On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Tom Zerucha wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, Kenneth Albanowski wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, Tom Zerucha wrote:
> >
> > > ZDOC is free, and you can edit records, and there are other free...
> > >
> > > Palm should consider a shareware/freeware/demoware directory ...
> >
> > This isn't the same. There's sure to be some subset of the Palm users who
> > have never used shareware, never used freeware, never downloaded stuff off
> > the Internet, never installed third-party software, etc. (A sad fact for
> > third-party developers, of course.)
>
> The number of people with this objection is small, otherwise a replacement
> memopad would be profitable for under $20 and would be selling briskly at
> the CompUSAs and the like. And everyone installs 3rd party batteries.
Er, sorry, "objection"? I meant nothing philosophical, just point out the
(fairly obvious, I thought) fact that there are and always will be folks
who don't use third-party software -- ignorance of its existance being a
simple reason. Not everyone uses the Net, not everyone has friends with
PIIIs, and some folks won't notice the "bonus" stuff on the distribution
CD. And some folks won't ever go into a CompUSA or the like (the Palm
device was a birthday gift, or a door prize.) A much larger percentage of
the population has walked by the battery stand in the supermarket, in
contrast.
Of course, this group of people are probably not going to know or care
about a 4K memopad limit.
> > Unless I seriously miss my mark, shareware/freeware/demoware on the CD can
> > only ever count as a "bonus" feature that only some of the users will get
> > to. In addition, Palm would need to think long and hard about "suggesting"
> > anyone use a specific piece of third-party software: if they do, customers
> > will want Palm to support the software, never mind who wrote it.
>
> Your original point was that Palm is losing sales because it can't store
> items over 4K. Well, it can, just not with the original Memo Pad program.
Er, original point? Frank started this conversation. (I feel like I'm in
the wrong shoes.)
It's not just memo pad -- enhancing it would be trivial (changing one byte
in the memopad prc should be sufficient). But your memos would get clipped
off by the older desktop software, which would break an extremely
long-standing record of backwards compatibility.
> Palm could come up with an enhanced MemoPad, but it would have to be
> installed. And they do have some extra apps - mostly games - on their
> disk. I am sure they could add their own DOC reader if they thought it
> was significant.
Indeed.
> There are a lot of things CE devices cannot do out of the box either. I
> take it you asked them and they universally said they would never add any
> application to their PDA whatsoever?
Huh?
> (And I don't think a Nino can beam an app to an E-10 and have it
> work).
I'm not even sure they have the concept of "beaming". (Certainly a
Journada 820 I've played with a bit seemed completely oblivious to a PIII
trying to send it a business card, and had no obvious mechanism for
starting a transmission.) The lack of a universal executable definitely
hurts there -- which might be considered a limition on Palm's future
options. (Not that I dislike Motorola processors).
Once again, I miss the Newton -- processor indepedant bytecode.
> > > Or you could simply say "no". And offer to beam them a DOC reader/writer.
> >
> > Which only works for the set of folks who own IR capable Palm units who
> > run into someone else with an IR capable Palm unit (or at least something
> > capable of communicating _with_ a Palm unit)...
>
> [One wonders how humans find time to replace the population, what with the
> probablilty of CommIrDA interruptis so high, but they seem to do it]
>
> Happens to me all the time. "Oh, you have a palm III too?... There is
> this neat app... [Beam] Do you know of anything that does ... Sure...".
Exactly, which demonstrates that, _within your cohort_, a wide
distribution of apps via beaming is possible. Other cohorts exist.
> They need to be able to give them away for 3 hours. That is the
> incubation period of the addiction. I couldn't tolerate accessing more
> than 4K of info on the CE palmtop devices I have seen.
>
> Except word-of-mouth. Though I am still waiting for a Macish ad - maybe a
> palm V in shadow with the opening strains of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" in
> the background, and a primate throws a bone at it and the backlight turns
> on to show the splash screen, and the primate, turned human wearing a suit
> grabs it and heads off to a busy day - fade to "The organizer for the 21st
> century" type of thing.
Somehow, I just can't think of anything to add to that.
> I have yet to see an ad for the Palm in any non notebook/laptop/palmtop
> specific venue. But it doesn't seem to be hurting sales.
Funny how that goes. It seems like the most mention I've seen about the
things is from news agencies. CNet has been keeping up the rumour patrol,
with a decent product announcement/review in the NY Times.
> > Text fields can go larger (but I assume the 4K choice was an efficiency
> > trade-off.
>
> The only slowness I have noticed with larger text fields is with reverse
> scrolling (scroll to the bottom, drag upwards).
We'd have to dig up a P1000 to test this properly -- fields may be a bit
more efficient nowadays.
> Theoretically if you can find the resource you should be able to change
> the maxfieldchars to something larger.
It ought to be trivial, in fact, at least on the PalmOS side.
--
Kenneth Albanowski ([EMAIL PROTECTED], CIS: 70705,126)
