Del Ventruella wrote:
Wow... One Palm device switches to a Windows platform, and the Palm OS programmers of the world are already ringing their hands. What a coup for Microsoft.
Well, on the one hand, selling a device with Windows on it doesn't mean the company has given up on its other OS. If you buy an x86 server from Sun, they'd prefer to sell it to you with Solaris on it, but you can order it with Windows Server, and that configuration is supported by Sun. This doesn't mean Sun is giving up on Solaris; in fact, they've just poured a bunch of resources into making Solaris 10, which has many new features and is a big upgrade from Solaris 9. On the other hand, I used to be an Amiga person, and over a number of years, I watched what happened with Amiga community, with the company (Commodore), and with the platform. It died a slow death, and there were several phases to the decline. I don't want to be pessimistic, but there have been some parallels in the Palm world. A major version of the operating system (AmigaDOS 1.x) saw few major changes for a long time, and finally there was a push to make a new major version (AmigaDOS 2.0) which took much longer than planned, whose scope was changed in the middle, and which when finally released wasn't adopted very quickly. Sales didn't drop precipitously, but they did decline gradually over a number of years as the market changed. The company tried some experiments to see if they could succeed in related markets (like the CDTV, basically an early set-top box). Later on, the rights to the platform were bought and sold a few times. Various parties tried their hand at making something marketable out of it since they could get the technology and rights for relatively cheap. I can't pretend I know what the mind of Palm is, but I'm starting to feel that they're growing less committed to Palm OS. I expected them to wait for PalmSource to become a bargain and then buy it back, but instead they let ACCESS have it. One would think if they saw Palm OS as their future, they would want to have more control of its destiny. Now they have introduced a Windows Mobile device, but it's not a plain vanilla Windows Mobile device. They are talking about bringing the Palm "experience" and usability over to Windows Mobile devices. PalmSource seems to view the kernel (PalmSource kernel or Linux) as unimportant and interchangeable, and the layer above it as the stuff that really matters. Palm is now kinda acting like they view the OS (Palm OS or Windows) as unimportant and interchangeable and like they view the layer above it (the user experience, certain applications, etc.) as the stuff that really matters. Only time will tell if Palm is just diversifying a bit, is hedging their bets, or is planning to totally move from Palm OS to Windows. I'm not trying to make predictions, but I do think there is a larger significance to the introduction of this new model than just one new thing on the product page of Palm's web site. - Logan -- For information on using the PalmSource Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
