I will go back this evening and have a look when I have some reading time. Thanks for the feedback Jeff. It's good to hear you are at least attempting an un-biased approach. When the big PALM with the red marker around it appeared (at least I seem to remember that as being your logo for a time - still?) on your site it seemed you had officially adopted that camp, forsaking others.
Unfortunately I cannot support the logic of your counter-argument. I could as easily say (in my own area of expertise) that if only the Czechoslovakian doublebass maker Dvorak made great basses, they'd be a great bass maker. Unfortunately they churn out utter crap, and no matter how my skills are pressed to their limits I cannot make any of them sound well. Or more on-topic, I could suggest that if only every company ignored Microsoft's insistence upon no exit commands, the stupid 'smart minimize' function would be rendered almost meaningless. Instead many of them, even most, insist on attempting to follow the rules and have no built-in way to exit. Pocket Artist had an Exit command until the version before last, but then Conduits wanted official certification... then it was left to a CtrlQ which almost no one knew about... then finally with version 3 they've made tapping on OK a couple of times in a row actually shut the program - apparently a workaround Microsoft's certifiers can live with. What the heck is wrong with closing programs when done with them?!! Brainless nonsense.
Whichever the mobile device OS, developers and OEMs and OS makers need to get their collective acts together and decide to make things work together. Since that sort of thing is not likely to happen any time soon, the next best thing is to allow developers the freedom to make great applications which work independent of any OS flaws or expectations which might get in the way. Saying to developers that they have to jump through hoops just to make the device look good is wishful thinking. Attributing failures of Palms to function properly with pseudo-multi-tasking to failures at the third-party developer end is a cop out.
Sure, Microsoft has trouble with the concept of limited RAM and thereby the necessity of task closing. No big deal; install any of the dozens of free or cheap task managers and deal with it. On the other hand, how exactly does one cope with Palm's own failure to implement their prized 'save state' nonsense in their own PIM apps? There's no fix, really. It's a failure, and a huge one, and they should go down in flames if they fail to fix it and quickly. Market share these days is being determined by an ever better informed usership, and getting away with such blunders is not likely.
Anyway, I'll check your site again and see what's up.
As to the whole multi-tasking discussion... what does it say about the fact that Garnet's capabilities are using a 10 year-old (or is it 15) technology for task management. As I'm sure most would agree, its always bad news to put the burden of a better OS experience on the software developers. Perhaps thats evident in the fact that there are so few Palm applications that take advantage of co-operative multitasking. Atleast thats my impression from Jeff Kirvin post. I'm by no means an expert on the PalmOS software community.
But by the same token, the Palm OS method is far, far more efficient and uses less memory. Which is better for a resource-contrained mobile device?
I can see you're point on memory constraints. However, it doesn't negate the fact that I may want to do more than one thing at a time. Like read an ebook while waiting for my email or a webpage to download.
Curious... how does the Palm OS handle playing music while doing anything else?
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I can see you're point on memory constraints. However, it doesn't negate the fact that I may want to do more than one thing at a time. Like read an ebook while waiting for my email or a webpage to download.
Curious... how does the Palm OS handle playing music while doing anything else?
By multitasking of course. Sounds fine. The media players are written to support background playback, and continue to stay resident much like DOS-era TSRs while you do other things. FYI, VersaMail can indeed fetch mail in the background while you read an ebook, and VeriChat can keep any number of IM sessions open while you're reading, downloading mail and listening to music.
This is my (ad nauseum) point: Palms *do* multitask. They just have a different approach than Windows Mobile. Which is better?
Well, which is the better ice cream flavor, chocolate or strawberry? Because that's what this argument boils down to.
... except that in the case of this analogy, sometimes the strawberry (or is Palm chocolate?) sometimes tastes great, other times never quite gets to the tongue, depending on which developer mixed the batch. Depending for multi-tasking upon thousands of independent developers doing things just right to implement it, well, that's a bit harder to swallow than having an OS which does it all on its own. Taking care of the basics at the OS level seems to make more sense. Or have I misunderstood? Does Palm send a simple codeset to every existing developer to simply insert into the right place in their programs, enabling multi-tasking if they comply?
... except that in the case of this analogy, sometimes the strawberry (or is Palm chocolate?) sometimes tastes great, other times never quite gets to the tongue, depending on which developer mixed the batch. Depending for multi-tasking upon thousands of independent developers doing things just right to implement it, well, that's a bit harder to swallow than having an OS which does it all on its own. Taking care of the basics at the OS level seems to make more sense. Or have I misunderstood? Does Palm send a simple codeset to every existing developer to simply insert into the right place in their programs, enabling multi-tasking if they comply?
