Good News for PalmOS Fans

For a while it looked like Palm had turned its back on PalmOS, the operating system which had powered its PDAs and smartphones for year. And to a certain extent they have but the situation may not be as dire as die-hard PalmOS fans had thought.

With the latest version of webOS, version 2.0, Palm has removed the PalmOS ROM from the phone which is the actual code which the Classic PalmOS emulator uses to run PalmOS apps on webOS phones like the Palm Pre and Pixi. It was a serious enough problem that MotionApps, the company which makes Classic essentially threw in the towel and stopped selling Classic. But it turns out that with a little digging and command line hacking, that the PalmOS ROM can be installed on a phone with webOS 2.0.

Two interesting points come out of this development. One, longtime PalmOS users who have already purchased Classic will be able to continue using once they upgrade to webOS 2.0 devices like the Pre 2 or after their older devices are automatically upgraded to webOS 2. The other interesting point is that since the PalmOS ROM is clearly separate from the Classic emulator, then creating a PalmOS emulator for webOS might be a lot easier than people realize. Even if MotionApps stopped selling Classic, it should be possible for someone else (perhaps even Palm themselves) to create an emulator for PalmOS apps.

While I wouldn't expect to see a lot of PalmOS emulators coming out any time soon, it's an interesting thing to note that since Palm is putting out the PalmOS ROM themselves through their webOS Doctor software, it should help keep PalmOS die hards going while they search for webOS equivalents to their beloved PalmOS apps.

Palm Drops Classic, Why It Matters.

Two weeks ago MotionApps, the developers of the Classic PalmOS emulator for webOS, announced that they were discontinuing Classic due to a dispute with Palm:

We are sad to announce that Palm has removed Classic’s ROM from the new webOS 2.0 device ROM which will result in Classic not working if utilized with Palm’s new webOS 2.0.

This is contrary to our agreement with Palm and was done without our approval or consent. Based on this action, MotionApps will immediately stop selling Classic. However, as a courtesy to our clients, we will continue to support existing Classic customers on webOS 1.x for the immediate future.

It's certainly a disappointing development for users of old school PalmOS apps like myself. But does it really matter? The truth is that I already have webOS replacements for most of my PalmOS apps. But a lot of these webOS apps are inferior to their PalmOS counterparts. Additionally, there are many PalmOS apps which still do not have webOS equivalents. And a lot of the PalmOS apps which have transitioned to webOS are still not ready for prime time. Finally, a lot of developers who made popular PalmOS apps are simply not interested in developing for webOS because its development tools are not mature enough yet.

While Palm has worked hard to foster developer interest, they are facing an uphill battle. Currently the webOS App Catalog has roughly 4300 apps. Add in the apps in Palm Web and Beta feeds and that number jumps to well over 5000. But Apple's iOS has 250,000 apps and Google's Android has 140,000 apps. And this isn't just a matter of quantity over quality, there are many unique and powerful apps which are not available to webOS users. A lot of this stems from limitations in the APIs of webOS and in the hardware of webOS phones. And that's all the more reason why Palm needs the Classic as a bridge between the limitations of webOS and the power of PalmOS. More than 30,000 PalmOS apps can be run in Classic.

Ultimately, it does Palm no good to further alienate a group of developers which were already upset with the move from PalmOS to webOS and who are attracted by the much greener pastures of Android and iOS. MotionApps has handed over the Classic source code and intellectual property rights to Palm, so Palm has all it needs to restore and support Classic themselves. There would seem to be no reason why they couldn't put it back in a future version of webOS.

So it makes a lot of sense for Palm to support Classic. They already go out of their way to support webOS and Homebrew developers. And they are working on tools to allow developers to build "hybrid" apps which will use both traditional C/C++ code and the HTML/Javascript code that powers webOS apps. A PalmOS emulator like Classic, could be another tool for Palm to get apps on to their platform.

Classic wasn't perfect. It was slow and it was the only app on webOS that could actually crash my phone. And using felt like living in a mobile computing ghetto—PalmOS apps ran inside Classic and couldn't be used as cards and you couldn't copy and paste between PalmOS and webOS apps. But it did allow access to a great number of apps which otherwise wouldn't exist for my phone or which are better than the apps which are available to me.

Now that Palm has full control of Classic and a perpetual license to PalmOS, they can fix all that if they want. They can make PalmOS apps run seamlessly as cards alongside their webOS counterparts. They can make it possible to copy and paste between PalmOS and webOS apps. They can even "skin" PalmOS apps to make them look more like webOS apps. For that matter why not add a PalmOS section to the webOS App Catalog where users can install legacy PalmOS apps? But all this will all take time and money—two things that I don't think Palm wants to spend on PalmOS. Having said that, Palm is still developing webOS anyway and it makes more sense for Palm to expand its capabilities instead of contract them.

I've seen a lot of comments about DOS and Windows XP bandied about in discussions about Classic. And Microsoft's history of support for Windows XP is actually a pretty good example of how to handle aging software—an example which Palm would be wise to follow. Up until last month you could still buy a PC with Windows XP preinstalled nine years after it debuted. (And you can still "downgrade" a PC with Windows 7 to XP.) Microsoft supported Windows XP with Service Pack 2 until July 31, 2010 and still supports Windows XP with Service Pack 3 to this day. For almost a decade, Microsoft has supported Windows XP with the result that it remained their most successful software program even long after it became obsolete.

