TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

Parker and Marshall Minardo, most famous in the PalmOS world for the Saguaro widget engine, which after a few years of development was scrapped. After scrapping this project, the pair was unsure of where to go. Apparently, they made the right choice in going to the iPhone:

Parker and Marshall Minardo, owners of a software company called EdgeRift, created a $1 iPhone application called Emergency Radio that gives users access to more than 1,200 radio feeds from police, fire and emergency frequencies around the country.
Within days of its launch in early May, the application shot up to No. 2 on Apple’s list of paid applications. As of Friday, Emergency Radio was still ranked in the top 40.
More than 180,000 iPhone and iPod Touch owners have downloaded Emergency Radio, and the application is currently averaging between 1,000 and 1,200 downloads per day, said 20-year-old Parker, Edgerift’s CEO.

The boys net in 70% of each sale, bringing in more profit than they probably ever got in PalmOS sales…

Congratulations, Parker and Marshall. Now come develop for the Pre

Read the full story: Tucson brothers create iPhone sensation.

Palm is in a pretty bad rut: their partners demand them to keep the Pre market closed for as long as possible in order to maximize their sales – while the press and hundreds of other developers want to get their hands onto the SDK as fast as possible. This being Palm, one can be 100% sure that they would find a sneaky solution – and a sneaky solution they did find.

PreThinking reports the following:

1. Palm invites and doubles the number of early Mojo SDK developers on June 26th
2. One of the lucky developer decides to leak the link to the Mojo SDK on IRC.
3. @keithah picks it up and tweets it.
4. Now we all have the Mojo SDK, well, at least the Windows users.

I personally think that the tooth fairy will visit me tonight – seriously, why would any developer be so dumb as to risk getting caught in a canary trap?

Instead, I think that the process was endorsed by Palm to some extent: this allows them to be pissed off in public and keep their launch partners happy, while being happy themselves about having provided their developers a cheap and ready-made route to market. Launch partners are happy as they remain the only ones to be in the App Store: but other developers can start developing now in order to get their apps ready for the moment when they are finally let onto the store.

Feedback, anyone?

The quote below has caused quite a ruckus recently (via GearLog):

…

Execs also hinted at the possibility of licensing their WebOS to other manufacturers. While they haven’t decided to do so, “it’s not a religious issue for us,” Palm CFO Douglas Jeffries said.

…

While this may in itself sound good, it means absolutely nothing. Keep in mind that Palm has gained little from licensing its operating system in the past: other manufacturers forced the company to innovate and keep hardware quality somewhat decent.

Stating that your company is not at all intended on licensing the webOS to other manufacturers would have been contraproductive at the time: both investors and developers would have been more than miffed…and don’t even get me started on the bad PR.

Stating your openness, on the other hand, makes for good PR…and means absolutely nothing. Palm can define hardware criteria which are so stringent that no other manufacturer can fulfill them – and then just claim that they are intending to license, but can’t find anybody.

Palm execs have repeatedly stated in the past that they were opposed to licensing the new operating system to other manufacturers…so why should that change now?

What do you think?

A blogger by the name of Jon Lech Johanson has released a small snippit of (presumably) Pre code which tells, in layman’s terms, iTunes that it is an iPod while in their recently announced “Media Sync” mode.

What does this mean for you?

Well, it means that current versions of iTunes will indeed sync with the Pre — Until Apple pushes out an update to iTunes to block this, as it inevitably will. The sync technology taht they use is, like all Apple technologies, held very close to their company and they are really a fan of the Walled Garden philosophy of software design (we will provide you with approved software for your iPod, approved software for your media sync, and these will only run on approved hardware.) They will change the technology used in the sync on their products, push it out in a iPhone upgrade and an iTunes upgrade, and make it impossible for the Pre to use this Media Sync Feature.

It also entails negative effects on open source applications with the ability to sync to the iPod, such as RhythmBox and Amarok. These tools rely on the standard method of sync that has been reveresed and changing these sync methods will break existing software, if these updates are pushed to the devices.

What does this mean for Palm?

Apple won’t sue The Big Orange over this, in my opinion. Unless there is more code than what Jon originally posted, mimicking a “trade secret” or patented sync method, there is little grounds for anything else that would stand up in court. Sure Palm used iPod values in standard USB descriptors in place of their own, but that is in no way patent infringing or in any way illegal.

