PalmSource Introduces Palm OS Cobalt and Garnet
PalmSource today introduced Palm OS Cobalt, previously know as Palm OS 6. Cobalt is a new enhanced version of the operating system that is designed to enable the creation of new categories of devices for the communications, enterprise, education and entertainment markets. PalmSource also announced Palm OS Garnet, an enhanced version of the popular Palm OS 5, designed to accelerate the development of Palm Powered handhelds and smartphones.
"We believe Palm OS Cobalt will pave the way for new categories of smart mobile devices and solutions, for the communications, enterprise, education and entertainment markets," said David Nagel, president and CEO of PalmSource, Inc. "We have also reinforced our commitment to optimize our platform for wireless devices, by including wireless capabilities in both Palm OS Cobalt and Palm OS Garnet, designed to enable a wide range of smartphones and other wireless products."
Formerly known as Palm OS 6, Palm OS Cobalt is a complete rewrite of Palm OS designed to maintain ease of use and software compatibility while creating a foundation for next-generation Palm Powered devices and solutions tailored to the growing needs of the communications, enterprise, education and entertainment markets. Palm OS Cobalt improves compatibility with Microsoft Windows, while offering advanced features including:
- Multitasking, multithreading;
- Memory protection;
- Support for more memory and larger screens;
- Industry standards-based security;
- Extensible communication and multimedia frameworks capable of handling multiple connections simultaneously;
In addition, Palm OS Cobalt provides rich graphics and multimedia features derived from the Be OS, which Palm®, Inc. acquired in 2001.
Also announced today, Palm OS Garnet builds on the solid foundation of Palm OS 5 and incorporates new built-in technical features such as standard support for a broad range of screen resolutions, dynamic input area, improved network communication, and Bluetooth. Palm OS Garnet is designed to enable licensees to more efficiently bring Palm Powered handhelds and smartphones to market and reduce development costs.
New Software Development Tools
PalmSource also introduced new software development tools for Palm OS Cobalt and Palm OS Garnet. A technical preview of the new Palm OS Developer Suíte is now available to Palm OS developers in the Resource Pavilion in the Developer Zone. The new Palm OS Developer Suite is based on the industry-standard Eclipse environment, an open-source, Integrated Development Environment (IDE) originally developed by IBM that supports software development in a variety of languages, including C, C++, Java and COBOL. The Palm OS Developer Suite provides one set of tools designed to assist Palm OS developers to create and bring to market higher performance wireless, entertainment and enterprise-grade applications that take advantage of the advanced functionality of Palm Powered smart mobile devices. PalmSource and its partners now offer a wide variety of development tools, including Metrowerks CodeWarrior, the Eclipse environment, Borland's tool suite and the Microsoft NET compatible tools from AppForge.
More About Palm OS Cobalt
- Multithreaded, Multitasking — Palm OS Cobalt is designed to enable multiple applications to run simultaneously, so users gain more productivity and a better user experience. For example, a user can listen to MP3 files, book a calendar appointment and take an incoming phone call. A background-processing model is designed to reduce most memory problems commonly associated with multitasking in mobile devices.
- Expanded, Protected Memory Architecture — With support for up to 256MB of RAM and 256MB of ROM, Palm OS Cobalt paves the way for the creation of more sophisticated communications, enterprise, education and entertainment applications. In addition, the new protected memory architecture is designed to protect against applications "hanging" the system or causing crashes.
- System Wide Security Architecture — Palm OS Cobalt provides built-in encryption, authentication and authorization frameworks for securing applications such as enterprise and e-commerce solutions, browsers, wireless email and connections to corporate networks such as VPN. The extensible structure also offers software developers advanced, industry-standard security services and cryptography.
- New Pluggable Communications Design — The modular, flexible, industry-standard STREAMS-based framework is designed to offer a simple way for licensees and software developers to add communications support for a wide variety of networking and communications protocols. Palm OS Cobalt is designed to supports multiple simultaneous communication sessions on various wireless networks, such as downloading WiFi delivered data while receiving a phone call.