Now compare this to what has happened with Classic. On October 19, Palm introduced webOS 2.0. By October 25, MotionApps withdrew Classic from the webOS App Catalog accusing Palm of breaking its agreement with them. That's not the kind of orderly transition from one platform to another that engenders user or developer confidence.

While Classic represents a tiny subset of the webOS user experience, there seems to be little point to removing a useful capability from it at a time when webOS is struggling to gain acceptance. The openness and freedom of the webOS experience is one of the things that distinguishes it from its competitors. At a time when Apple was trying to outlaw Jailbreaking and Google was challenging the legality of rooting Android, Palm actually made it easier to hack your phone. And Classic represented an example of that freedom—the ability to install and run "obsolete" software which you still found useful. For me the bottom line is that if I wanted a handset maker telling me what software I can and cannot use on my phone, I'd have gotten an iPhone.

With webOS 2.0, MotionApps drops Classic PalmOS Emulator in Palm's lap | PreCentral.net

Teaching My Tether to Get Along With Classic

I posted this guide to Hotsyncing my Pre with my netbook using My Tether as a wifi hotspot in Precentral in this thread. I am archiving it here on my blog because I don't want to have to spend a lot of time searching for it on Precentral's vast forums.

Running My Tether and Can't Hotsync? Use My Tether to Hotsync!

---

I'm not sure if this post will fall into the "Duh, we all knew that already" category or the "That's just crazy enough to work!" category but it's new to me and I haven't seen it on these forums.

I was thinking about doing a hard reset on my Classic PalmOS installation in hopes of getting it to perform better but wanted to do one final Hotsync in order to back it up. But I had been having a lot of trouble performing a Hotsync. Wifi? Failed. Bluetooth? Failed. Then I remembered reading in these forums that a lot of users of My Tether were having trouble hotsyncing.

So I had what seemed at the time to be a crazy idea. Since My Tether is doing a fairly good job of turning my Pre into a wifi Hotspot, why not tether my Pre to my netbook via wifi and do a wifi Hotsync that way? Since I was having no success in Hotsynching while connected to my home wifi network, this felt like a rather unlikely solution but I tried it anyway. And it worked.

So to summarize:

The Problem: Cannot Hotsync Classic via wifi or Bluetooth.

The Cause: Users of My Tether often suffer this problem and it is widely believed that My Tether is the culprit.

The Solution:

1. Launch both My Tether and Classic.
2. Turn on wifi tethering in My Tether.
3. Connect to your Pre as you would connect to any other wifi hotspot.
4. Take note of the IP address which your Pre assigns to your computer.
   • In Windows 7,
     1. Click on the wifi icon in your system tray to bring up your wifi network.
     2. Right click on your wifi network (by default My Tether calls itself, AoNet).
     3. Click on Status and then click on the Details button.
     4. Your IP adress will be listed in the Network Details box that comes up.
   • In Windows XP,
     1. Your connection will sometimes put a network icon in your system tray.
     2. Click on it and select the Support tab of the status dialog that pops up.
     3. Your IP Address will be listed here.
        or
        1. If this icon is not in your system tray, open My Network Places instead.
        2. Click on View network connections in the sidebar and click on Wireless Network Connection.
        3. It will pop up the same status dialog as in the above example.
5. Launch the Hotsync app in Classic.
6. Tap on Select PC.
7. The Hotsync app will be unable to find a PC and will ask you to enter your PC's name or IP address by hand.
8. Enter the IP address that your Pre assigned to your PC.
9. Tap Done.
10. Tap Hotsync.

That should be it. You should now be able to do a successful hotsync. Or at least that's what I did to get Hotsync running in Classic.

Google Reinvents Graffiti

Google has added a new feature to Android which looks a lot like an old feature from another mobile OS. Palm's old PalmOS PDAs had stylus-based input system called "Graffiti" where you would enter characters based on set of predefined pen strokes. It worked very well for years until the emergence of smartphones required Palm and Handspring to adopt keyboards for their devices. Add a long lawsuit by Xerox and Graffiti disappeared into the mists of gadget history.

Sort of. The idea of Graffiti remains popular enough that there is even a version available for iPhones. So it was probably only a matter of time before someone tried to bring it to Google's Android OS. That someone turned out to be Google itself which recently released a Gesture Search application which allows you to run searches by simply drawing letters. This is essentially what you did with the old PalmOS Graffiti.

But Gesture Search is a single standalone application while Graffiti was an essential part of the PalmOS and could be used with every PalmOS application. In fact even after Palm abandoned having a dedicated Graffiti input area for its Treo phones, it was still possible to install an app which would allow you to enter Graffiti strokes directly on the phone's screen.

That has gotten me to think about webOS on my Palm Pre. While there is a virtual keyboard available for webOS, there is nothing like Graffiti or even Gesture Search available for webOS. And that's disappointing because after all, Palm was the company which made this sort of input work in the first place.

And I think that Palm is uniquely suited to make it work again. Palm already has the code to Graffiti and Graffiti II—the successor to Graffiti which Palm introduced in part because of the Xerox lawsuit. And Palm has a its dashboard notification system which would be a convenient place to keep the controls for a Graffiti-style input system. So there really is no reason why Palm couldn't create another version of Graffiti and have it work on the entire operating system.

I used Graffiti for years on Palm PDAs. And I've used smartphone keyboards for years. But I was never really able to get used to using virtual keyboards which is one reason why I never got an iPhone. Now if I could have Palm's old Graffiti writing system back and have it live in my Palm Pre's dashboard, that would be a great alternative to sliding open my Pre when I only have to enter one or two characters.

