Plamwashed?

Couple of days ago, I was hanging out on the #webOS channel (IRC), when the conversation moved onto Apple's IP threats. Now, I mostly hang-out there because I know some folks that now work for Palm (and on the Pre), and not because I'm a Palm user or developer (in fact quite the opposite). Anyhow, during the conversation, I had to (kindly) correct one of the participant (clearly re-educated by Palm's political police) who believed the Palm Pilot to have come before the Apple's Newton ... Not only was the first Newton (OMP100) introduced close to 3 years before the first Pilot (Pilot 1000), but also the term PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) itself, was coined by John Sculley, then CEO of Apple.

To be fair to the Pilot, I just don't think both devices are comparable. The Original MessagePad, even with its laughable handwriting recognition, packed much more punch and capabilities than what Palm could delivers 3 years later! The same extends to the late MessagePads, which more than 10 years after its introduction, still simply rocks and is still been used by thousands. around the worlds (including yours truly up to June 2008). How many PalmPilot Personal are still been used in 2009? ....

Don't believe the Newton can still be useful? Check this article made by cnet.co.uk back in 2006, in which the Newton came out as the winner when compared to an UMPC!!

(Edit: the Casio/Tandy Zoomer did beat the OMP release by 2 months, and thus it is considered the first PDA. Palm Computing contribution to it was the Personal Information Management (PIM) software).

Palm and its Mojo ...

When I first saw that Palm's Pre SDK was called Mojo, I couldn't beleive that will pick such a ridiculous name for their brand new platform. I mean come-on Palm, Mojo!?! Yeah we get it, like Austin Powers you got your Mojo back ... It will be more than fine for an internal codename, but for a public name? Not very classy ... Then, there is the whole thing about the framework been based on HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. How many mobile developers knows theses, or have time and will to learn them? Apple got a a lot of flak from the developers community from using Objective-C on its mobile platform, which only a small (tiny?) fraction of the developers (most of which live in the Mac platform ghetto) knows ... and it's a C superset!!! At the risk of sounding like an a$$, I'll like to said that web developer != software developer ... experience, education and skills are usualy very different. But maybe, that's what Palm is after? A platform where applications are quick and easy to hack and release?

Palm's Nova ... #2

It's out and in the open, and it's called webOS! gdgt.com has a live feed of the keynote. Looks good, rather iPhone-ish but with some nice features (e.g app switching) ... but HTML, CSS, and javascript for dev tools? Surely there will be some sort of C API ...

Palm's Nova ...

Well today is the day where Palm is supposed to announce, at the CES, its new OS (Linux based apparently) which should compete with the iPhone. Not much have leaked so far on what to expect (somehow this sounds like an Apple's operation), so there is not much to said for now. I'm not very warm to Palm, mainly because the Palm Pilot is somewhat responsible for the (inevitable?) demise of my beloved Newton (smaller & cheaper devices which didn't do a quarter of what the Newt' could do). It's not that I didn't try to like them, since I got myself (I know! What was I thinking!) a Palm Tungsten T3 back in 2004. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), there was no spark between us. The device it-self was alright I guess, but the OS left me cold, uninterested and the unit ended-up collecting dust on my desk for years, unused.