- Extensible Multimedia Framework — Palm OS Cobalt is designed to provide a rich graphics and multimedia architecture. Graphics support includes paths, rotation, gradient fills, anti-aliasing, outline fonts and transparency. The new graphics system is designed to support screen sizes up to 32,000 by 32,000 pixels! Multimedia support includes playback of industry-standard audio and video including ADPCM/PCM, MP3, MPEG1 and MPEG4 designed to enable licensees and software developers to more easily build media-based applications. This extensible multimedia framework is designed to enable licensees and software developers to easily add additional audio and video standards.
- Improved PIM Applications & Databases Palm OS Address Book and Date Book are redesigned to support up to 255 fields, providing better interoperability with Microsoft Outlook. Each standard PIM application is designed to automatically adjust layout size to fit particular actions. For example, a small screen for the Dynamic Input Area when editing a document, and a larger screen when reading an eBook. Palm OS licensees and software developers can also extend and customize underlying schema databases easily to create new fields.
- Better compatibility with Microsoft Outlook and PC files PalmSource has also added additional fields to Palm OS DateBook and Address Book, designed to correspond more closely to the information stored on Microsoft Outlook. In addition, Palm OS Cobalt is designed to allow users to transfer PC files directly to Palm Powered devices by dragging them onto an icon on the PC desktop, making it even easier for reading and editing.
- Compatibility with existing Palm OS software Palm OS Cobalt includes a software emulator, designed to enable software programs created for earlier versions of Palm OS to run on Palm OS Cobalt Palm Powered mobile devices.
What leading Developers are saying about Cobalt...
"With the release of Palm OS Cobalt, we believe that PalmSource has firmly ushered us into the 'post-pc' age," said Alexis Hinds CEO, Blue Nomad. "The new multitasking, multimedia, and security APIs reaffirm PalmSource's leadership position in the mobile space, and will enable developers to deliver very rich applications to users clamoring for more sophisticated productivity and entertainment applications for Palm Powered handhelds and smartphones."
"Electric Pocket is excited about the new multimedia support in Palm OS Cobalt, which will enable us to offer advanced video messaging via our Pixer MMS solution for Palm Powered handhelds and smartphones," said Steve Bennett, chief executive officer, Electric Pocket Limited. Wireless carriers demand stability and leading edge capabilities, and we're confident that Palm OS can give us the best of both worlds.
"Our long-term faith in the Palm OS platform is reinforced by the PalmSource commitment to providing a true modern operating system with multithreaded and multitasking in Palm OS Cobalt," said August Grasis III, CEO of Handmark. "Together with the new extensible multimedia framework Handmark applications will deliver new features and richer user experiences."
"The powerful processors and rich audio and video capabilities of today's Palm Powered devices make them ideal portable entertainment devices for multimedia," said Brian Hall, president and CEO of Mark/Space, Inc. "The Missing Sync for Palm OS Cobalt from Mark/Space provides a simple and fast means to transfer music, audio and photos between a handheld and iPhoto or iTunes on a Mac."
"I view Palm OS Cobalt as a watershed event in the growth of the Palm OS platform as it incorporates two technologies that will be vitally important for the enterprise: flexible, schema-based databases and a truly robust security system," said C.E. Steuart Dewar, CEO of Pimlico Software, Inc. "With these technologies in place, developers like Pimlico Software will be able to develop even more powerful applications, which in turn will secure the dominant position of the Palm OS platform in the mobile market."
PalmInfocenter will have more coverage of Palm OS Cobalt and Garnet from the Developer Conference in San Jose as it gets underway.
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RE: Upgrade
unfortunetly. Long live OS 5
Why do you think that? palmOne will probably offer upgrades (for a price) for high end devices like the T|C and T|T3. As for why its not mentioned here - this conference if a PalmSource dev conference - its up to OEMs (like palmOne) to offer upgrades (or not).
RE: Upgrade
unfortunetly. Long live OS 5
I'll be very happy with my TH55.
Until I see OS6... hah!
RE: Upgrade
RE: Upgrade
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=6480
There is nothing sure about this though. Don't expect the upgrade for certain.
Nicola
RE: Upgrade
T|C?
Sounds promising
Best wishes,
Feisal
RE: Sounds promising
What!?! No landscape? lol.
You could get 32k x 32k now, just buy 10,000 T|E's and arrange them in a square, and there you go!