Official Google Mobile Blog: Search your Android phone with written gestures

The Palm Pre Gets An Onscreen Keyboard. Yay?

One of the reasons why I never got an iPhone was because I could never get used to its virtual keyboard. Still, once an onscreen keyboard became available for the Pre which was relatively easy to install, it made sense to at least give it a try. And the results were about what I had expected. While the ingenuity of the Virtual Keyboard is admirable (when tap the "Sym" button, you can scroll down and enter any symbol that the keyboard is capable of entering), it is ultimately too small to use comfortably especially in comparison with the Pre's slide out hardware keyboard.

There are also other problems. While the Pre's built-in error correction is fairly meager compared to that of the iPhone, it does come in handy for little things like putting apostrophes in contractions and automatically capitalizing letters at the beginning of sentences. This does not work with the Virtual Keyboard even though realistically, you will tend to make more typos with it than you would with the hardware keyboard—disappointing to say the least.

But the Virtual Keyboard does have its uses. It's great for pulling up recently visited pages and bookmarks in the web browser which usually come up after typing a couple of letters. It's a small thing but it is potentially very convenient since you no longer have to slide open the keyboard in order to type two or three characters.

More than anything else, the Virtual Keyboard makes me miss Palm's old Graffiti writing system. A fairly simple, easy to learn set of onscreen strokes which allowed users to enter information without any kind of keyboard, Graffiti was one of the things that got me hooked on the old PalmOS. And it would be a nice thing for some enterprising developer to try to bring to the Palm Pre.

Classic—Bringing New Life to Some Old Apps

I checked the Palm Pre's App Catalog today and it had the same thirty applications that have been there for at least a week. Thirty apps. That's one ten thousandth the number of applications available for the iPhone and about one thousandth the number available for Android phones like the T-Mobile G1. But all is not lost for the Pre. One of the apps in Palm's App Catalog, is MotionApps' Classic PalmOS emulator. This app makes it fairly easy to run many of the thirty thousand apps available for older PalmOS devices on the Palm Pre.

But how easy is it to run PalmOS apps using Classic really? Since I've been a Palm user for over ten years, I was eager to learn. While the results are somewhat mixed, I've come to the conclusion that Classic is definitely a viable solution for Palm enthusiasts trying to convert to the Pre.

The Classic screen resembles that of a Treo smartphone—well, really it resembles the Palm Centro with its stacked, paired buttons and big d-pad. Unfortunately, Classic is locked into a 320x320 interface, using the rest of the screen for its virtual buttons. On the list of improvements that I want to see in Classic, being able to take advantage of the Pre's 480x320 screen is number one.

Number two is being able to copy and paste between other webOS applications. Classic handles copy and paste among applications that run inside it just fine. In fact in some ways it's even better than the implementation of copy and paste in webOS as a whole. But you can't for example cut a block of text from the PalmOS Memos app in Classic and paste it into the modern webOS Memos app.

Classic is also missing sound and codec support. This makes games somewhat less exciting and is a disappointing omission.

Classic also has problems with stability. It will sometimes throw up a Windows like BSoD which asks you to close the window and try again. Sometimes it will even crash the Palm Pre itself, causing it to reboot. Fortunately, these crashes are rare and have become even more rare since MotionApps updated Classic to version 1.0.2. MotionApps also has a separate Rom Update application which helps fix some bugs when it is installed inside Classic. We sometimes forget how unstable and cranky the PalmOS had become in its final years and some of these problems have definitely been carried over into Classic. But again, these problems are rare. Generally speaking most apps run faster and better under Classic than they ever did under the old PalmOS. MotionApps claims that PalmOS apps will run twice as fast under Classic as they would on a native PalmOS device and that seems about right. Everything in Classic seems to happen instantly and that is definitely a good thing.

While Classic does emulate an SD card treating its "ClassicApps" folder on your Pre as if it were an SD card, I've found that most of its crashes can be traced to a conflict between the app its trying to run and Classic's SD card emulation. It's much easier to "install" applications into Classic by putting them into a folder, appropriately named "Install" which Classic creates under its "ClassicApps" folder on your Pre. In the case of older applications which don't support loading from an SD card this is your only option for running them anyway. Also apps which consist of a .prc file with several .pdb data files tend to run better and more stable when they are installed instead of being run from Classic's virtual SD card. This causes a slight start up delay as Classic imports these files but the increased stability is absolutely worth it.

While Classic does not at this time support PalmOS Hotsync (MotionApps claims that it is looking into adding it in the future), it does support a Hotsync ID. This allows users to use software which they've bought and registered over the years without buying it again.

Importing PIM data is a little more involved than importing third party applications. MotionApps has fairly detailed instructions on how to do this but the gist is that you need to use a third party file manager like Filez on your PalmOS device to move the PIM databases to an SD card, copy them to your computer, and copy them again to the "Install" folder on your Pre. Once they are on your Pre, the Classic PIM apps look just like the PIM apps on any PalmOS device. If nothing else they are a good way of handling your imported data while waiting for better native Pre apps to come along.

Overall, Classic is a good way to ween PalmOS enthusiasts off their old apps while plugging some software holes in the Pre App Catalog. Buying Classic was fairly easy. I went to MotionApps' website and bought it and the next time I ran Classic it already knew that it had been registered. While this process is easy, it is interesting to note that the purchasing process for buying apps on Android is even more seemless—if you've ever bought anything through Google, the Android Market has your information and that makes purchases instantaneous.

Here are the applications which I've tried to run in Classic along with brief summary of the degree to which I succeeded:

AcidFreecell—Crashes when run from the ClassicApps folder. Generally stable (still occasionally crashes but not often) when installed into Install folder.

