel. (And I guess there's the additional issue that there are six zillion cellphones using about one quillion completely incompatible hardware platforms, whereas there are only a handful of MP3 players and only one that's achieved marketshare heaven.)
 
There are already GNU/Linux based cellphones. And what about the iPhone implies that it would be open in a way that, say, an average Nokia isn't? I appreciate they ported GNU/Linux to the iPod, but for the most part the reason similar things haven't happened on more regular cellphones has been an issue of the amount of work involved, with it being somewhat harder to write a GSM stack from scratch and port a kernel than it is to simply port an off-the-shelf kernel. (And I guess there's the additional issue that there are six zillion cellphones using about one quillion completely incompatible hardware platforms, whereas there are only a handful of MP3 players and only one that's achieved marketshare heaven.)

Oh, sure. But GNU/Linux could slowly introduce a standardized set of cell phone hardware platforms to build from, just like Intel and AMD and ATI (now a part of AMD, of course) and NVidia produce reference platform hardware that then anyone can make a compatible motherboard/daughter card from, what needs to happen is to have one particularly successful and particularly popular cell phone interface, and then (potentially) everyone would be clamoring to sell it to their customers.

Now, the difference between cell phones and computers is in the history. Cell phones achieved popularity and mass market penetration before a unifying hardware platform or OS platform came into being; whereas computers didn't achieve that kind of success until afterward. So really the dynamic and all the sequencing here is different.
 
The real influence the cellphone companies (at least, the ones not stuck in the 1980s as far as their network infrastructure goes) have on phone purchasing is the ability to subsidize phones that fit their model.

The fact Apple can't expect carriers to subsidize their phones is one issue they have to deal with.

NEWS:
November 23, 2006 CNN
NEW YORK (AP) -- Cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced Wednesday.


Given the above news, NO cellphone company may soon be subsidizing ANY phones.
 
NEWS:
November 23, 2006 CNN
NEW YORK (AP) -- Cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced Wednesday.


Given the above news, NO cellphone company may soon be subsidizing ANY phones.

Well, it's a totally separate subject that's off-topic for this thread, but I would like to quote one single sentence from the related CNN news article.


CNN.com said:
The new rules will take effect Monday and expire in three years.

So, here's my question: If these rights are so important and have been recognized as being so important, then why would they want to deliberately sunset those same laws? Something here doesn't smell right.
 
NEWS:
November 23, 2006 CNN
NEW YORK (AP) -- Cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced Wednesday.


Given the above news, NO cellphone company may soon be subsidizing ANY phones.

All it says is that cellphone owners can break the locks. It doesn't say cellphone operators have to help them. It also refers to specific instances where the software itself has to be modified to unlock a phone. It is already legal, because it's not a copyright violation, to unlock, for example, Nokia phones, whose locking code is actually algorithmically generated and therefore requires no copyright violation to use.

Truth is, most countries have no laws against breaking SP locks, and many countries, notably most in Europe, have laws forcing operators to unlock phones on demand. And yet most countries still have operators that sell subsidized phones in exchange for contracts. SP locks are there not so much because the phone is subsidized so much as to help enforce the contract, and reduce churn by making it more expensive to switch carrier.

So no, this change will make no difference as far as subsidized handsets go.
 
NEWS:
November 23, 2006 CNN
NEW YORK (AP) -- Cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced Wednesday.


Given the above news, NO cellphone company may soon be subsidizing ANY phones.

Sure they will. They give you the phone at a discounted rate, or free, if you sign a service contract for X number of years.. which is how they get their money back.

The new rules are intended for people who buy the phones at full price, or decide to move to a competing carrier after they have fulfilled their obligations under their service contract/agreement.

The people this might sting would be outfits like Virgin Mobile, TracPhone, and other 'pre-paid' wireless companies, who often sell their phones at or below cost because they'll make up the money in sold airtime.

They hook you with the low price and no contract or monthly fee, but then sock you with .25 cents a minute or more airtime charges.
 
Oh, sure. But GNU/Linux could slowly introduce a standardized set of cell phone hardware platforms to build from, just like Intel and AMD and ATI (now a part of AMD, of course) and NVidia produce reference platform hardware that then anyone can make a compatible motherboard/daughter card from, what needs to happen is to have one particularly successful and particularly popular cell phone interface, and then (potentially) everyone would be clamoring to sell it to their customers.
That would take a degree of cooperation and coordination I've never seen in that environment. There's also the not-so-small issue that there is, so far as I can see, no public, free-software, GSM, UMTS, or IS-95/AMPS stacks and someone would have to write one.

...in an environment where, as yet, they can't even run the software they write. Porting the Linux kernel to the iPod and Nintendo DS was relatively simple, Linux pre-existed, and it was Linux's built-in functionality - the ability to run GNU - that was desired. But a cellphone OS needs to, fundamentally, be a cellphone at the end of the process.

Now, the difference between cell phones and computers is in the history. Cell phones achieved popularity and mass market penetration before a unifying hardware platform or OS platform came into being; whereas computers didn't achieve that kind of success until afterward. So really the dynamic and all the sequencing here is different.

Bear in mind the race for standards isn't even close to over right now. The most popular standard in the US, CDMA2000, appears to be about to become completely obsolete. UMTS is going to get a new air interface courtesy of the 3GPP Long Term Evolution project, and WiMAX is starting to be deployed, initially as an Internet access system, but in the long term - well, who knows? All you need is SIP phone software running over it and...

And that's all "By 2010" stuff. While all of this is in the air, there's no real notion of where these devices are heading in terms of capabilities.

So the hardware certainly isn't settled. The upper layers of cellphone operating systems are likely to be in flux. It just doesn't strike me as likely that the iPhone is going to come about as some great unifying force, where every cellphone maker will go "You know what? We should use the same hardware as Apple, but put GNU/Linux on it." More likely, the various custom systems will continue to make up the mainstream, both on the software and hardware side, with radically different phones getting their own radically different OSes.
 
Long time Mac Addict!

I have had a lot of Apple products in my life (see below) and I have a Treo650. I would dump it in a heartbeat and pick up an iPhone. Especially if it has intigration with iLife apps. I'm sick of having to run flakey software just to hear my phone. I'm on my second 650 in 6 months (Speaker quit working) and while the Palm OS is outdated, I wouldnt touch Windows Mobile with a 10' pole. I'm excited with the prospect of an Apple phone.

My Stuff:
Mackbook Pro 15" 2.16 ghz w/Glossy Screen:D
Powerbok 12" (Cat killed it though) :mad:
Silver iPod mini
iPod Shuffle
Palm Treo650
Wife's Stuff:
Intel iMac Core Duo 2ghz
iPod Nano
Other:
iMac G5
20gb Ipod (Sons)
Pink iPod Mini (Daughters)
Airport Wireless Home Network
 
I just bought a Nokia 6682 and find the Symbian OS Smart Phone to be a wonderful phone. I will not be buying an iphone unless it comes in GSM with a mobile browser, full email POP support, instant messaging photo/video and mmp3 playback... and even then it won't be worth the cost.... they better pull something out of the bag because this phone rules!
 
it's a f**** phone! why does palm ceo opinion count?:confused:
they suck at inovating they're PDA's are crap...
 
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