09-12-2002, 09:00 AM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Heading into 2003, it will get interesting
Going into 2003, the PDA market will change radically.
� First, the current king of the hill, the Palm OS, will finally ship OS 5 products.
� Second, Dell enters the PDA fray with a Pocket PC 2002 device targeted at consumers for $299 this Christmas.
� Third, I keep seeing indicators that in early 2003, there will be an update to the Pocket PC operating system based on thoughts like this and this.
� Fourth, Microsoft's Smartphone should be shipping by then.
� Fifth, Foo Fighter will get a Pocket PC with a transflective screen, so traffic here will drop a bit. 
The most interesting and unknown of these is the success of Palm OS 5. "... Palm's biggest challenge may be migrating its large and valuable developer community, which has populated the handheld landscape with Palm devices and applications. " This is no simple trick. The only OS I've seen that was a radical change from the previous version was Mac OS X, and they still don't have all of their key apps ported from Mac OS 9 to OS X. There are some pretty complex apps on the Palm. There is no porting. It is ground up rewriting to work natively in the ARM based OS. OS 5 isn't where this happens but OS 6. At some point Palm will presumably drop the PACE emulation environment. Rewriting 15,000 apps is a lot of manpower. I suspect some of the 250+ calculators won't get rewritten along with 500+ versions of solitaire.
"There's a lot of pressure on this new OS to be a strong answer," Aberdeen Group analyst Isaac Ro said. "This may be Palm's last best hope to recapture dominance in the marketplace."
What do you think? Will Palm recoup lost market share with OS5? Will Dell clean everyone's clock with a competent $300 Pocket PC? Will the rumored iPAQ 5000's keep iPAQ the strong product it is today? Will Microsoft trump every conceivable Palm OS 5 option with a Pocket PC 2003 available in early 2003 - one that we could hopefully put on our 2002 devices for $30 or so? Will smartphones come in at a price cheap enough to sway consumers and start eating into PDA marketshare? Will Foo ever be happy with his PDA's screen?
Thanks to Foo for the link to OS 5 article, which spurred this thought.
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09-12-2002, 09:04 AM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 1,350
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Re: Heading into 2003, it will get interesting
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Originally Posted by Ed Hansberry
Will Foo ever be happy with his PDA's screen?
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Yes. But then he'll find something else he' wouldn't like.  Which is great BTW. People like Foo should keep on telling the world what is wrong with the current batch of devices. That's the only way progress will be made.
All in all, I agree with you. These are going to be very interesting times!
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09-12-2002, 09:08 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 91
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Re: Heading into 2003, it will get interesting
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Originally Posted by Ed Hansberry
The only OS I've seen that was a radical change from the previous version was Mac OS X, and they still don't have all of their key apps ported from Mac OS 9 to OS X. There are some pretty complex apps on the Palm.
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You mean you don't remember all the fun and games going from WfWG 3.11 to Windows 95, and all the app buying it caused because old versions didn't work in the new OS? 
Mark
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09-12-2002, 09:19 AM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,177
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Ed!
According to PalmGear.com, you've got only 107 Solitairs and 400 calculators. Facts! :lol:
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09-12-2002, 09:34 AM
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Mystic
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,768
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2003 different?
Is year 2003 any different than 2002 or any other year. This industry is in perpetual change... usually indicating improvement. I certainly hope however that the next year is more momentus in the change that takes place. I am kind of getting bored now of the current PDA technology and think there needs to be something really sexy to drive the next wave of adoption. Everything is too predictable right now.
__________________
Jonathan (JonnoB)
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." -Edmund Burke
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09-12-2002, 10:01 AM
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Swami
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 4,303
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Re: 2003 different?
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Originally Posted by JonnoB
I am kind of getting bored now of the current PDA technology and think there needs to be something really sexy to drive the next wave of adoption. Everything is too predictable right now.
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Totally agree - I really want a transflexive VGA screen for my next major purchase � everything else is a bit ho-hum. Like Foo I have been sold on the 39xx series screens. I do hope other manufactures get their hands on those IPAQ style screens.