The question is not the legal ramifications, but the egg that’s going to be splattered on their face when Apple decides to do something to break this “feature” that Palm has announced as supported and hyped. People buying the phone expecting it to sync flawlessly and JustWork will be disappointed, and Palm will get ever more bad PR.

Just what it needs.

What do you think Apple will do? Will their suits be banging on Palm’s door, or will their sync finally be set free by Big Orange?

I recently met a project manager working for a very large wireless operator at a conference. I agreed to hide his identity and void my free alcohol in exchange for a bit of information – here is what he had to say.

Will carriers sell the Pre?
Yep. That is, if they can. Palm has had a history of eekers (his words, not mine) with device and software quality…which can make their devices unsellable.

Obviously, this is not my problem: I just look at the device, and chuck it right back at the Oranges if they don’t manage to get it in line.

What do you think about software quality on the Pre?
Big if. Big eeker. Decider of Pre fate.

Nothing more to say as I didn’t handle the critter so far.

Will the Pre or the Eos get to Europe first
As far as I know now, the Pre will definitely come first. As for the Eos…it could very well end up to be an US-only device.

Are you aware of _a_ Pre in Austria
Definitely not.

Pretty good info for a bit of booze. Opinions, anyone?

Killing sprees at schools always are horrible – my thoughts are with the victims, who I wish to rest in peace (or to achieve whatever good their belief places after death). Unfortunately, these displays of rage against the society always lead to alarmist behavior from politicians and boulevard press…which usually goes against the IT business.

This time, Germany’s politicians have decided to go for a somewhat softer target: they decided to work on outlawing Paintball and similar real-life games. The calculation behind it was simple: as most people don’t give a sh#t about paintball, banning this won’t provoke much of a lobbyist reaction but will allow us to appear tough.

I honestly have to say that I can’t care less about Paintball – but the implications are clear for me. Once Paintball is disposed of, Arcade games like the House of the Dead are next:

(hey – good ole Tam looks pretty mean in this pic. He is a threat to society; let’s ban the Tamoggemon Content Network)

And once arcade games are disposed of, computer games in general are next. Consider it a waterfall or dam failure scenario: once the first gate busts, all others will follow suite.

Thus, I urge all of you to overcome any sentiments against Paintball. Once again: I don’t give a darn about Paintball and have never handled a Paintball rifle/attended a game…but this IMHO is a question of societal responsibility rather than taste.

P.S. 6 year old kids are forced to hit each other with balls in a game called “people’s ball” in mandatory school sports education => injuries galore. Yet nobody dares to talk about this one…guess there’s too much teacher’s lobby in the background.

Tam Hanna image shot on scene by Dr. D. M. Kohrs – all rights reserved, all reuse prohibited. Anti-paintballheads: I am dead serious. Reuse it and see you in court.

You are of course permitted to print this article out and share or repost it in order to promote paintball and digital freedom – as long as it remains unchanged and is reused in whole.

TamsPalm reader joecoder recently left the following comment (thank you very much for it):

Okay suppose it’s really 400px and not an error, aren’t webOS apps developed using HTML, CSS and Javascript? With some careful (thoughtful?) CSS and Javascript, you can pretty much scale webOS mobile apps to fit any screen resolution.

In fact, webOS should handle resolution scaling pretty easily, just like any browser would. Right?
…

Even though his point is valid at first glance, I have to apologize…it just doesn’t work that way in practice, especially when games are involved. The two images below show exactly the same web site shown on two monitors (scaled down to the same pixel width):

on MSI Wind U100 – 1024×600

on HD display – 1900×1200

OK. I have to admit that the differences between Pre and Eos are not as significant as the ones seen above…but the core problem remains. HTML scaling is difficult to achieve at best – it may work somewhat well with static content, but gets incredibly difficult the moment we look at dynamic content or different aspect ratios.

Limiting yourself to one screen resolution (like Apple does) makes life significantly easier for developers IMHO – anyone of you feel different?

A recently-leaked slide from AT&T’s has circulated all over the internet in the last few hours – according to PreCentral, it was followed up with a series of in-store seminars training employees on perceived or real weaknesses of the Pre when compared to the iPhone 3G.

Leaving the points in the slide aside (most of them are pretty, um, eeker), one very significant bit of information remains: the Pre will face the iPhone 3G, and not some kind of successor.

If AT&T would already have further information on the immediacy of the iPhone 4G’s release, why for heavens sake would they train their employees to fight the Pre using the iPhone 3G rather than the newly-released model?

