Don't worry, I have tried the 4.0 ROMS and I will continue, serious or not. ;)
But this topic gives me a cue I'd like to aim squarely at Palm's marketing and
developer relations department: (and not at the very
kind and helpful Palm developers who read this forum, although maybe they could pass
it on.) It deals not as much with knew OS
releases as with new devices.
I assume that it is Palm's faith in the Emulator that puts us in the unusual situation
that we developers only get new devices at
the same time the public gets them. (Laughably, we are even told they don't exist
right up to the public launch.)
(Well, actually, the select public gets them months before we software developers do.
I have a friend - no connection with Palm -
who was trying out an English M505 MONTHS before the first emails came to us
developers telling us the M505 was only a rumor. And
if developers want discounts on the hardware, then they get them even later than the
initial mass roll out, because of course, users
have priority.)
So Palm does a big marketing push, they roll out tons of new Palm devices, eager
people buy them - but one catch - 99% of developers
haven't been able to test their software yet to make it fully device compatible. So
the eager users have to keep checking back on
line, waiting for the "NEW VERSION FOR YOUR DEVICE FINALLY AVAILABLE. Download and
apply patch. See instructions."
And any "serious" developer has found many differences between the emulator and the
real devices - some more than trivial.
I agree with you that in Palm's case the damage has been reasonable small, as new Palm
devices aren't so different from past ones,
but I CERTAINLY hope Palm will provide a way for developers to get real ARM devices
months ahead of the public, even if they aren't
considered 100% final reference.
David Fedor wrote:
>
> But why just hope for the best, when prerelease (and now final) 4.0 roms
> have been available since December for you to test with? I would hope that
> anyone considering themself to be a serious Palm OS developer would have
> joined the seeding program by now...
> http://www.palmos.com/alliance/resources/
>
> -
--
For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see
http://www.palmos.com/dev/tech/support/forums/
