PalmSource Drops Mac Synchronization in Cobalt

But I agree this is not good. I've come across many people who've wanted to buy CLIEs and went with Palm due to the lack of Mac sync software.

Now I wonder how many fomer PalmOS users will be interested in this:

http://pocketmac.net/

I have read many posts on Mac forums about this announcement. Many have said they will never buy Palm again - some, like me, after 6 or more years of loyalty. Many have also said smartphones will be the way to go now or iPod plus mobile phone.

This isn't an option for me. I do a lot more with my handheld than keep a few addresses and memos. I keep around ten full length medical refences in there and consult them to help me care for hundreds of patients each month. Thousands of doctors do this and the number grows daily. Within this community I'll venture to guess that Mac users number more than 3% as is often quoted for the general public. I hope the future is bright for us as far as handheld computing and Mac syncing - for us and our patients.

For the longest time I was. But I got sick of asking, "Is there a MAC VERSION of that?"

Let Steve Jobs go ask.

Just because I'm using Gates's stuff doesn't mean I *like* it. I wish Mac had the larger market share.

Perhaps Apple will now consider an Apple branded and produced PDA. Heck, do for PDA's what they did to the MP3 market with the iPod.

If Apple came out with a PDA, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

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Pilot 5000, Palm IIIc, Clie N710c, Clie NR70v, Tungsten T, Tungsten T2, Tungsten T3

Based on some preliminary word from PalmOne they have stated THEY WILL CONTINUE TO SUPPORT MAC USERS IN THEIR COBALT HANDHELDS.

owned: Pilot 5000, PalmPilot Pro, Palm V, Casio E-11, IIIc, m505, Sony T615, Tungsten T, iPaq 1945, Tungsten E.

I agree, this is a big mistake by Palm. I utilize both Macs and PC's, however, I primarily use my Palm with the Mac OS. (My laptop is a Mac.)

Perhaps Apple will now consider an Apple branded and produced PDA. Heck, do for PDA's what they did to the MP3 market with the iPod.

If Apple came out with a PDA, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

::End Quote::

Heh that's kinda funny. You see, if you were a true geek up on your computer history, you'd know that Apple *INVENTED* the PDA in the early 1990's. They sunk tons of money into R&D for the Apple Newton, which was unfortunately a huge flop for the company and was one of the factors that almost sunk them. Ironically, while it was never successful, it was the inspiration for the Palm company, who set out to design a leaner, faster and smaller device. They created the Palm Pilot and the rest is history.
On a related note, you can still find tons of Newtons on eBay. They still have a very loyal, albeit very small, following of nerds who continue to write drivers and software for them. You can actually use Wi-Fi on a Newton, and that's something you can't even do on a Palm! Despite its age, it was still arguably more powerful than a Palm until the T|T came out.

Arthur

Palm Pilot 1000 > Palm Pilot Professional > Palm III > Palm M100 > Sony Clié PEG-T415 > Palm T|T3

Yeah, I agree. All 8 of you.

The zeolots aren't restricted to the macintosh camp. I develop on both PC and Mac machines and have to say I see a lot more zeolots on the PC side.

As for Palmsource not supporting Mac? I'll hold my opinion to see what PalmOne does.

Haha, count again. I don't know about you, but I would be pretty happy to sell a product and have the entire Mac market all to myself.

Zillions of Windows out there does not change this; it's a separate opportunity. It shouldn't be an "either-or": PalmSource could have had the Mac market and keep on competing with Pocket PC on Windows.

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For a major upgrade, saying that they drop support entirely for one platform, and "follow" another (a competitor!), has so many negative effects, psychological and otherwise.

Since Cobalt is for the high-end, they could have just ditched pre-OS X support and concentrate on OS X and beyond. Oh well...

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> "And I have nothing against Macs. I just don't care for the zealots who use them and suggest anyone who doesn't use them is somehow handicapped. BIOYA."

I hope it was not directed at me, but if so:

Did I suggest anything like that? If it makes you feel better, I have more Windows machines then Macs here... ;)

To Mike from PalmSource:

I do appreciate you taking the time to comment here regarding the change regarding native Macintosh support. Yes, the fact that Mark Space develops drivers for the Mac is advantageous.

However, the fact that built in native support will not exist in Cobalt is disconcerting nonetheless. As a Palm supporter since my first Palm 5000, the lack of Mac support in future OS's will make me re-evaluate whether I will continue to buy PalmSource/PalmOne products. Instead of always upgrading within the Palm product matrix, I will now scrutinize other platforms since the Palm OS no longer offers a compelling benefit over other Handheld OS's for users who use a Mac to sync with.

I understand the decision to do it, I'm not naive. However, I wonder if the full consequences of this decision were truly realized before this decision was made.

We shall see...

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Pilot 5000, Palm IIIc, Clie N710c, Clie NR70v, Tungsten T, Tungsten T2, Tungsten T3

ganoe: Switch to what?! Linux?

Despite the outcry here, Mac users are a minority on PIC too.

About an hour ago, BBC World Service reported that portions of Windows source code has been leaked onto the Net. Which version and how much has not ben specified. But perhaps this could be a serious blow to MS... I wouldn't mourn if it was a fatal blow!

this is a DEFINATE NEGATIVE on going forward with such a big Palm order. I know others who feel the same way also. As OS X continues to attract attention in enterprise, PalmSource will miss out on customers like my company.

Cut the BS, Junior. Organizations like standards and Windows is the standard. Whether or not it deserves to be. I suppose you and your coven of "others who feel the same way also" will also be recommending Netscape, WordPerfect, Eudora and Lotus 1-2-3 for your Fortune 500 companies?

Be honest: you're 11 years old and are reading Palminfocenter on your Mommy's AOL PC in the basement. How droll.

