So, I wanted to respond to many notes that have been posted today and
yesterday, because this is an important issue and both I and my group and
Palm in general feel strongly about it. I decided to put all the responses
in one email. But it was too big so I had to split into two messages :-)
At 1:56 PM -0700 8/7/00, Brian Mathis wrote:
>I think Palm has done a large part for developers on
>stuff that *matters*, like pre-releasing color debug ROMs, etc for us to
>test on.
That's the exact goal.
> "Hey Mr. Palm Developer, what do you know about the new devices?"
> "Well, not much, because they haven't been released yet."
Or another great response would be "I may or may not know, and if I knew
anything, I'd be bound by an NDA and thus wouldn't be able to say." Right?
The premise in lots of these arguments is that folks need to know before it
is public info, so they can share it with their customers. And bingo,
there goes confidentiality. This is inconsistent: people want to know the
secret so they can share it with their customers and are overlooking that
the action makes it not a secret.
At 2:07 PM -0700 8/7/00, Richard Hartman wrote:
>And if you _really_ expect things to be compatible, where the
>hell is the OS 3.5.1 ROM for POSE??
Nowhere, because that's actually a meaningless question. Take a 3.5 rom,
drop on the 3.5.2 update, and you've got a 3.5.2 system which has (as
explained on this list BEFORE the 3.5.2 update was released) one more bug
fix than 3.5.1 did.
There's no such thing as "the" 3.5 or 3.5.1 or 3.5.2 rom. Every time our
build system builds, it creates literally about 100 roms from the same
sources... flavors for lots of devices, lots of languages, lots of software
configurations. Where is "the" windows 2000 hard drive image? No such
thing exists either... hundreds or thousands exist.
At 2:17 PM -0700 8/7/00, Bradly J. Barton wrote:
>...I had to tell them ... [t]he new
>devices are a rumor, and should be treated as such. Since most rumors prove
>to be false and with a lack of support from Palm, I had to tell the customer
>that it looked like they (ZDNet) got the story wrong. Now today, Palm
>"unveils" these new units and has them on store shelves, leaving us to tell
>our customers.. "we're sorry, Palm has now confirmed the rumors they were
>denying".
You were right they were a rumor. This one turned out to be pretty
accurate. And we neither confirm nor deny rumors except in really unusual
circumstances. Your response needs to be "it is a rumor and Palm hasn't
made any announcement, so let's wait until there's facts available, or else
realize we're making decisions based on hearsay." Sure it'd be nicer to
have the facts, but the device team made a business decision that they
didn't want to announce until product was available to stores. The
alternative is vaporware, which isn't very palatable either.
At 2:28 PM -0700 8/7/00, Oliver King-Smith wrote:
>>If you were a PC software vendor, would your customers expect you to know
>>all the details of Intel's newest chip?...
>
>This is the incorrect analysis. First Intel and MS both heavily publicize
>new products prior to release. MS releases tons of betas along the way so
>developers are well informed. While it is true that Intel or say Compact
>don't send out their complete info prior to the devices getting released,
>they offer a guaranteed platform on which to build.
This is precisely what we did. Way back in October we started public
seeding betas of 3.5. You got the "guaranteed platform on which to build"
in January. And you didn't get device details until it shipped, same
story. You never got the final hard drive image of a Compaq XYZPDQ, did
you? Neither did you get the rom image of an m100 device; you had the
platform for the past 6 months.
At 2:51 PM -0700 8/7/00, Bob Whiteman wrote:
>I entirely disagree with this statement. With each new PalmOS version there
>have been inevitable bugs and incompatibilities. It's the nature of
>computers.
>
>For instance, there is a bug involving gadgets which are set unusable that
>was introduced with Palm OS 3.5. This bug rendered my software entirely
>unusable, even though it worked perfectly in all previous OS versions.
Right, which is precisely why you got that software more than 6 months ago.
Heck, at PalmSource if people found good enough bugs, they even got fixed
before it went final.
>Developers need to see platforms before they are released. That way if there
>is some incompatibility in the new OSes I can find out what that is, fix it,
>and release a new version...
Right, I totally agree. Which is why you got the platform 6+ months ago.
Guys, the Palm m100 device is a DEVICE. A software configuration not
fundamentally different than what you could have done yourselves on a Palm
V device with flashing utilities and software that you could get from
Palmgear. New or removed apps, sure; different default button
configurations, a user could have done that. A few cool things like
turning the system on briefly when you hit up-arrow and it shows the time
and goes off a few seconds later... neat, and could have been done with a
3rd party hack. (And sort of was done via a hack.) The platform didn't
change; the bundled apps and the device exterior did.
At 3:00 PM -0700 8/7/00, Steve wrote:
>...I think it's quite unfortunate that Palm isn't able to give
>the subset of developers involved with hardware add-ons and cables (a
>TINY subset, NOT a group so large that confidentiality can't be
>maintained) a heads up on the new connectors which were forthcoming.
Well, even without telling developers, plenty of leaks happened. And
although developers are in general much better than press or store clerks,
NDAs do get broken. And every time that happens, the clamps get tightened.
When leaks don't happen, they slowly release. Because this is a business,
and leaks make negative results to the business.
>Undoubtedly some folks were told, I'm sure, but others weren't,
>that's clear.
That's how it will always be. If you want to be told, then be one of the
most important 5 or something. Make it worth the device team's while - and
arguing "I'll get 7 more devices sold if you tell me" isn't exactly
compelling :-)
>Brian Mathis wrote in message <20055@palm-dev-forum>...
>Actually the OS is a new rev: OS 3.5.1. It may be virtually the same, but
>we have no way of knowing this. It -does- have one major new feature: the
>recognition of the "up" key press when the device is off.
Nope. As above, this is the same OS with one fewer bug patched than the
3.5.2 you've had for a while, and some built-in software which does a cool
thing that anyone could have done with Hackmaster if they had thought of it
(and had drilled a hole in the lid, of course!) Great added value for the
device team, no new API, no change to the platform.
>Bradly J. Barton wrote in message <20068@palm-dev-forum>...
>Actually Rustin Nesse just brought up a number of differences that
>might affect some software. In particular mail conduit software that uses
>the built-in mail app as a reader. The loss of Network Hotsync may
>affect some people too.
Yes, that's true. But nobody should assume that any given app is on the
device or on the desktop. Fail gracefully... and you already have that
requirement because of things like FlashPro.
>... [Palm] should not have >continued denying the existance
>of these new products to the DevZone members.
We never did. I was responding to the apparent acceptance of it as
verified, announced truth. I said it was a rumor, and no announcements had
been made, and that the validity of rumors varies wildly.
At 3:34 PM -0700 8/7/00, Richard Hartman wrote:
>I would like to apologize to the Palm representatives (especially David
>Fedor) for the vehemence of my response earlier today. I now believe
>that it was due to a misreading of a key phrase.
Thanks very much, Richard. It was indeed intended to be a statement of
faith in the product. Poor writing on my part, I guess. Sorry for causing
undue stress!
(More to follow in a separate note.)
-David Fedor
Palm Developer Support
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