AtomSmash—Not compatible with Classic. Crashes under all circumstances.

Bejeweled!—Runs well in Classic.

BellTime—Runs well but without sound support, alarm clock apps are essentially useless.

BibleReader—This is a pretty good application for showing off Classic's strengths and weaknesses. It crashes when run from the ClassicApps folder and runs well when installed in the Install folder but it cannot see its databases unless they are also installed in the Install folder. Once everything is installed properly, BibleReader runs instantly in Classic—faster in fact than on any PalmOS device which I've ever used it with.

Bubblet—Runs well in Classic.

Converter—runs well in Classic.

D2RuneWords—Crashes when run from ClassicApps folder. Runs well when installed in Install folder.

DateBk5—Runs well when installed in Install folder but floating events require no longer "float" as they require Classic to remain running at all times.

Diddlebug—Runs well when installed in Install folder but requires more precision than is possible with the human finger.

Eat Watch—Runs well when installed in Install folder.

eReader—Runs but cannot see books unless they are installed in the Install folder.

FreeJongg—Runs but distorted graphics make the game unplayable.

HandyShopper—Runs well when installed together with its databases in Install folder.

JFile—Runs well when installed together with its databases in Install folder.

Keygen—Runs well.

Mass Transit—Runs well

Noah Pro—Runs well when installed together with its databases in Install folder.

PalmFiction—My favorite ebook reader on PalmOS runs very well under Classic, viewing books no matter where they are in Classic's directory structure. If only Classic supported 480x320 resolution.

PsMemo—Runs well.

SplashMoney—Runs well when installed together with its databases in Install folder.

T-Crisis—Runs well but virtual D-pad makes control difficult.

Thesaurus—Runs well when installed together with its databases in Install folder.

TopSecret—Runs well when installed together with its databases in Install folder.

WordPop!—Runs well.

USDA Foods—Runs well when installed together with its databases in Install folder.

Cut and Paste—webOS vs Classic PalmOS

One of the big albatrosses around the neck of the iPhone was it's lack of support, until recently, of copy and paste functions. So naturally Palm has trumpeted loudly that the new Palm Pre supports copy and paste from day one. And it does but there's a problem—actually two problems. Palm's copy and paste doesn't work everywhere and it doesn't work as well as it did under the older PalmOS operating system.

In order to copy and paste text in the Palm Pre's webOS, you tap to place the cursor at the beginning of the block of text you want to copy, hold down the shift key, and drag your finger horizontally to choose the text you intend to copy. Then you choose "Edit" from the drop down menu and select ." Palm has even created a little shortcut where you can tap and hold your finger in the gesture area and it acts like an unlabeled Menu key—the Pre will cut, copy, or paste whenever you press the "x," "c," or "v" keys on the keyboard. Pretty slick right? Actually, in the old PalmOS it was even easier to copy and paste. You could simply drag your finger across the text you wanted to copy and select "Cut," "Copy," or "Paste" from the edit menu which is even easier and more intuitive than with the Pre's webOS. In fact, I was so used to this way of doing things from my PalmOS devices that at first the webOS felt more awkward because I was trying to drag my finger across the text I wanted to copy when I was supposed to first place the cursor and drag my finger horizontally in the direction that I wanted the selction to move. This feels confusing and unintuitive, the older PalmOS way of doing things feels simpler to me.

Of course the older PalmOS was designed for PDAs and smartphones with different types of touchscreens than webOS. PalmOS was optimized for use with a stylus while webOS is designed for use with a finger. Could this be the reason for the Pre's Cut and Paste method? If only there were a way to compare these two methods side by side. There is—MotionApps' Classic emulator allows us to run PalmOS apps side by side with webOS apps. So I loaded the webOS Memos application and PsMemo within Classic. And it turns out that it's just as easy and intuitive to use the PalmOS Copy and Paste method in an emulated PalmOS app on my Palm Pre as it is on a Treo or a Palm TX.

I suppose that it doesn't make much difference one way or the other—the Palm Pre cuts, copies, and pastes just fine. It's just interesting how in the march of progress we sometimes take a tiny step back even as we move ahead.

One thing that does make a significant difference to me is the fact that webOS' copy and paste only works in text fields. As a result, you can't copy a block of text from your browser and paste it into a memo or anywhere else. The PalmOS web browser, primitive as it was, has always been able to do this and it should be simple to implement. Of course it this is so simple why did it take Apple, many times larger and richer than Palm, so long to implement it in the iPhone? Even Android, which is made by Google and had copy and paste on day one, took over a year to implement it in its browser. So perhaps I should cut Palm some slack.

Nevetheless, this does have a practical downside. I have secured my home wifi hotspot with a long 63-character wifi password. It's easy for me to put this key in a text file on a flash drive copy and paste it into any laptop that connects to my home network. It's also easy to put it into a memo and copy and paste it onto my Palm TX. With my T-Mobile G1 it was a little harder. First I had to find an Android application that could read text files and copy and paste. Once I had done that, it was easy to copy a text file to the G1 and copy and paste the wifi key.

With the Palm Pre it was even more of a challenge. While I had imported my old PIM data into Classic, including a memo with my wifi key; Classic sadly does not appear to support copying and pasting data between PalmOS and webOS applications. And neither does the Pre's built-in document viewer, the text file option was out. After trying several solutions, I concluded that the easiest solution was to email the wifi key to myself and open the email in my Palm Pre. But since the email application only displays the email I wasn't out of the woods yet. I had to tap reply in order to place the text of the email into a text field so I could copy and paste the key. Once I did that, I finally had access to my wifi hotspot on the Pre. That's not exactly what I'd call elegant.

