11–20 of 141 posts
I remember investing in Palm thinking that they'd eventually be the ones to build something like the iphone. Sadly, they didn't and when apple did that was it for them.
I remember investing in Palm thinking that they'd eventually be the ones to build something like the iphone. Sadly, they didn't and when apple did that was it for them.
Then Palm developed webOS, which made some weird hardware decisions and couldn't compete with iPhone and Android. But it could have been a contender, better than Blackberry and Nokia that didn't make jump to capacitive screens.
I think Palm's problem was being too late, but if they hadn't split and made PalmOS successor, they would have missed capacitive smartphones.
I remember investing in Palm thinking that they'd eventually be the ones to build something like the iphone. Sadly, they didn't and when apple did that was it for them.
Arguably, what ultimately brought Palm down was their early success and the huge library of existing shareware and freeware tools:
They desperately needed to try something new (Palm OS was just showing its age as a single-threaded, in-RAM, non-virtual-memory-based OS), but couldn't, since it would have alienated long-time fans by stranding their existing software libraries.
They could never work their way through that chicken-and-egg problem (and all of the split ups (OS vs. hardware), forks/spin-offs (Handspring), and re-mergers didn't help either) until it was too late: Cobalt OS never saw any devices, and the Pre was an ambitious new start but would have had a tough time against the iPhone even if it would have launched earlier than that.
Also of interest: CloudpilotEmu - Palm emulator in your browser https://cloudpilot-emu.github.io/ When I installed it and could play Vexed again... ahh, the happiness!
I remember investing in Palm thinking that they'd eventually be the ones to build something like the iphone. Sadly, they didn't and when apple did that was it for them.
One big problem is that Palm split into PalmSource for software and Palm One for hardware. PalmSource went off to design Linux-based OS, got acquired, and disappeared. Palm One, renamed back to Palm One, made some early smartphones with PalmOS. But PalmOS was pretty obsolete by then, with 16-bit apps running on 32-bit OS. Then Palm developed webOS, which made some weird hardware decisions and couldn't compete with iP…
I remember investing in Palm thinking that they'd eventually be the ones to build something like the iphone. Sadly, they didn't and when apple did that was it for them.
One big problem is that Palm split into PalmSource for software and Palm One for hardware. PalmSource went off to design Linux-based OS, got acquired, and disappeared. Palm One, renamed back to Palm One, made some early smartphones with PalmOS. But PalmOS was pretty obsolete by then, with 16-bit apps running on 32-bit OS. Then Palm developed webOS, which made some weird hardware decisions and couldn't compete with iP…
This PumpkinOS project is pretty incredible. I can't imagine how much effort it would take to be compatible with all the system calls that the average Palm app would expect. I remember Palm did some truly weird things with memory: anything moderately large would need to be put into a special memory block that the OS could rearrange at will, and one would need to lock the block's handle to keep it stable while accessi…
> anything moderately large would need to be put into a special memory block that the OS could rearrange at will, and one would need to lock the block's handle to keep it stable while accessing it Didn't 16-bit Windows and classic Mac OS do something similar? If you're doing multitasking on a system without an MMU then I think that kind of live heap defragmentation would have been practically required.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One big problem is that Palm split into PalmSource for software and Palm One for hardware. PalmSource went off to design Linux-based OS, got acquired, and disappeared. Palm One, renamed back to Palm One, made some early smartphones with PalmOS. But PalmOS was pretty obsolete by then, with 16-bit apps running on 32-bit OS. Then Palm developed webOS, which made some weird hardware decisions and couldn't compete with iP…
webOS was really nice, a lot of ideas that didn't come to iOS and Android until much later were present and nicely implemented back in 2010 or so.
I think webOS could have been the iPhone if Apple didn't exist. I think they could have taken the second spot from Android if had been earlier, open, and released conventional hardware.
This PumpkinOS project is pretty incredible. I can't imagine how much effort it would take to be compatible with all the system calls that the average Palm app would expect. I remember Palm did some truly weird things with memory: anything moderately large would need to be put into a special memory block that the OS could rearrange at will, and one would need to lock the block's handle to keep it stable while accessi…
> anything moderately large would need to be put into a special memory block that the OS could rearrange at will, and one would need to lock the block's handle to keep it stable while accessing it Didn't 16-bit Windows and classic Mac OS do something similar? If you're doing multitasking on a system without an MMU then I think that kind of live heap defragmentation would have been practically required.
Obviously, with the state of mobile hardware back then relocatable blocks were also similarly necessary in order to save RAM.
For anyone wondering, no, this isn't the thing that made classic Mac OS unfit for multitasking. The MMU is necessary to keep applications from writing other apps' heaps, not to do memory defragmentation. You can do some cool software-transparent defragmentation tricks with MMUs, but if you're deciding what the ABI looks like ahead of time, then you can just make everyone carry double-pointers to everything.
I remember investing in Palm thinking that they'd eventually be the ones to build something like the iphone. Sadly, they didn't and when apple did that was it for them.
They did have the Treo line! Arguably, what ultimately brought Palm down was their early success and the huge library of existing shareware and freeware tools: They desperately needed to try something new (Palm OS was just showing its age as a single-threaded, in-RAM, non-virtual-memory-based OS), but couldn't, since it would have alienated long-time fans by stranding their existing software libraries. They could nev…
[edit: referring to Treo specifically, not the rest...]