IMHO, this is good news for Palm: it means that their (untested) device gets to run against a (2 year old) device which may be well-tested, but definitely isn’t cutting edge anymore and furthermore lacks a keyboard.

An iPhone 4G would probably steal most of the hype from the Pre – but when it comes to facing the current 3G, I am pretty sure that the Pre has good chances if Palm doesn’t bork up on customer care and/or press relations.

Ideas, anyone?

My recent post (inspired by a rant from the PalmInfoCenter) has resonated pretty badly with the many Palm employees reading TamsPalm: in case I haven’t stated that recently, thank you all for being here. I love you!

Donald C Kirker posted the following comment to the TamsPalm blog – he is definitely not the only one whko sent something like this in, but has IMHO summed it up the nicest. I have taken the freedom to break up the comment and insert my thoughts:

Or maybe the journalists could quit feeling like everybody owes them every bit of information?

We (at least the members of the Vienna Journalists Club) don’t think anyone OWES us information. However, we need information in order to do our job…see below.

When you are harassed with questions over and over again that would violate your NDA (especially when the same person is asking the questions), it gets rather old and annoying.

I’m not about to loose my job because some “journalist” wants to leak a release date, or some little tidbit.

I fully understand this. Everybody needs and should think about himself first.

People complained that a Palm rep in a video was rather rude for stating that she could not let a journalist hold the Pre. There is nothing wrong, or unprofessional, with saying, “I am sorry, I cannot let you do that.” Speaking for myself: I have an NDA to uphold, and I am NOT about to falter on that.

As dashford said, the iPhone was *UNDER GLASS* after it was announced. For 6 months.

Remember, when you ask “What is the release date?” after being told that information is not available, you are essentially saying, “Please put your job, your primary source of income, at risk so that you may provide me with a little tidbit of information that might make me or my site look better.”

This is the core difference. We do this for a living, too! For a tech journalist, getting in the latest scoop can make or break a career. Many of us work hours and hours on end for sometimes little pay…providing a service to the community.

If some of us snap because of pressure, I can only ask for understanding and apologize for the entire profession. We need to get our jobs done just like you folks…

–
My opinions are those of my own, and are in no way to be taken as the opinions of my employer, Palm, Inc., or those of my business, OpenMobl Systems, or those of anybody affiliated with either entity (either as another employee, or business parter).

I personally think that we all need one another: tech journalists need tech companies and vice versa. If we all start to understand one another a little better, life would be easier for all of us…doesn’t that sound like a deal?

I recently wondered why next to no information (except for the Compal leak, which was quickly disguised with some tabasco) was leaked out on the Pre before its launch. Has Palm really managed to beef up its security to an extent similar to Apple’s? Was this all the work of one famous corporate-fraud expert who requested not to be named on TamsPalm publicly? Or was there something else afoot?

While our aforementioned friend definitely is an outstanding expert in all things loss prevention and corporate fraud, I nevertheless think that he was assisted by one factor: the weirdness of the whole idea.

Analysts like yours truly literally receive dozens of rumors a month: our work is looking at what is possible, and what is probable: and only after that, content gets to hit the press. If somebody would have told me about the Pre a year ago without giving any further evidence, I would have thought that he is a madman and would have deleted his email immediately (in fact, somebody from Palm did tell me something similar…).

Thus, a leaker would have needed information AND a working device…which is a fact an expert can prevent my having separate software and hardware groups. Palm definitely had that -> no leaks.

Unfortunately for Palm, future models will not benefit from the WTF factor…which means that we can expect many a juicy leak in the near future…

The title above is not developed by yours truly, but rather by Anders Bylund from the very popular investment web site “Motley Fool”. His piece looks at the current financial status of Palm, and can be summed by two words: cash burning.

While I don’t fully agree with all of his positions, Anders definitely is right about one thing: there is no second chance for Palm. With money from Palm OS products falling off a cliff and Windows Mobile competition getting stronger than ever (Treo Pro…haha), the folks can not survive on their self-generated income.

If the Pre fails, Palm is as good as dead. There probably won’t be another webOS device if the Pre doesn’t sell (extremely) well…which is a fact I am not too sure about.

While the Pre definitely is an amazing (and very daring) piece of technology, I am not sure if there will be many Palm OS heads waiting to upgrade to this device due to lack of upwards compatibility.

Palm’s fate will decide itself in the next six months – and it will be prosper or perish. The time of stasis is over for good…

So far, Palm’s SDK has not materialized anywhere (except at O’Reilly’s) – however, it looks like the folks at Palm’s have just accidentally admitted to having some sort of caste system in regards to developers.

The offending quote is as follows:

Palm did confirm that games are in development for webOS,
…
Palm’s currently working with a small amount of developers in private beta, refining the SDK to their feedback and needs, and will slowly expand that as the phone approaches launch, but we don’t expect a full SDK to reach Joe the Coder until very close to before or after the launch.

Apparently, it looks like Palm doesn’t want to repeat the “open approach” we saw with the original Palm OS – this time, they apparently want a small core team of developers supplying the majority of applications under Palm’s control (possibly giving them a revenue share).

I guess that I don’t need to explain that this move will have a devastating impact on the third-party application ecosystem. “Product wars” such as the one between DataViz and QuickOffice or between Agendus and DateBK have led to some of the finest Palm OS programs available today – a scenario which is more than unlikely in a planned economy.

While a “state-directed economy” has always appealed to some, all countries based on this system have proven themselves to be spectacular failures – do you think that Palm’s attempt will be any different?

CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk recently took apart an extremely stupid bit of research on computer gamers – to cut the message short, we all are antisocial and love to smoke pot. I personally have heavy lung problems and thus am physically unable to do so…and none of my mates has ever felt like it either. So far so good.

Unfortunately, this discussion does not bring us anywhere – in fact, it supports the work of these critters. This may sound weird…but think of my now-classic article on egoshooters:

Many of the studies come from attention-seeking, unsuccessful doctors
I never believed this until I experienced it myself…this is a true story!

One day, I was at a bar programming. The DJ kept playing Rap(hey, its a LOUNGE) – and I walked up to him to ‘motivate’ him to play something else. Ok- Assemblage 23- and back to coding. Suddenly, I noted a gal slipping next to me talking to me about how Rap makes people aggressive, etc. Hmm – interesting gal, lets talk. She openly confessed that she decided to write her thesis on this topic for only one reason: to get media attention. This media attention should help her repay her student loan – mad but true!

If we continue from this story, there is only one thing we (as the analyst community) can do to stop the crap: the solution is to stop covering these idiotic bits of “research”. Whenever you get a press release about it, send them a link to this article and delete it without giving it any airtime.

It may sound weird at the first glance – but is the only thing that works. If these men of honour find their family robbed of a cheap way to get press and money, they will move onto other fields of business or will ideally get on the dole.

The first cleanses our industry from this cancer and helps us grow faster, but puts the burden on others. The second would eventually lead to less folks graduating…which means that the overall burden gets reduced over time.

Either way: the only way to handle these issues is the delete key…

What do you think?

At Tamoggemon’s, corporate policy protects our readers from political statements by our editors – which is why we have been largely unaffected by the recent hype about Mr. Obama’s mobile device of choice. As the inauguration is coming closer and closer and people start to wonder what impact his switch to WM will have on RIM, we felt that it’s time to put one thing straight:

Barack Obama does NOT affect RIM in any way!

Please allow me to back up this bold statement with a variety of facts:

First of all, Barack Obama is switching to a device regular consumers will neither want nor be able to buy. The Sectera Edge is a 3500$ brick, which is way too expensive, heavy and feature-poor to appeal to consumers. If Mr. Obama would go for a device from, say Asus (I am sure that his worst enemies won’t wish him that), the situation would be different. Customers could buy the phone…and probably would do so.

Secondarily: people attracted to Obama can usually also be reached via a selection of pop stars/rappers. The latter have turned out to be extremely fond of RIM’s devices, with a Bold even appearing in a music video. This alone provides RIM with enough “market pressure” to remain competitive – and as the competitor is out of reach and unappealing, there is no danger on this front either.

Finally, we need to think of the approx 45% of people who didn’t vote for Obama. If RIM would invest significant amounts of money into making their BlackBerry “obama-proof”, these customers would be extremely dissatisfied. As many of these are in corporate, the damage potential is high – RIM definitely doesn’t want a boycott similar to the ones happening due to Proposition 8.

In the end, I personally feel sorry for Mr. Obama, as the BlackBerry he currently uses probably is the more convenient solution for him. Even though industrial devices have become much more “bearable” in the past, they still can’t match consumer devices from a handling point of view. Nevertheless, RIM has done the right thing to let him go – unfortunately, the realities of business sometimes force companies to abandon customers…