I can't help seeing this in the context of the old Microsoft/PC vs. Apple/Mac discussion.
I think the secret behind Apple's success has been that its hardware and software have been inseparately linked and finely tuned. On this basis they have managed to obtain superior stability, much at the cost of flexibility - it's been difficult to "get under the hood of things". But then, almost all the time, that wasn't necessary either, because everything was so finely tuned. I think this is the case for their computers and peripheral devices such as iPod, and - until recently - Palm (I know Palm isn't directly associated with Apple anymore but we all know it's foundation). I think the problems started when Palm decided to separate the hardware from the software. Microsoft can do it, but then they have always allowed developers to get down to the core of things, so that they can fix problems under the hood. Not so with Palm, which doesn't even have a proper file system that you can manipulate. This works fine as long as everything is perfectly tuned! But when it isn't, simplicity becomes just frustration and the extreme limitations of such a system painfully reveal themselves. The irony that I illuded to in the beginning of this posting is that I think the PDB-format is just perfect for quick access to data in a handheld context; so I wrote algorithms on Windows Mobile to deal with pdb-files. Here, using a "proper" file system, I do all the memory handling manually. This simply can't be done on the Palm. Simplicity is fine as long as it works. When it doesn't, it becomes pretty useless. -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