CompanionLink to Bring Palm Desktop Sync to Palm Pre

One of the concerns for PalmOS users (at for this user) about the Palm Pre is data migration from older PalmOS devices. CompanionLink which for years provided solutions for syncing Palm devices with Outlook is now showing demo video of how syncing between a variety of desktop PIMs, including Palm Desktop and Outlook, and the Palm Pre will work.



This isn't a perfect solution for everyone I suppose since it uses Google as an intermediary but for those of us who have to use Google for their Android phones anyway, it makes migration to the Pre fairly natural. Now the biggest question is how much all this will cost. The Pre itself is likely to command a premium price when it debuts and MotionApps' PalmOS Classic emulator will likely be a separate purchase. Now we have CompanionLink's new desktop conduits as yet another potential expense. While a healthy eco-system of third-party applications will be necessary for the Pre to catch on, Palm also needs to consider the expense of upgrading from an existing PalmOS device to a Pre as well.

MotionApps Brings PalmOS Apps to Palm Pre

One of my misgivings about Palm's upcoming Pre smartphone with its fancy new webOS and way cool Synergy with all of your Internet based information was that it was not backwards compatible with PalmOS applications. Now MotionApps is creating an emulator for running PalmOS apps on the Palm Pre's webOS operating system. This is pretty good news for me even if it means I have to shell out more money for the application. I've depended on PalmOS applications for a decade and I still haven't found better alternatives for many of them on other platforms. So I'm a little more excited about the Pre than I was yesterday.

WebOS Developer Webcast

It's been up for about two weeks but I finally got around to viewing Palm's hour-long developer preview webcast on Palm Infocenter. To no one's surprise, it turns out that programming for Palm's upcoming webOS, the operating system which will power the Palm Pre, is a lot like programming for the web. The information was very basic but it looks like webOS will be very easy to program for traditional PIM applications like Calendars and Contacts.

But what about more elaborate applications? People keep asking about games but I'm thinking more in terms of other classes of applications. Suppose I want to write a Usenet client for the Pre? It would have to connect to a Usenet server on the Internet and download articles using the NNTP protocol and install them into a database on the Pre. That should be no problem for a decent programmer (it might be beyond my abilities but that's another story). But what about other tasks that a good Usenet newsreader needs to perform like filtering, sorting, and purging articles? Will it be doable on webOS and will it be fast?

Another question is how easy will it be to add things that Palm leaves out of the Pre. Specifically, I'm thinking about a PalmOS emulator and Graffiti support. While I understand Palm's decision to not support legacy PalmOS applications, that doesn't mean I have to like it. So how long will it take to get a PalmOS emulator to run on webOS? I don't suppose that an application like WINE which is not an emulator in the strictest sense but does allow Linux to run many Windows applications is possible for running PalmOS apps under webOS?

And would it be possible for an enterprising developer to add custom gestures which would allow for character input—in other words a replacement for the PalmOS's old Graffiti character recognition system? A year ago, this probably wouldn't have mattered to me but then I upgraded my phone from my Treo 680 to a T-Mobile G1. Suddenly, I found myself using my Palm TX a lot more for tasks where my G1's Android OS didn't measure up to the PalmOS. And thus I rediscovered Graffiti. It sure would be nice to have a webOS Dashboard that could pop up a Graffiti like input area for times when I only need to enter a few characters and don't want to open the Pre's keyboard. I'd probably never use it after a while but it would be nice to know that it was available.

TealOS Gives PalmOS Users a Pre Preview

TealOS is a new PalmOS launcher from TealPoint Software which mimics the user interface for the upcoming Palm Pre. I've been playing around with this program on my Palm TX and it is a fairly enjoyable program to use. It also gives people who haven't been lucky enough to be able to play around with an actual Pre—in other words just about anybody who doesn't work for Palm or Sprint and who hasn't been to their Pre preview events—an idea of how the Pre's UI is likely to work under more or less real world conditions.

TealOS looks almost exactly like the Palm Pre smartphone UI as demonstrated by Palm, right down to the flower wallpaper. Like the Pre, it has a quick launch toolbar which by default is mapped to the applications which are typically mapped to PalmOS hard buttons. This makes the quick launch toolbar somewhat redundant but these buttons can be remapped, giving you four extra launch buttons. While this is no big deal on a Treo or a Centro which both have a keyboard in addition to their hard buttons, this is very useful on a Palm TX which only has its four hard buttons. As you launch and switch in between applications, TealOS takes screenshots of them and displays them as "cards" which you can move around and which allow you to quickly switch from one application to another. The cards aren't "live" like the webOS cards on the Pre but they do give you a nice way of keeping track of and organizing your recently used applications. These cards can be "thrown away" with an upwards swipe but I found that this doesn't always work well I'd hope because it requires a fairly vigorous swipe.

But the webOS mimickry doesn't end with there. A fifth button on the quick launch bar also pops up a simple launcher with transparency effects just like on the Palm Pre. TealOS also has the Palm Pre's "Wave" launcher with five remappable buttons which you can bring up in any application. The motion which brings up the wave launcher is surprisingly intuitive and easy to learn. It's even a kind of fun.