However if we are going to get a new OS in March isn�t the time a bit tight? We know that there are new IPAQs floating around there � for the Christmas season perhaps. We are also seeing the 310 and possibly the 740 being discontinued � again � for new products around Christmas. March is pretty close to bring out new hardware really. Product cycles are not that close surely? Unless Christmas is the last blast of PPC 2002 with currant spec Hardware and March will be the first of the .NET PPCs with VGA (please, please  ).
I hope I have the willpower to hold off till a VGA screen PPC comes along. :?
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09-12-2002, 11:09 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 110
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I think Palm are taking a big gamble on this. I really don't envy their position! Their whole ethos was originally based on KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid) and it has served them very well in the past. Readers of this site aside (!) there are a lot of people who just want a mobile diary and none of the more advanced stuff.
More recently Palm seem obsessed with competing with MS - hence all the extra claimed features of v5 and the move to ARM etc. But, as you say, this is a dangerous tactic - they won't get all those apps ported overnight! Although wasn't there talk of a built-in dragonball emulator? I'm a bit out of touch.
Also (ref the other thread and Michael Mace) my experience says that trying to "slam the competition" is always indicative of the wrong focus. Good focus comes from worrying about making YOUR product the best you can. True success comes from BEING better not claiming to be! /end preach
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09-12-2002, 01:12 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 405
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You guys are completely wrong.
No calcualators are being rewritten, and solitare will not be re-written.
OS5 plans to have a simple emulator to emulate most of these applications, which by the Palmsource exec will run the same speed and in some cases, faster than the orig OS4 version.
The only apps being re-written will be things like Docs to Go, Kinoma Vid player, Movie players, and other such things, so they can take advantage of the FULL power of Intel and Motorla's new processors.
Visit http://www.palminfocenter.com for some of the articles.
Being a Palm OS loyalist fan with a Palm M500, im quite jealous of the multi-tasking PPC owners can do, however, I do not wish to support a company like M$ with their evil anti-trust junk.
However, if some of you do know a thing about PPC's...Toshiba E310?
Ipaq 3970?
Your newest PPC member, the Palm OS mutating fan.
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09-12-2002, 01:21 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Fzara
You guys are completely wrong.
No calcualators are being rewritten, and solitare will not be re-written.
OS5 plans to have a simple emulator to emulate most of these applications, which by the Palmsource exec will run the same speed and in some cases, faster than the orig OS4 version.
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Right. That's what I said. However, in OS6 they will start to allow multitasking and native ARM code. Will they keep PACE around forever? I would assume at some point they will drop support for it meaning all OS4 and earlier code will be worthless.
And welcome to the site! :way to go: We have forums on Toshiba and Compaq/HP where you can ask specific questions about the 310/3970.
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09-12-2002, 01:29 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 718
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Microsoft is an evil anti-trust empire?
Imagine if auto makers decided to use 3 or 4 different gas types for "their" car model. Imagine being able to only go to 1 of 3 or 4 gas stations because your car supports only brand "x".
Sometimes monopolies are good.
Applied to computers, imagine having 3 or 4 different OS's, all equal in popularity. Imagine being a developer having to write your product code for each of the OS's lest you be missing out on a major chunk of revenue because your stuff only works on one of those OS's. Writing apps for different OS's like Mac, Win, Unix isn't just a matter of running the code through different compilers. Each code base has to be tailored. Without Microsoft's dominance of one OS, small time developers would all but be eliminated because they can't afford the time and money to code for 4 different OS's (and reach all the potential markets) nor can they afford to code for one or two OS's and sell to only a small part of the market. Only the big application boys with big resources could play.
I think people, when bashing Microsoft, do so because we only can see the present. We can't see the alternative time line of what things would be like with true comptitition, at least in the OS market. I suspect computing would be a lot less farther along if we had legitimate choice. Without Windows, could you honestly say the internet would be where it is today?
I'll take a "lesser" standard over a superior niche anyday.
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