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Dan Harkless
Page created: February 15, 2009 [Site Map] |
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I've been a very happy user of Palm OS devices since the Treo 300 in 2003, continuing with the Treo 600, Treo 700p, and now the Centro, and I'm shocked and saddened that Palm has decided to basically cut ties with their userbase. The Palm Pre will reportedly be based on an entirely new OS called webOS which provides no backwards compatibility for the huge library of Palm OS apps. To add insult to injury, they announced on Wednesday that Palm will release no more Palm OS devices.
In Spring 2007, Palm made public their OS strategy, which in addition to continuing to support Windows Mobile (which they started to build devices around in 2005), included creating a new Linux-based OS that would include backwards compatibility for Palm OS apps. They even labeled that last part as "Commitment to the Palm OS Community" in the documents that were released to the public regarding this strategy.
Access, the Japanese company that bought the Palm OS from Palm in 2005, has actually had a Linux-based OS including Palm OS emulation, the Access Linux Platform, since 2007, but for unspecified reasons, Palm elected not to license it from them, and instead started working on creating their own separate Linux-based OS from scratch. (And since then, Access has not been able to get any other smartphone manufacturers to use their OS.)
This delayed the release of a new platform quite a bit, and now, near the end of the wait, Palm has presented us with webOS, which, contrary to their prior promises, will not include a Palm OS emulation layer. Not only that, but aping Apple's iPhone strategy to a fault, upon release, there will be no proper SDK for the Pre -- developers will only be able to build web-type apps with HTML and JavaScript.
Perhaps in the future a third party will be able to develop a Palm OS emulator -- reportedly StyleTap, who sells a Palm OS emulator for the Windows Mobile and Symbian platforms, is considering making one for webOS. However, until Palm makes available a proper SDK with the ability to call underlying OS functions, do direct screen drawing, etc., this will be impossible.
Even if an emulator does become available, there will be some compromises. For one thing, the Pre is lacking the 5-way navigation pad and application buttons of the Treo / Centro. It's also lacking a stylus, and it's unknown whether the screen digitizer even supports pixel-accurate tapping, considering the webOS is designed around lower-resolution finger taps. StyleTap also documents certain limitations with their emulator, including not supporting HotSync conduits (and of course a lot of people's essential Palm OS software includes programs with data that needs to be synced with the desktop). I suspect there are a lot of undocumented limitations as well, but when trying to research this when making my last smartphone purchase, I found surprisingly little info out there on people's experiences with StyleTap. I'm guessing that one such limitation is that alarms set by Palm OS programs only work if you happen to be actively running the StyleTap emulator at their designated time.
So if Palm is deciding to just throw away one of their few market advantages, the huge library of existing Palm OS software, which includes very specialized applications such as ones for verticals like health care and real estate that don't exist for any other platform, maybe they're making up for it by making a new platform that's so compelling that it still be worth it for most users to switch? Well, not that I can see. Looks like the webOS is just yet another iPhone imitator. Apple has already started rattling the sabers and implying that they'll be suing Palm for patent infringement on the gesture-based interface.
Other things that suck about the Pre include a keyboard that must be slid out to be accessed (okay, maybe I could get used to that), no memory card slot, and no desktop synchronization / backup. Originally another major suckage was going to be that Pre apps would only be available through an iTunes-like online store run by Palm, complete with a big brother approval process (and profit "sharing"), but now Palm has said that they'll allow distribution of apps through other channels as well (hopefully that also means no approval will be required for such apps). One final opportunity for suckage is that Sprint, who will be the exclusive carrier of the Pre in the U.S. for an unspecified period of time, may, as with iPhone imitator the Samsung Instinct, require a more expensive data plan than Sprint's industry-leading low-priced ones (including grandfathered plans that are even cheaper than the current ones).
So though Palm's stock has recently soared from a low at the beginning of December of $1.42 a share up to $8.70 (and temporarily $9.51) a share, I can't say that I agree with the market outlook. Thumbing their nose in the face of the Palm OS' loyal installed base and squeezing out another me-too iPhone imitator (and imitating the first iteration of the iPhone where proper third-party software wasn't possible) does not seem like the way to ensure your company's longevity.
Update, 2010-04-28:
Well, sure enough, the Pre was effectively Palm's death knell. The webOS
devices have not been a hit, the stock dropped again, the company ran out of
money, and today, it was announced that HP will be acquiring Palm. Reportedly HP will be forging ahead with the
webOS devices. I wish them luck, but do not expect to be a customer.
Beyond the issues I discussed in my original post (some of which have since been rectified, including the release of a proper SDK, and a third-party Palm OS emulator called Classic, which, unlike StyleTap, actually supports Network HotSync), after the Pre was released, I learned that the ultimate deal-killer for me was that the device had no way to sync and back up to your own PC (aside from apps under Classic, as mentioned above). Instead, the device inherently synchronizes with "the cloud" (man I hate that term): Palm's servers. There is also apparently no option to pre-encrypt your data before handing it off to Palm (or now, HP). Totally unacceptable in this age of rampant security vulnerabilities and theft of your private data from third parties that hold it (including credit card processors, Google, etc.).
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Dan Harkless
Page created: February 15, 2009 [Site Map] |
Validated HTML 5 +
CSS Last modified: September 11, 2025 |