On the Palm TX, programs can be launched by either the default PalmOS launcher or through a Favorites application which allows you to create shortcuts to applications or to web links. While TealOS can't create short cuts to web links, a simple utility called Shark Links can. (And quite frankly, the Palm TX's web browser is so primitive that I only used it for Google's excellent mobile RSS Reader even before I upgraded to my T-Mobile G1.) So it's fairly easy for TealOS to take the place of both these programs. And it looks good on the TX's large screen.

While TealOS does a fairly good job of mimicking the Pre's webOS UI, it can't replicate the hardware and it is a bit slow. Some of the graphics are also fairly rough-looking due to the limitations of the PalmOS (the cards don't scale well at all) and older Palm hardware. PalmOS also has no multitasking which limits the usability of its cards. The Palm Pre promises that its cards will always show a live preview of the applications they represent, allowing you for example to monitor a download in your web browser while you manage your e-mail. This is simply impossible to do with the PalmOS.

TealOS works very well as an application launcher and as a preview of Palm's UI for its future devices. Still, I find that the simplicity and speed of McPhling which is just a menu which can be mapped to a hard button or to a swipe across the Graffiti area, makes TealOS less necessary to me. But for people with Pre-envy looking for a nice replacement for the default PalmOS launcher, TealOS is a good fit.

My Favorite PalmOS Applications

All the hype about the Palm Pre and its new operating system has made me nostalgic for the old PalmOS applications which I've enjoyed on my various Palm PDAs and smartphones. These applications are the real reason why I still use my Pam TX and occasionally a Treo 680 even though their OS is ancient in gadget terms and I have a modern T-Mobile G1 which runs rings around them in many ways. One can only hope that when Palm's new OS premieres that it attracts the kind of developer support that leads to the creation of nice apps like these:

• DateBk5—Palm has some great built in personal information manager (PIM) applications, its Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, and Memo applications are all excellent, but DateBk takes them a step further. Utilizing the same databases as the PIMs, DateBk5 expands on them by adding features such as templates, Floating Events which are to do items on steroids, the ability to link your appointments to contacts, to do items, and memos, and icons. The original DateBk application was so good that Handspring used a stripped down version of it as the default calendar on its Visor handhelds and later on the first Treo smartphones. Sadly, Palm dropped it in favor of its own calendar app on later Treos when it bought Handspring. But DateBk is has survived and has only gotten better over the years. It's a must have application for anyone who wants to get more from their Palm.
• HandyShopper—A powerful shopping list which allows you to track your shopping by item, store, price, or even by aisle, HandyShopper allows you to estimate the cost of your shopping trip and can even account for local sales taxes. HandyShopper is a good example of what makes PDAs useful. No longer are you subject to the tyranny of your feeble memory or chicken scratch hand writing. You can just write down what you need in medium which is a little harder to lose than a piece scrap of paper.
  
• PalmFiction—Probably the best e-book reader available for the PalmOS, PalmFiction features custom fonts, screen rotation, autoscroll, and good-looking skins. It can also be configured to maximize your screen real estate.
• CorePlayer/TCPMP—CorePlayer spent a long time as a free beta called TCPMP but even in its beta stage, it was an excellent video player that could play videos off a Palm's SD card. I ripped a bunch of my old DVDs to watch on my LifeDrive during long commutes. This was at a time when the iPod was still new and still couldn't play video. Today, CorePlayer has added streaming Youtube videos to its repertoire and looks great a on my three year old Palm TX.
• OliveTree BibleReader—I was raised pretty religious and one of my biggest pet peeves has always been expositor who would jump rapidly from one verse to another during a sermon. BibleReader was the solution to this problem. It allows you to keep a complete copy of the Bible on your PDA or Smartphone. With a wide variety of translations in a number of languages available BibleReader is a great tool for anyone who is religious or just interested religion.
• Novii Remote—Back when everyone carried a Palm Pilot, it was a common sight to see business people "beaming" each other their business cards with the Palm's infrared port. Now that PDAs have declined and smartphones have ascended in popularity, the advent of Bluetooth and the fragmentation of mobile usage into different incompatible platforms, the IR port sees a lot less use. But it doesn't have to be that way. Most PDAs like the Palm TX have fairly powerful IR ports (smartphones on the other hand have fairly IR ports if they have on at all) and could be used as a television remote control if they had the right software. Novii Remote is that software. It's perfect for controlling multiple TVs and television accessories like TiVos, DVD players, and sound systems.
• Diddlebug—A simple drawing, note-taking, and alarm application, Diddlebug is so good that Palm tried to copy it but I never really liked their version. So I include Diddlebug here, its a great little application.
• PhoneSearch—Palm has always had very good search tools on it smartphones but this little application does one thing extremely well. It searches your contacts not by name but by number. It's a nice little simple application which can come in very handy.
• McPhling—I almost forgot this application because it's so unobtrusive but I probably use it more than any other program on my Palm. McPhling is a task switcher which pops up a menu of favorite and most recently used applications. Most newer Palms and Treos pop up a similar menu when you hold the home button but McPhling is much more comprehensive. It's list is holds more programs, it includes favorites, and it includes support for Desk Accessories, little mini-applications which can pop up in front of your current application and allow you to perform tasks without leaving your current application. It's about as close as you can get to multitasking on the ancient PalmOS.
  

Can Palm Come Back?

PalmDoc shares his excitement over Palm's upcoming CES presentation and has a rather nice wishlist of what he wants to see from them complete with a pretty snazzy mock-up. I've owned ten PalmOS devices over the past ten years and would love to see Palm get its act together. But it's hard to say if I should be enthusiastic or not given how tight-lipped Palm has been about its new OS. 

