New Apple PalmOS Device?

T

terran74

The thread killer
I just found an article on CNET about Palms unwillingness to comment about Apple being a new PalmOS licensee.

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-965338.html?tag=fd_top

In the Artcile they say

" PalmSource will soon announce that it is licensing its operating system to several more hardware companies, Nagel said, although he wouldn't be drawn on whether Apple--where Nagel was once head of R&D for the Mac and Mac OS--and Legend, China's largest PC vendor and a key bridgehead into that giant market, are on that roster."
Click to expand...

Ok I have gone from one side of the spectrum to the other. I was once a huge newton fan and hated seeing it die. I wanted Apple to release an iPDA but after hearing S.Jobs speak of the market I then switched to a "no way Apple should stay away. It's a dead market. They had a good run with Newton but it's too little too late"

I Have recently been shopping for a new PDA. I have tried 5 PDAs in 3 weeks (I love return policies). From PocketPC to the one I am using now, the PalmOS 5 Sony Clie NX60.

Now I have come to this conclusion. Apple needs to enter this market and do to it what they did to the MP3 market. I think Apple has all the ingredients to make a very high powered low cost PDA based on Palm. Now that OS 5 is more open to customized interfaces and adds better support for Compact Flash, Bluetooh, Wi-Fi and high resolution screens, I think it would be in Apple's benefit to come out with a PDA and customize it with Newton Applications.

That is where this market is going. The OS is just this small plain thing and it is the pdApps and multimedia additions that make the sytem... I hope this Article is on to something.

The PDA could easily turn into something between a simple business Palm device and the new TabletPC. It could be a consumer friendly Mini-TabletPC

So are there still any rumors lately about an Apple PalmOS device? Anyone hear of anything? Could Apple include a 512Mbyte IBM microdrive in one? Sigh, I hope so because though my Sony Clie NX60 kicks butt , I want more and the ARM processor can give us so much more than what is out there now... Like a real camera instead of the dinky "no flash color quickcam" in the Sony Clie NX70
 
Apple have been a Palm OS Licensee since 1999. If you have been a Palm OS person as well. I think you would have read that years ago.
 
Woah this is news to me. I have not heard this. Do you have articles about this?

That's very interesting though.
 
Cool thing is, from what I understand, Palm OS 5 is much more modular when it comes to imput styles as well, so Apple could possibly put the HWR from the MP2000 (hopefully updated) onto a Palm device. That would be pretty damn cool.
 
slightly off-topic...
isn't the next version of palmOS supposed to be based on BeOS? I could have sworn I read that on their site somewhere....
 
I belive that Palm OS 6 is going to be based somewhat on the BeIA platform (which was BeOS adapted for embeded devices). I have also heard other reports though that while the ideas and technology in OS 6 will be based on some of Be's stuff, there would be virtualy no code in common between the two, so I don't know.
 
PalmOS 6 will in fact be based on the underlying Be Architecture. How much of it will make it into the new PalmOS is yet to be seen. I am not sure we need the SMP or JFS of the old BeOS though the API for BeOS and the multimedia capabilities are the ones I am hoping to see transition over to the PalmOS.

Did any of you remember running apps on BeOS? The API was so slim and most apps were under 500k, the really really big ones were a whopping 1 Mbyte in size usually. I never saw many apps that were above 1Mbyte in size. It was a very nice API and powerful too. The nice thing is Sony already has experience in BeIA with there short lived "All-in-one" internet Appliance based on the BeOS

As for Apple making "ARM-lets" for PalmOS 5, that would be cool. From what I understand, Palm asks most developers to code for PalmOS on the Dragonball processor and run it in emulation. If it needs ARM specific additions, those should be added on through ARM-lets.

I would like to see Apple bundle a slew of nice Apps for the PalmOS through their own PDA and give it the brushed metal interface for a MacOS look and feel. There are so man Commercial Apps out there for Palm and Apple would be a nice fit in the Application side. One way to avoid piracy is to make these apps run only within and Apple specific launcher. They could release Appleworks, iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Quicktime with MPEG-4, and possible even mail.app on top of the PalmOS. I don't think it would be that hard and it would give the Palm market the "Killer Apps" they need.

I just hope they do something like bump up the RAM to 32Mbytes, leave the ROM at 8 Mbytes and add a 256 or 512Mbyte IBM microdrive. That would be like a real handheld computer. A nice Compact flash slot for 802.11 or bluetooth would be nice too. Finally a SD card and instead of USB, sync with Firewire so the cable acts as both a recharge station and sync device.
 
Originally posted by terran74
I just hope they do something like bump up the RAM to 32Mbytes, leave the ROM at 8 Mbytes and add a 256 or 512Mbyte IBM microdrive.
Click to expand...

Microdrive? No thanks. This Palm V I have with a whopping 2 megabytes of RAM is not even half full after thee years. There's no way I would have any use for 32 megabytes of RAM in a PDA, never mind a quarter or half gigabyte of storage. One of the best things about my Palm V is that I can have it out of the cradle for a month, using it fairly regularly, and it doesn't complain about low battery voltage even once. That would be really hard to do if you have to power up a spindle. If you want a PC that you can put in your Pocket, as opposed to a PDA, well .. you know what you should buy, and it's not a Palm.

