Over the last two weeks, my rather positive view of the future of the Palm OS economy has worsened – and apperently, I am not alone. Dmitry Grinberg(famous by fixing Palm’s ‘mistakes’) openly announces Windows Mobile evaluation; Brayder closes shop; Palm’s PalmSource contract is problematic, etc.
The Palm OS economy currently is full of rumours. Some report the spotting of a Cobalt-powered Palm (SG) handheld, while others report on the end of Palm’s traditional PDA business and the death of the LifeDrive line. Independant of whom you listen to, the sum of the rumors is the Palm OS economy is off badly.
Palm itself has a company policy of not commenting rumors, which is indeed standard for larger US companies. However, in this case, they maybe should open their mouth – else, developer erosion would reach dangerous speeds.
Palm basically lives off its third party developers(face it). When Windows Mobile entered the market as Windows CE, nobody really considered it because of the ultimate lack of third party applications. Almost all application development took place for the Palm OS, making sure that Palm users always had loads of impressive third party apps to choose from.
IMHO, mobile operating systems are insignificant – what people want are functions. Wheter these functions are powered by Palm OS or Urp Burp OS is insignificant….
Third party developers want future security. They invest loads of time into creating applications and want to sell them for a long, long time. The current rumor situation is very negative and thus dangerous for Palm’s third party developer share.
IMHO, Palm should see the problem and announce what OS they plan to run and what products they plan to create. Just keeping the situation as is, may leave their shiny new Garnet-compatible OS without developers…
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Not necessarily true. If palm does indeed release a “shiny new” OS and it proves not to be vaporware, It would likely draw developers back “from the dark side” (especially if it is good as it is rumored to be). Whats more, it would draw at least a few developers of normal desktop linux apps (as a result of intersystem compatability).
The PalmOS API is probably the largest kludge I’ve ever seen (and I’ve worked with Minix…That should tell you something). That is why I have also decided to evaluate Windows Mobile, however I have a relatively old Pocket PC..It wasn’t even CALLED “Windows Mobile” back then). I still carry my Z72, I will still continue occasional development on , etc…But most of my primary uses for a PDA (ebooks, light gaming, that kind of stuff) has been and probably will continue to be on the slightly larger, much older, fairly slow h3800 with PocketPC 2002.
Hah, oops.
Hi,
IMHO, you all overrate Linux compatibility.
Most app development happens for Windows(I am not talking about server/geek stuff here); and so Windows Mobile is a bit of an easier step than going back to the Palm OS.
Best regards
Tam Hanna
And I don´t see the point for developers to first switch to WinMobile and then see the great Garnet and come back again!? If I would make that switch- which is quite an effort- why would I want to come back?!
It would be smarter to keep the developers and offer them some sort of future outlook. But maybe palm doesn´t know itself….
I think developing for multiple platforms ain’t that difficult. If the benefits outweigh the pain threshold for maintaining two platforms, so be it. However, Palm’s future is far from rosy, far from it. Why even bother planning ahead for it? I mean, developers have mouths to feed, right? Why risk that on one company? Ever heard of avoiding all eggs in a basket?
Side note: If Palm’s 3rd party software developers abandon them, the platform WILL die off faster. To a certain degree, the OS is irrelevant (I agree with Tam here). If I can duplicate all the functions I need on Symbian (I’ve managed to do so to a certain degree), I can stop using a Palm OS device.
And I have.