And yet, I look at my old Treo 680 and Palm TX and think that they are pretty good devices. I still use my TX as a PDA, PDF and e-book reader, and as a universal remote. For all my T-Mobile G1's powerful hardware and sohpisticated Android OS, its software library lacks the breadth and depth the third party software that is available for the PalmOS. The way I use my TX is a perfect example of this—there are PDF and e-book readers available for Android but they are slow and clunky in comparison to Palm's offerings. 

And that's part of the reason why I worry about Palm's new OS. Will it be backwards compatible with older applications? Palm won't say. Historically Palm has been very good about supporting older apps on its newer operating systems but Nova is expected to be a huge leap from earlier versions of the PalmOS. Without its huge software library, I would see no reason to abandon my shiny new Android phone for a new Palm Nova OS with little or no third party software.

Old Palm Website Flagged "Bad" By Google

While browsing Palmaddicts, I came upon a link to an article at The Inquirer with a misleading headline suggesting that Google was pronouncing PalmOS utilities as dangerous to your computer. In fact, Google actually is referring to the hosting website as shown in this screenshot:



When you actually click on the "This site may hard your computer" link you get this page:


It's not too informative except for the final comment which explains that, "In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message." The first comment in the original Inquirer article gives us a better explanation than either Google or The Inquirer, pointing us to another Inquirer article. It seems that a few months ago, crackers began to take advantage of a flaw in Microsoft's SQL Server software which allows them to inject malicious code into web pages. Most webmasters have since fixed that problem but palmsource.com is actually an old website for PalmSource the company which owns Garnet (the official name for version 5 of the Palm Operating System) and which was bought by ACCESS a couple of years ago. Since buying PalmSource, ACCESS has sold the Palm name back to Palm and is working to build a new operating system with a new name. So it appears that ACCESS never bothered to update their old website even after a serious exploit made it vulnerable to being hacked. This makes me wonder if ACCESS will approach their new OS with the same care.

Palm—Always Dying, Never Dead

It seems that every time I look on the Internet, I see someone asking "is Palm dead?" And the answer from disgruntled Palm PDA and smartphone users is usually a mixture of bitter agreement, hand wringing, and denial. I try to take these comments with a grain of salt. Palm has been "dying" for most of its more than decade-long existence. I seem to recall the first "Palm is dead" posts appearing on Usenet almost as soon as Microsoft introduced Windows CE in order to create devices which would compete with PalmOS PDAs—that didn't happen. Searching through Google's Usenet archive, for the words "palm dead" the oldest thread on the subject of Palm's imminent death is dated May 27, 2001. That was seven years ago and Palm still hasn't died yet.

A lot of this is the natural Internet bitching and moaning that has always dominated Internet discussion. Part of it is that Palm has been legitimately in trouble several times over the years since they went public at the height of the dotcom era. But I think that a lot of it has been Palm's own fault. Palm has always been a very secretive company and yet it also makes a lot of clumsy attempts to reach out to its users. A good example of these problems is the Palm Foleo fiasco. For years Palm had hinted at the existence of a new class of mobile devices that they wanted to sell. Palm's founder Jeff Hawkins dropped tantalizing hints for almost two years. When the Foleo was finally near completion they hyped the device to jaded users who were skeptical of its modest specs and high price. And then, they abruptly decided that the device was flawed and canceled its release. And as a final insult, several rival companies quickly released similar products which sold very well. I can't help but think that a disaster like this one could have been avoided if Palm had communicated earlier and more effectively with its users.

The LifeDrive, Palm's Missed Opportunity

Ever since my iPod broke I've been thinking a lot about what will replace it. For now it's my Palm TX PDA but I feel that it's a stopgap because it simply doesn't have have the battery life to do what I want to do while I'm commuting—because of the TX's big screen, I find myself watching a lot of video on it. Music, video, wifi and bluetooth internet access all take their toll and the TX has no automatic way of importing podcasts. That got me thinking of another Palm device which was everything the Palm TX isn't—big, heavy, slow, and unstable. But also had options for synching data and a storage capacity which the TX lacks.

I'm referring to the Palm LifeDrive which was my main source of mobile entertainment for two years until I got an iPod and later a TX. The LifeDrive was a very slick device for its time but it was also very flawed. It had all of the features that you'd typically want in a PDA: wifi, bluetooth, and a wide variety of easy to use applications. It also had a lot of things you'd want in a media player: a good MP3 player, file manager, a 4GB hard drive, and an easy way to synch information between it and a host PC. These are features which the Palm TX lacks and this makes it a poorer media player.

The LifeDrive was Palm's attempt to create a new class of devices which it called "Mobile Managers." The idea was that with its big hard drive and versatile file handling options and some unique software, a Mobile Manager would allow you "store your life" on one device. So a photographer could store all his pictures on the LifeDrive. Or a slacker could store a lot of music and video on it. The point was that you could do a lot with this device compared to what you could do with a PDA. And you could do it in a lot of different ways. The LifeDrive could be put into "Drive Mode" which allowed it to look like just another hard drive on your computer. (If you had an SD card in the LifeDrive's SD slot, would also show up on your computer while the LifeDrive was in Drive Mode.) You could also drag and drop files from your computer to the LifeDrive Manager application and do the same thing without putting the LifeDrive into Drive Mode. This was useful because the LifeDrive Manager could convert files (such as videos) into a format that the LifeDrive could use.