I honestly don't know. Yes, the WM way of doing things is less work on the developers, but it's also wasteful when programs don't need to stay active in the background. Palm applications, by having to write the multitasking code explicitly, don't sit around in memory unless they have a pretty good reason to be there.
It's a preference, nothing more. Neither is inherently better than the other. They both have pros and cons.
and oranges, chocolate and strawberry, ford and chevy, nor any other mere preference. There is a logical break here. In one case, any of a fistful of freeware programs can be used to close applications - one is just 5kb and can be mapped to a button and/or used in the Start Menu. In the other *every* *single* *program* must incorporate code to perform the opposite, to stay running, else it is gone.
Which makes more logical sense, adding bulk and complexity to every program or adding one tool to an exit-less OS to close things generally?
and oranges, chocolate and strawberry, ford and chevy, nor any other mere preference. There is a logical break here. In one case, any of a fistful of freeware programs can be used to close applications - one is just 5kb and can be mapped to a button and/or used in the Start Menu. In the other *every* *single* *program* must incorporate code to perform the opposite, to stay running, else it is gone.
Which makes more logical sense, adding bulk and complexity to every program or adding one tool to an exit-less OS to close things generally?
It's not every program. Only the ones that really need it. But you clearly don't see my point, and I no longer care to make it. Goodbye.
I feel that Jeff is mistaken; I see his point, but find it fallacious and misleading, besides being overly servile to the motives and beliefs of Palm engineers. If I were to play the same game I would have to say that I liked the fact that the PPC OS contains to one-tap solution to truly close programs, that I liked dynamic memory allocation and the automated shut-down of rear-most, user-launched applications beyond a total of 32 running processes. I do not. I think that these are stupid limitations.
Deciding for the user which programs are important to multi-task is every bit as offensive as deciding for the user that they not be allowed to close applications. Each is a kind of baby-sitting, a dis-empowering of the individual user.
That you choose to say "goodbye" at this point is not terribly surprising, only dismaying, as it again demonstrates that logical argument isn't part of it for Palm users any more than it is for Mac users. It's a matter of taste. And by no means would I dare to suggest that anyone is wrong for choosing to use Mac or Palm, or a 1982 Sharp personal organizer with 16KB total memory if that's what works for you! But by the same token I feel perfectly free to offer comments and criticisms on what seem to be failures in design approaches, regardless of the platform.
Palm fan claims of Palm device stability and simplicity have gone on for years, ignoring the many users in Palm forums who have lost important data and those who find Palm-based devices difficult or impossible to use in many computing applications. Same goes for Mac fans; I have a friend who has for years been extolling the virtues and stability of Mac computers to the point of boastingg he never needs to make backups. Well, he lost his entire email databases the other day, addresses and all. Gone, poof. Guess nobody is perfect... funny though, just a while before that happened one might swear Mac was.
The question I am asking, and which Jeff seems unable or unwilling to answer, is one of honest logical sort. What makes more sense, to keep simple tasks like multi-tasking and program closing as unified and simple as possible or to make everyone join in the decision making process about where priorities lie? Do you serious want every third-party developer to have to make a decision about what percentage of users will want to keep their particular application running in the background or not? Do you then want these same developers assessing these best guesses (for how could they possibly know?), deciding based on personal taste, ethical judgement, and coin toss whether to take the trouble to implement the extra coding? I don't. Just as I don't want PPC developers deciding not to include an exit function in their menus.
Imagine a game like Tomb Raider not having an exit command! It's a massive RAM gobbler. If instead of allowing one to close it, instead it allowed one to move it to the background, every other program would run like molasses. Without a native taskbar such as GigaBar it would be very difficult to see what was running, and many users would become frustrated, forgetting that heavy game or movie or whatever running in the background. Fortunately many PPC developers are smart enough to include a simple exit command, losing the right to Microsoft's seal of approval, but I think not losing much in sales.
Keeping options open = good.
Limiting user options = bad.
I feel that Jeff is mistaken; I see his point, but find it fallacious and misleading, besides being overly servile to the motives and beliefs of Palm engineers.
Indeed, I too believe he is wrong in this matter. Every other mobile OS enables all applications to multitask -- Symbian, Linux, and Windows Mobile. Only Palm has this insistence on leaving everything up to developers. Not only does it make end-users dependent on developers in implementing these features, which they may not, but it adds to the work of developers. Worse, it allows for a nonuniform implementation.
They're not equivalent, as he implies. While WM's multitasking has its share of problems, the OS-level multitasking is de facto in the computer industry, both mobile and desktop, for a good reason.
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