That said, a modern Apple PDA would be something amazing. I think I would buy one as long as it has a good form-factor, has good battery life, and is at least as useful as what I have now in getting my life organized.
 
Right now Palm's are nothing more than electronic agendas, which they do very well. But in my field (medical) I envision more uses to a PDA. Actually several of my colleagues have bought PocketPCs instead of Palms because of the size of the drive they carry. That's definitely something that's missing on the Palm, and yes I could use 500 MB of space to store clinical images, movie loops, etc, which I could carry around. Native Java 1.4+ support would be great and obviously a QuickTime player. All of this in a PDA form factor. That's what I would need and buy. Until then, I'll keep using my Palm 500...
 
Still, there's no reason for Apple to enter a market that's already full of good players, unless they can top them all.

Sony has been very, very agressive on that market, has been innovating the Palm platform for some time now (and will go on, I'm sure).

And best of it all: They work with Mac OS X. I'm an old time Newton fan, too, but however cool it would be to have an Apple branded PDA that would - at its introduction - be competitive with Sony's hardware and software, Apple isn't known to be kicking out new versions and devices as fast as Sony.

The iPod was a huge hit among the Macintosh crowd - and even more so at the Windows crowd. It entered the market as 'the MP3 player without the lacks and errors'. But could Apple really pull that off with a Palm OS 5 or 6 based device? And most of all: Is it at all necessary?

Apple is primarily providing the iPod for two reasons: 1) There wasn't any really good MP3 player around (all were USB based) and 2) there was no good MP3 player for the Macintosh.

There ARE however good PDAs, and there are good PDAs for the Macintosh.
 
Originally posted by wmono
Microdrive? No thanks. This Palm V I have with a whopping 2 megabytes of RAM is not even half full after thee years. There's no way I would have any use for 32 megabytes of RAM in a PDA, never mind a quarter or half gigabyte of storage.
Click to expand...

You sure about that? I remember people saying the same thing about not needing no more than a gigabyte hard drive but the thing that changed that is a 'killer app'

That is what the palm needs right now. Sony has put mpeg 1 and 4 playback in the clie's. It has put a new 'launcher' that changes the look and feel of the interface (not the GUI). There is a an ACTUAL HTML web browser (not a WAP web clipping viewer) called NetFront that takes up a whopping 2.5 Mbytes on your dang clie. That 16 Mbytes in the clie only gives you 11Mbytes available because the new OS needs more of the RAM to run processes. I am hurting on 11Mbytes and running Apps off memory sticks is slow.

Apple entering the market with killer apps for the PalmOS that run on a proprietary Launcher (sort of like the finder) or window manager type package would be what could change the palm. Right now I use a nice little app called "New Pen" that lets you write Grafitti anywhere on the screen. Why can't apple just port their inkwell to PalmOS? It's the same processor using a different OS. Exclusive apps like Quicktime, iTunes, inkwell, and iPhoto are what apple has that could really trump Sony and Dell and Compaq.

Once you open that door to killer apps which take advantage of the 32-bit ARM processor then you really do need 32 or 64 Mbytes of RAM and 256+ mbytes storage.

Sony has entered the market as a Multimedia consumer friendly device. Palm is and many others are simply sold as organizers. Handspring markets as a multifunction phone with PalmOS. Apple could enter the market of Palm as something that it doesn't yet have and badly needs... what that is I don't know but im sure Steve Jobs knows. And yeah I can't wait to play back a Mpeg4 movie on my PDA, I just need the memory stick. Sony provides the tools for Mpeg4 playback somewhere on the CD for the clie.
 
I used to be a big Palm fan,and still have my Handspring Visor Platinum (I don't carry it now, since it has been replaced by my phone, a Sony Erricsson T68i updated using iCal and Address Book).

I used to fill the internal 8MB and an additional 32MB card with two bibles and lots of apps. I had about 50 games in there, loads of e-books, etc.

When it comes to storage, I think the hardcore power users will always need an extra boost.

But sticking to the point in this thread, I think Apple has the ability to create a new product, but the world economic scene does not encourage too many adventurious venture into unchartered waters. I think this is the stand Apple is taking right now. With iMac sales and G4 Towers doing badly this quarter... they might consider doing something about entering another new arena to boost sales, but I think they have done lots to introduce Win friendly iPod, and would be too financially taxing to bring on a PDA.

There were prototypes of PDAs floating around for Apple (or from Apple, so to speak) and all was vapourware in the end. I am still wondering why. Unless Apple really can recover from the failure of Newton, they will not go back into the PDA market.
 
I believe Apple registered as a Palm OS licensee so they could legally develop applications for it like iSync. They probably also did it to (legally) download copies of PALM OS from Palm handhelds into emulators for troubleshooting apps like iSync.
 
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