Friday, February 13, 2004
Miscellaneous Tidbits
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THE COMPETITION" @ 05:00 PM
Well, I haven't stirred things up here in at least 72 hours and I have a few items in my inbox that you, Pocket PC Thoughts members, have sent me. Thanks! :grinning devil:
First are a few items on PalmSource's new OS, Cobalt, also known as OS6. This Brighthand article has some pretty good info on the new OS from Ed Hardy who has been playing with Cobalt for a few days. It seems Palm will forgo native landscape support in OS6, again leaving it up to the OEMs to add their own custom APIs. "In a revelation I found very disappointing, Cobalt doesn't have support for switching between landscape and portrait mode built into it. I had been told in the past that this would be a part of the standard API, therefore bringing this important feature to all Cobalt Powered devices. Licensees will still be able to add this themselves, as palmOne did to the Tungsten T3, but it's unfortunate that PalmSource didn't make it a part of the operating system, especially as Microsoft has said this will be a standard feature of Windows Mobile 2004."
OS6 will also pretty much fix the the shortcomings in the address book application by extending the number of fields and making it more compatible with Microsoft Outlook. Hrm... another area Palm is following Microsoft. ;) Multitasking is there too. "I saw a demonstration of a test device playing a movie, making a phone call, and looking an address up, all at the same time." All of that sounds really confusing to me. Multitasking isn't in my Zen handbook. :idontthinkso:
No matter. Doesn't really matter what Palm does or doesn't do. The point is, you should just buy a Palm according to Washington Post.
:roll: I can see that being in a Palm advertising campaign in the future. Of course, don't count on your old Palm apps running on OS6. Ed Hardy writes "PalmSource is really hammering developers to get their current apps ready for Palm OS Cobalt. The developers I spoke with said some tweaking was necessary for most apps that run under the current version of the operating system, but the changes are fairly minor...Therefore, you can expect a lot of apps will need a small update as soon as devices start shipping." Minor change or not, if the change has to be made, the developer has to crack open the code and fix it, even if it takes less than 10 minutes from start to compile complete. If your app is older or no longer supported you might be out of luck. You can say what you want about Pocket PCs, but with the exception of drivers and communication related apps that got thrown for a loop with the Connection Manager introduced in 2002, I still have Pocket PC 2000 apps that run just fine under 2003.
Have a good weekend all. :onfire:
First are a few items on PalmSource's new OS, Cobalt, also known as OS6. This Brighthand article has some pretty good info on the new OS from Ed Hardy who has been playing with Cobalt for a few days. It seems Palm will forgo native landscape support in OS6, again leaving it up to the OEMs to add their own custom APIs. "In a revelation I found very disappointing, Cobalt doesn't have support for switching between landscape and portrait mode built into it. I had been told in the past that this would be a part of the standard API, therefore bringing this important feature to all Cobalt Powered devices. Licensees will still be able to add this themselves, as palmOne did to the Tungsten T3, but it's unfortunate that PalmSource didn't make it a part of the operating system, especially as Microsoft has said this will be a standard feature of Windows Mobile 2004."
OS6 will also pretty much fix the the shortcomings in the address book application by extending the number of fields and making it more compatible with Microsoft Outlook. Hrm... another area Palm is following Microsoft. ;) Multitasking is there too. "I saw a demonstration of a test device playing a movie, making a phone call, and looking an address up, all at the same time." All of that sounds really confusing to me. Multitasking isn't in my Zen handbook. :idontthinkso:
No matter. Doesn't really matter what Palm does or doesn't do. The point is, you should just buy a Palm according to Washington Post.
Quote: "Even if, as a consumer, you don't care about Palm, you should," said Saffo, the futurist. "Without [PalmOne], we're all marching lockstep with AT&T and Microsoft. As consumers, I think we should all buy a Palm even if we don't use it -- just to keep the diversity out there."
:roll: I can see that being in a Palm advertising campaign in the future. Of course, don't count on your old Palm apps running on OS6. Ed Hardy writes "PalmSource is really hammering developers to get their current apps ready for Palm OS Cobalt. The developers I spoke with said some tweaking was necessary for most apps that run under the current version of the operating system, but the changes are fairly minor...Therefore, you can expect a lot of apps will need a small update as soon as devices start shipping." Minor change or not, if the change has to be made, the developer has to crack open the code and fix it, even if it takes less than 10 minutes from start to compile complete. If your app is older or no longer supported you might be out of luck. You can say what you want about Pocket PCs, but with the exception of drivers and communication related apps that got thrown for a loop with the Connection Manager introduced in 2002, I still have Pocket PC 2000 apps that run just fine under 2003.
Have a good weekend all. :onfire:
