This is just me, but I think they need to scrap OS6 and start from scratch. They need to add all of the wonderful things that Ed mentions, like pre-emptive multi-tasking and a real file system, before they're going to have something to compete against WM2003SE and WM5.
Just my 2 cents...
OS6 on a Linux kernel. If they can pull it off, they'll have something better than WM, but at this point I'd put better odds on them not pulling it off.
As for letting Nagel go? PS was only making roughly 72M, they reported a loss of roughly 3M, and Nagel is making about 8.5M...
It also clears the way for P1 to do a friendly takeover, if that's what they're thinking. (And if they have 1/2 a brain cell, it should be. Wait, I'm talking about P1 here...)
This is just me, but I think they need to scrap OS6 and start from scratch. They need to add all of the wonderful things that Ed mentions, like pre-emptive multi-tasking and a real file system, before they're going to have something to compete against WM2003SE and WM5.
Just my 2 cents...
The problem is I personally doubt that they have time to build a new OS from scratch. I mean if you REALLY started something from scratch? Minimum a year I bet. Why do I get this image of Apple's transition from OS 9 to 10 here? How many times did they start and stop that project before Jobs came back?
They could always license the win ce kernel and run styletap on top of that. Problem solved in one day! OK, to get conduits and wireless to work will take a few more weeks, but afterward any new apps they write will be automatically multi-tasking. They would have access to all the hardware and drivers already available for win ce also.
The announcement isn't helping their stock much. In a day when the NASDAQ was up half a percent, PalmSource dropped 1.33%.
Not a palm fan, but stocks drop on good news and bad on any particular day, regardless of the market. The stock looked dead around the same price about a year ago (if my memory serves me right). Then it rebounded. It doesn't take much for a good rebound (well maybe a little irrational exuberance).
This is just me, but I think they need to scrap OS6 and start from scratch. They need to add all of the wonderful things that Ed mentions, like pre-emptive multi-tasking and a real file system, before they're going to have something to compete against WM2003SE and WM5.
I bet, behind the scenes, that their Linux strategy is doing exactly this. If they keep stuff from OS6, it sounds like it'll be the high-level stuff - UIs and APIs. What saddens me is to see the total downfall of the BeOS kernel, which was supposed to be an amazingly stable multitasking platform.
You may say a lot of negative things about PALM OS, however I never reset my Palm. You have to reset a Pocket PC every 2 to 3 hours of use and battery life SUCKS! I am now on my 4th Pocket PC and Third Palm. PALM OS may not be perfect, either is windowsMobile.
No one here ever said one or the other was perfect.
Now, your other points:
1. If you've never had to soft-reset your Palm, that's pretty impressive. I had to reset even my Palm III back in the day, and I've seen modern units spontaneously crash and require soft resets fairly often. (And, on the other hand, I rarely soft-reset my Pocket PC -- usually once or twice a month.) You may want to look more closely at the applications you're running on each, as they tend to have a far greater effect on stability.
2. If you look at the latest specs, battery life on the two platforms is nearly identical, across-the-board.
That said, let's keep this from being another cookie-cutter Palm vs. Pocket PC discussion. I think many of us would like to see Palm succeed, if for no other reason than to give WM competition. However, their strategy seems to be confused. I'm not sure getting rid of Nagel is going to help; what little I saw of him at a CeBIT keynote suggested he was reasonably clueful (compared to, say, Carl & predecessors.)
The problem is I personally doubt that they have time to build a new OS from scratch. I mean if you REALLY started something from scratch? Minimum a year I bet. Why do I get this image of Apple's transition from OS 9 to 10 here? How many times did they start and stop that project before Jobs came back?
Right -- the Mac fans kept the platform solvent long enough for OS X to be released and perfected. I don't know if Palm is going to have the same groundswell. It seems to me the LifeDrive is a strong attempt to maintain the userbase in that fashion, and it remains to be seen how it'll fare.
It's funny how owner's of iPods and PSP devices are trying to figure out how to add PIM functionality
I totally agree with the rest of your post, but it is important to remember that the iPod came with (read-only) PIM, text reading and address book from the very first model, it seems added as an afterthought on top of the media functionality. Quite the reverse of what Palm's strategy has been!
Re: PalmSource CEO David Nagel Resigns
Linear Mode