RE: Sounds promising
RE: Sounds promising
>>>What!?! No landscape? lol.
Funniest comment of the discussion. You should get an award. Or something.
RE: Sounds promising
Zodiac2/T616
1.128 gigs under the hood.
RE: Sounds promising
To get 32,000 by 32,000 res. you'd need a pattern of 100 across by 100 down. 100 x 100 = 10,000 T|E's.
________________________________
M100==>M500==>T|T==>T|T2==> ?
Limited vision
Fire the person who put that stingy cap on it.
Should have been 1GB RAM for a start. (A 32,000 x 32,000 screen with 256MB MAX RAM? ROTFLMAO!)
I hate the names.
I am rechristening them:
PalmOS 5: Vanilla.
PalmOS6: Chocolate.
RE: Limited vision
I agree too that the names are horrendous, impossible to pronounce in many languages (yes there are other languages than English), and impossible to relate to what's behind. If they wanted to hide which one's worse, they certainly succeeded. Plus, they combine with Palm One's nomenclature in a most ridiculous way!
"Does this Tungsten have Garnet?"
"No, Tungstens have Cobalt. It's Zires that have Garnet!"
"But my boyfriend's got a Tungsten with Garnet!"
"Ah, well, have you considered upgrading?"
"Gee, no, I thought it would be better to wait for Ruby ..."
"But Ruby the device or Ruby the OS?"
"No, Ruby the language!"
(....)
It would require the Monty Python to make it sound more absurd.
RE: Limited vision
RE: Limited vision
As for the naming, numbers were a problem because in the PC world a higher number means the lower number is obsolete (Windows 98 immediately replaces Windows 95). Palm OS Garnet is just fine for many users and will persist a long time, so licensees asked us to move away from numbers.
I have worked on a lot of naming over the years, and the one sure thing is that you can never please everyone. It is very hard to find names that pass trademark muster and also do not mean something inappropriate in some country. We settled on minerals because they are an ingredient in many things. That seemed appropriate for software designed as an element in many great products.
Mike
CCO, PalmSource
On a Treo at the conference
RE: Limited vision
RE: Limited vision
------------------------------------------------------
You may be a race car driver at heart if you refer to leaving your driveway as "Turn 1"
RE: Limited vision
Ok, done nitpicking. Soapbox, anyone?
RE: Limited vision
Mike
CCO, PalmSource
RE: Limited vision
RE: Limited vision
But what's this about no landscape mode?! Is that true at all? Say it's there!
And I'm glad to hear that it can go past 256MB. The sooner the better. How soon it'll need to be done might even surprise you!
Now... if only The Graffiti/Xerox Suit would be put to rest and Graffiti Classic replace that abomination, pseudo-Jot!
RE: Limited vision
Hmm...I'm not sure I even want to think of the battery drain associated with that...
>>"We can go higher than 256 megs in future editions of Palm OS Cobalt. And keep in mind that you can go to gigs of storage on a memory card."<<
Seeing as SD only goes to 1GB, and that's barely on the market, does that mean that licensees are finally going to offer us something with SD *and* CF, which offers much larger capacities of memory, Mr. Mace? Sadly PalmSource was shortsighted enought to price out of the market the only licensee to date that offered such an option, Handera. I'm interested in your comments...
>>"I have worked on a lot of naming over the years, and the one sure thing is that you can never please everyone. It is very hard to find names that pass trademark muster and also do not mean something inappropriate in some country. We settled on minerals because they are an ingredient in many things. That seemed appropriate for software designed as an element in many great products."<<
Ok, I can't resist. Does this mean that the PalmOS naming process has become....elementary (Dr. Watson)?
>>"What kind of mineral is Garnet?"<<
It's a darkish red gemstone, not very valuable, but very hard.
_________________
Sean
Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.
Michael Mace ---> Palm's future ----> ????????
Mike
CCO, PalmSource
On a Treo at the conference
OK, now the naming drama is over, how about we hear a little about some more serious issues. Searching for your name brings up this little article:
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=5742
Since Palm is apparently now so open to suggestions, here are a few:
1) Release a 320 x 480, Vx-sized (thin, LIGHT) Palm ASAP. If you can't make it as small as a Vx, forget it. Despite what they say, size matters. Only a few fanatics will be submitting to those big, thick, heavy monsters that Sony is trying to ram down peoples' throats. Let Sony cater to suckers that want Monster Palms. Palm needs to get back to designing simple, elegant hardware that works for the way most people actually use their handhelds.
