Many of you can still remember Jeff Kirvin - the former 1src podcaster and editorial writer. Very few people have divided the mobile community as much as Jeff Kirvin did with his editorials about Palm OS Garnet and Cobalt, Grafitti 2 and other mobile related things…until he suddenly dissappeared. I managed to track him down and ask him 10 questions, which he gladly answered:

Please describe yourself and your business
I’m not sure I have a business, really. I’m a writer. My intent has always been to write fiction, and I got into Mobile Technology as a way to make that easier and more convenient, to be able to write wherever and whenever the muse whalloped me upside the head. The result, however, is that over the years I’ve written hundreds of articles about mobile technology and my nonfiction wordcount far exceeds my published fiction. Go figure. While I tried to start a more generalized blog a while back, I’ve since gone back to writing for WritingOnYourPalm.net.

What PDA do you currently use? What do you use it for?
I’m using a Sprint PPC-6700, their version of the popular HTC Apache. It’s a Pocket PC Phone Edition running Windows Mobile 5. I use it for just about everything when I’m not at one of my desktop PCs. Email, ebooks, music, podcasts, Audible, blogging, games, writing, spreadsheets (mostly wordcount logs), and a bunch of other stuff.

Why did you switch from Palm OS to Windows Mobile
Honestly, because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. I wish I could say a ton of thought went into it, comparison matrices and whatnot, but I walked into the Sprint store intent on buying a new phone because I didn’t want to be dependent on the phone issued by my day job. I was going to get either the Samsung A900 (which I ruled out after trying to write an email on it), a Treo 700p or the 6700. And I really, really loathe and despise the button layout on the 700p.

This isn’t without precedent. Historically, I switch platforms every three years. I used Palm OS from 97 to 2000, Pocket PC from 2000-2003, Palm OS 5 from 2003 to 2006 and now I’m on Windows Mobile 5. Each time I switch, it’s because the OS I’m switching to has the upper hand on the OS I’m switching from. This time around, Windows Mobile has better support for 3G data networks and has caught and possibly surpassed Palm OS for usability. I also like the larger (if lower res) screen for ebooks and the roomier thumb keyboard.

Was the switch difficult
Not at all, but keep in mind I’m no stranger to Windows Mobile. It took me a couple weeks to get back up to speed and figure out what I’d missed in the prior three years, but I’d call myself an expert Windows Mobile 5 user by now.

What Palm OS features do you miss
Not much, really. If pressed for something, I’d say that while I don’t have to use my stylus much on WM5, I didn’t have to use it at all on the Treo. It’s a small difference, but it’s there. The fact is that there isn’t a lot of difference between the two platforms anymore. I needed Resco Explorer on the Palm to do file management and clean up the Saved/Unsaved Preferences files, the Palm OS equivalent of the registry. I use Total Commander on WM5 to do file management and edit the registry. It’s a wash.

What do you think about the future of the Palm platform
It depends on how you define the Palm platform, I suppose. I think Access is completely irrelevant for US users and we really don’t need to keep up with what they’re doing at all. They’re focused on the Chinese and other Asian markets, and really have nothing to do with Palm anymore.

As for Palm, I think they have a variant of Linux in development so that they don’t become entirely dependent on Microsoft for their OS, but I don’t know how backwards compatible that OS will be with Palm OS as we know it. On the one hand, this is largely the same group of people that made the original Palm OS in the first place (a lot of PalmSource developers and engineers jumped ship from PalmSource to working for Palm directly both before and after the Access buyout), so they have that Zen thing down. On the other hand, Windows Mobile and even Symbian’s UIQ are going to have a huge lead on any “new” smartphone OS in terms of available applications.

As for Garnet, I have to reverse my earlier assertions that it can be patched almost indefinitely. Garnet is definitely near the end of its usefulness. The nail in the coffin is 3G data. The reason the upcoming Treo 750 runs Windows Mobile is that it has to support UMTS, the 3G GSM successor to EDGE and GPRS. One of the things a UMTS phone has to be able to do is keep a data channel alive and active while a voice call is going on, and the limited multitasking in Garnet simply cannot do that reliably. Garnet is still fine for PDAs, but PDAs are a diminishing market. The future of handhelds is in smartphones, and Garnet can’t keep up.

Why did you leave 1src?
Frankly, it was too much work. I have a day job and I try to write fiction whenever I can. I just couldn’t do all of that and do a weekly 1SRC podcast and write a weekly 1SRC editorial and be sure to stay home Saturday evening and moderate the 1SRC chat. It was just too much. Plus, I was getting to be too big a target for detractors and wanted to leave all that bile behind me. I have better things to do with my limited lifespan than argue with a bunch of haters.

Are you still active in any Palm OS communities?
Sure, I read and post on 1SRC and TreoCentral, but not as much as I used to. I also pop into the 1SRC chat when I can.

How is the PocketPC community situation. Is it better or worse than the Palm OS one?
It’s more fragmented because there is so much more diversity in Windows Mobile devices. I read Pocket PC Thoughts, the forums at PPC-600users.com and PDAPhoneHome.com and sometimes the forums at xda-developers.com. I’d say the Windows Mobile community is just as supportive as the Palm OS community, but a bit scattered.

Do you want to state anything else?
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to get some of this on record. I’d also like to invite people to the newly redesigned (and now Wordpress-powered, self-hosted) www.writingonyourpalm.net

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