Handling podcasts was a snap with the LifeDrive. I created a folder called "Podcasts" on my PC and used a podcatching application called "Juicer" to download podcasts every night. In the morning I'd synch my LifeDrive with that folder and it would download all my podcasts onto its hard drive. It was all very easy and while using an iPod to synch to iTunes is easier still, the LifeDrive had the advantage of supporting a wider variety of formats when it was kitted out with the right software. I could also use the same feature to synch my documents folder with my LifeDrive and do actual, work on it.

The LifeDrive actually had a pretty crappy video player but at the time, it was easy to find a very good video player called "TCPMP" which played video in just about any format. (The successor to TCPMP is an application called "Coreplayer" which costs $29 but works very well on my Palm TX.) Video is a problem for the Palm TX because it is limited by its storage capacity. While its 128MG of memory is plenty for storing PDA data and applications, it needs to have an SD card installed for music and video. The LifeDrive already has a 4GB hard drive as well an SD card slot, so it can potentially hold much more data. With their big screens, the LifeDrive and Palm TX practically beg you to watch video.

Ultimately however the LifeDrive was too little too late for Palm. It had come out at a time when Apple was starting to take over the MP3 player market with the iPod and had a much smaller storage capacity than the best iPods which came with 30GB hard drives at the time. It was also buggy and slow. This made the LifeDrive's wifi and huge battery a lot less useful. Ultimately, I think that the LifeDrive's shortcomings could have been overcome but Palm never created a followup device and its attempt to create a new product category fell flat.

Entertainment on the Go, Beauty vs Functionality

My iPod broke the other day. But even though I'm constantly listening to music and watching videos, I haven't really missed it. This is mainly because I already carry around a pretty good media player, really two. My cell phone, a Palm Treo 680 and my PDA, Palm TX, both already have a good built in MP3 player in PocketTunes and it's easy to view video on both devices with an application called CorePlayer. On top of that, the TX also has wifi and can use the Treo as a modem which means I have have Internet access anywhere I go.

It's almost like having an iPhone except that my Treo and TX are two year old devices which could do what they do long before Apple introduced the iPhone. And they can do even more. Both devices have great built-in calendar and note taking software and a multitude of available third-party software for including Documents to Go for editing Word and Excel files, e-book readers, and games. I can even use software to convert my Palm TX into a remote control. The iPhone meanwhile can't even copy and paste yet and has to be "Jailbroken" in order to install third-party applications. Apple promises that it will allow third-party apps onto the iPhone and iPod Touch, it looks like they will be tightly restricted.

So why are Apple's iPod, iPhone, and iPod Touch so popular while Palm's products wallow in obscurity? It seems to be a mixture of marketing, opportunity, and technology. You can take an iPod out of its box, charge it, install iTunes on your computer and you're all set. The iPod is ready to use. The iPod is tightly integrated with iTunes and you can import your music library easily or build one by buying music and movies directly from the iTunes Music Store. And if you buy a new iPod, you just plug it into the same computer and import your music library.

When you take a Palm PDA or Smartphone out of the box, it's the beginning of a long process. You have to install some sort of synching software on your computer and it can vary widely depending your computer, your choice of PDA or Smartphone, the phase of the moon, and whether or not you are upgrading. Treos and Palm PDAs can synch with Microsoft Outlook but they can also synch to Palm's own Palm Desktop which is a fairly simple easy to use application. Unfortunately, Palm Desktop has numerous compatibility issues and sometimes it seems that each new Palm PDA or Smartphone has its own version.

While Palm Operating System's huge library of third-party software is its greatest strength, it's installed software is relatively weak. While most newer Palms and Treos usually come with Documents to Go and PocketTunes, I've yet to see a Palm PDA or Smartphone with a decent video player. There doesn't seem to be a good reason for this—there are at least two good third-party video players available for the PalmOS that I know of: Kinoma and CorePlayer which can be bought and installed on your Palm PDA or Smartphone. And there is even a free version of CorePlayer called "TCPMP" which is widely available. So if Palm can license Documents to Go and PocketTunes, why not do the same with either Kinoma or CorePlayer? Well, in a sense they have done just that—newer Palm smartphones like the Centro and my own Treo 680 do have an embedded video player which appears to have been licenced from the makers of the Kinoma video player. But as far as I can tell, it's not a standalone application. You can't just throw an .avi file onto the Palm's storage card and play it unless you have already purchased and installed a third-party video player.

That brings me to the other big problem with Palms as media players—size. Not the size of the device but the size of the devices' onboard storage. My Palm TX has a 2GB Secure Digital storage card. That's good enough for about two hundred songs, a little less than two hours of video, thousands of pictures, lots of documents, many Palm applications, and leaves plenty of space left over for more stuff. But my iPod had a 30GB hard drive enough for over 2200 songs, over 20 hours of video, and over seventy podcasts and the iPod was still only about three quarters full. There has never been a Palm PDA or Smartphone which can compare to that kind of storage capacity. Also, you have to buy a seperate SD card in order to have any storage capacity at all.

Finally, I mentioned podcasts above. I don't think that I'm the only schmuck with a blog on the Internet who is addicted to podcasts. Apple realizes this and makes it easy to subscribe to podcasts directly from iTunes. In the Palm universe, podcasting might as well not exist. I actually did roll my own solution for downloading podcasts and synching them to my Palm LifeDrive and used it for over a year but that particular PDA had capabilities which Palm never duplicated on its latter models. In a way it's sad, the Lifedrive could have been Palm's version of the iPod Touch two years ago but it had several serious flaws and Palm never created a followup product to address these issues.

But at least they've made their products good enough that I didn't have to automatically run off and buy a new iPod when my old one broke.