2) Make the Treo 600 available for $300 or less. If it's priced right, the Treo could become the new executive toy du jour - like the Vx was a few years ago. Price it much higher than $300 and watch it be ignored by everyone except the few hundred people that read Palm fan sites. The Treo 600 (or its immediate successor) may save Palm as long as the desire for quick profits doesn't win out over The Big Picture.
3) Stop the redundancy in Palm's software portfolio. Pick the best of breed apps and stick with them. If you really want to show what Palms can do, get users Hooked On Palm by creating a licensed suite of the best freeware and shareware Palm apps/games/utilities and bundling them with every Palm sold. I'd suggest looking at including as many of these as could be licensed for a reasonable price: Bejeweled, DiddleBug, HandyShopper, iSilo, Open, Vexed, Vindigo, YAUC, Zagat. Others - like APCalc, DateBk5, FindHack, LauncherX, McFile, TealLock, TealScript, To Do PLUS, Ultrasoft Money and Uninstall Manager - would make good replacements for those ancient original Palm ROM apps that do the same job. Sure, bundling hurts other developers, but it's all about survival of the fittest. Just look at what Microsoft has done over the years.
4) Stop skimping on the RAM. Yes, I know you want to sell SD cards, but at this point there's no excuse for releasing any PDA with less than 64 MB RAM.
5) Want to get innovative? How about pushing Palms as a low cost laptop alternative? A clone of the CLIE UX50 with a slightly bigger screen, CompactFlash and SD slots, 802.11b, Bluetooth and Word/Excel/Powerpoint apps is all the "laptop" a lot of employees really need. Cheap to buy, cheap to support. A TCO dream come true.
6) Hire what's left of the HandEra software engineering staff and use them to make some real improvements in the Palm OS. The "Zen of Palm" spin just doesn't cut it these days. Unfortunately, I envision a whole lotta current apps breaking if Palm finally advances the OS to where it needs to go.
7) Fear Microsoft. Palm's historical dominance in handhelds won't mean much if Microsoft starts giving away basic PPCs with every copy of Office. Don't think they can't or won't just buy the PDA market outright. The petty cash fund in Redmond could probably cover what was spent on worldwide sales of all PDAs last year.
8) Fear Nokia. Cellphones are already doing what most people use their Palms for. The average Joe isn't going to buy a Palm if their "free" cellphone comes with an address book, to do list, memo pad, date book, digital camera and games. Only geeks will be willing to carry two devices.
9) Adhere to the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Most Palm users never even use any programs other than the built in apps for a reason: Palms are almost perfect "as is". Just make them smaller, lighter, faster and more integrated with cellphones, digital cameras and MP3 players. Sound easy doesn't it?
10) Don't wait too long before selling out to Sony. A purchase for 800 million within the next six months - say, January 15, 2004 - sounds like a good way to exit stage left. Don't let me down - baby needs new shoes...
How about an update now that that "quiet period" is over, Michael?
Here's what I've seen/heard:
1) Sony's all over this one. Between the TH-55 and the new CLIE UX, the complaints are about to be silenced. I hope Palm is able to get better quality control from their Tungsten manufacturer, but I'm not holding my breath.
2) The sub-$300 Treos are coming not a minute too soon. (Actually, it's been easy to find a Treo 600 subsidized to $300 - $400 with contract for at least a couple months, but soon GSM phones will also be a lot cheaper.) Treo 600 sales volume are still low despite repeated claims they're "selling briskly". Apparently Palm is building to order and inventory is purposely
kept low. Sounds like Palm's learned its lesson and prefers to avoid another expensive inventory glut like what cost the ompany a couple hundred million two or three years ago. Smart move.
3) Despite your claimed aversion to bundling apps (supposedly "not fair" to developers), you've continued the trend Palm started with MultiMail/VersaMail/Documents To Go/DateBk/etc. About time. But HandyShopper and Ultrasoft Money should have been part of the PalmOS 6 ROM. Shame!
4) Still not enough RAM on the new Palm. We should be at 128 MB now.
5) The new CLIE is just weeks away and shows the "Palm as laptop" concept brilliantly.
6) The Be buyout was a massive waste of money. HandEra had a core group that you could have raided for next to nothing. Even Mike Waldron alone would have done more for Palm than what you paid for a dozen Bebies. I've seen a few apps break on PalmOS 6. Not many though.
7) Microsoft isn't pulling their punches these days but as you know, smartphones is where everyone is looking now. Unfortunately, looks like Palm figured this out a year too late. The Treo is being blatantly copied by PPC and those clones will be out by the summer. And the new PPC phones won't be ridiculous bricks this time. Advantage: Microsoft.
8) Nokia dropped the ball with N-Gage, Symbian still has syncing and other issues and the current Nokia phones have major ergonomic flaws, but Nokia learns quickly from their mistakes and has the $$$ to move on when something's just not working. Coming soon everywhere = streaming video/TV, cellphones with decent quality video cameras, smaller size. Advantage: Nokia.
9) Looks like Palm has kept KISS alive, (probably mainly to avoid blowing even more millions on support calls to Indian call centers). By the way... OUTSOURCING SUPPORT SUCKS - just thought you should know.
10) Sony wouldn't bite on the price. Did they realize they had no need to buy Palm since they're already getting the OS for peanuts and could mold it into whatever they wanted? The new Sony Desktop shows the kind of risk-taking Palm couldn't afford to do.
Overall, looks like a solid C- for Palm's report card this semester.
It's just too big.
RE: Michael Mace ---> Palm's future ----> ????????
It's just too big.
RE: Limited vision
I'd also like to remind the gentle readers of PalmInfoCenter that there is no "Palm" anymore. Really, truly there isn't. There's a PalmSource, the software platform company I work for; and there's palmOne, the largest licensee of Palm OS. They are two totally separate companies, with separate management, stock, and headquarters. We're not even located in the same city.
Mike
CCO, PalmSource
RE: Limited vision
-- http://www.sun.com/suntrademarks/
This doesn't seem to be the type of non-conflict between the trademarks for, say, Apple Computers and Apple Records.
Has PalmSource bought that trademark off of Sun?
RE: Limited vision
Cheers,
RE: Limited vision
-- http://www.sun.com/suntrademarks/
Am I missing something here, under C there is no Cobalt. Please explain
I went to the dark side for 9 months with a Windows PPC Phone Edition device, but now I AM BACK!!! Long live my T3 and Nokia 6310i.
RE: Limited vision
Sun Cobalt whatever, Sun is part of that,
therefore Cobalt by itself I don't believe is trademarked. I am no trademark expert by any means so I could be wrong, but it is my understanding that the trademark is exactly as it is written. Any experts out there?
I went to the dark side for 9 months with a Windows PPC Phone Edition device, but now I AM BACK!!! Long live my T3 and Nokia 6310i.
RE: Limited vision
Somehow, unless PalmSource bought out SUN's use of "Cobalt" (though I am not a lawyer), I would think sufficient similarity exists due to similar "sector" use (that is, both are computer oriented unlike Apple Computers and Apple Records!).
Note - NetBSD actually used "Cobalt" to describe an operating system thus perhaps PalmSource, while not in trouble for using "Cobalt", cannot trademark it.
Anywho, someday PalmSource will actually answer the question soemwhere...til then, an interesting aside...
RE: Limited vision
Somehow, unless PalmSource bought out SUN's use of "Cobalt" (though I am not a lawyer), I would think sufficient similarity exists due to similar "sector" use (that is, both are computer oriented unlike Apple Computers and Apple Records!).
Note - NetBSD actually used "Cobalt" to describe an operating system thus perhaps PalmSource, while not in trouble for using "Cobalt", cannot trademark it.
Anywho, someday PalmSource will actually answer the question soemwhere...til then, an interesting aside...
RE: Limited vision
Michael Mace: Still awaiting word on --
1) PalmSource landscape standard (no icon shown for it in Status Bar)
2) Icon in Status Bar to invoke Command Bar (why must this be a silly two-step: Raise DIA, do Stroke)
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