It's just too big.

I agree. I didn't say Windows was superior. MS should have more competition, but to echo mikecane's words, the main reason I bought a PC in the first place was because when I walked into computer stores there was always a huge section of software and hardware for PCs - including things I wanted - and a little corner display of Mac stuff that was mildly interesting.

> "And I have nothing against Macs. I just don't care for the zealots who use them and suggest anyone who doesn't use them is somehow handicapped. BIOYA."

I hope it was not directed at me..."

It wasn't directed at anyone, just an observation based on my experience.

"What a blind and naive statement. What if the product turned out to be the PDA version of the iMac? You know, overpriced, underpowered, and using 3 year-old technology. To this day, while it may have saved Apple's skin, I cannot respect taking advantage of gullible buyers by adding "pretty colors" to and charging full price for a product that was essentially the Mac of 3 years previous."

Obviously it's kind of silly to say you will buy something as soon a manufacturer announces it regardless of specs etc, but I'd take issue with your comments on the iMac. It's not designed for power users, it's designed for people who want a computer which they can take out of the box, plug-in and be on the Internet within 10 minutes, who don't want to worry about viruses and worms trashing their computer every week etc. And honestly, the average home user doesn't need a 3GHz machine to surf the web, write e-mail, manage digital photos or listen to music. The argument about 'power' could easily be levied at Palm devices. Sure you can now get them with fast CPUs, but until OS 6 is out you can't make use of that extra processing power for anything particularly useful.

I will also remind you that Apple's last Newton PDA, discontinued in 1998, had a 166MHz ARM processor in, considerably faster than most Palms until recently, and still faster than Zire 71, T|E etc, so even if they did use 3 year old technology it would easily be comparable to a current Palm device.

With regards to the user suggesting they switch to PPC, why not? If they have to use a 3rd party utility to sync with Palm OS, why not use one for PPC? I agree that the user interface is inferior to Palm OS, but they are cheaper and faster than Palms and tend to have better expandability. As most PC users demonstrate, these are clearly trade offs people are happy to make or Apple would be the defacto desktop standard.

"You're considering Macs for enterprise use? Unless you are a graphics shop, you better reconsider before you do something that loses you your job."

I'm sorry but you just don't know what you're talking about here. What do you think enterprises use their servers for? File storage, e-mail, directory services, web/intranet hosting? Mac OS X Server can do all these things really well and happily works in a cross platform environment with NO per-user costs and while being much easier to use than a Linux server. Anyone who reads business oriented technology sites is well aware of the increasingly large waves Apple is creating in that sector. Windows on the desktop doesn't mean necessarily Windows in the server room.

"Good riddance to you from the Palm community then, is my opinion. I'd much rather see a few reasonable folks here than a lot of zealots who don't bother to think before they speak."

Hello? Here you are accusing Mac users of being zealots because of their choice of computer, and here you are being a Palm zealot because someone might switch to what you consider is an inferior PDA.

If anything I would expect Palm users to be able to emphasize with what Mac users are put through for not going along with the juggernaut of mediocrity.

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Visor Deluxe > iPod > Clie SJ33 > Zire 71 > ?

I'm sure people would be more inclined to take your word for it if Larry Slotnick wasn't quoted in three separate sites in three different ways as saying that PalmSource was dropping Mac support in Palm Desktop AND HotSync with a offensive air as if this was a good thing.

It wouldn't be so bad if Palm had not support Macs for so long. For instance, as a Linux desktop user, I just shrug my shoulders.

I'm sure there is some spreadsheet showing dwindling Mac owner purchases. I know at one time 15% of Mac owners had a PDA which would put it well above the 3% figure when translated into Palm numbers. However, I'm just as sure that marketshare IS decreasing and, while some PC people here are wrong in not realizing the inroads Mac OS X has made in enterprise, their total enterprise market is rather tiny (but then again, Windows is small too and not growing as fast as Linux).

What I see is that the Mac is the first platform to actually build desktop synchronization between the computer and a myriad of devices (Palm, cell phones, PDA, multiple computers via internet, and even PocketPC with Missing Sync). Given that most PDA users (NOT your typical reader of PIC) just use a Palm for Address Book and maybe Memo Pad or Date Book, I'd expect that a number of people dropped the PDA from their budget and made do with a cell phone or iPod via synchronization (they sure aren't using them for data entry because one can't do it at all and the other requires you be a teenage european to have developed the motor skills necessary to triple-tap).

But the Mac is a harbinger. Standards like iCalendar, vCard and SyncML spell a new future where PalmSource is going to have to confront vis-a-vis new devices running previously beaten operating systems: embedded Linux, PocketPC, Symbian, etc. For instance, what will then happen when Microsoft integrates their knock off of iSync with... Longhorn if the PalmOS already can't compete with a relatively captive audience in the Mac world.

Especially when everyone and their aunt knows that PDA sales have flattened.

That's why I think that this news is a bad sign for Palm enthusiasts.

(And here I was exciting to think that Palm finally got out of the dark ages by realizing that supporting an open source toolchain is not just a good idea, but necessary for their very survival. Remember even WindRiver stopped fighting Linux recently and they have a far larger market and far more to lose.)

Finally, right now in the Mac world, iSync currently piggy backs off HotSync through a conduit (that needs to be installed by hand no less) not replaces it. I can't speak for future plans or current negotiations with Apple and 3rd party developers like MarkSpace, but saying that PalmSource has no plans on continuing to develop HotSync on the Mac is no less than a death sentence for Palm and Mac, despite all your attempts to mitigate the PalmOS 5/6 transition giving them names liek "Cobalt". Common sense, having worked at Apple, would predict their reaction to a T. (Yes, I can use a java based solution or a port from Linux to sync, but if tried you see they just won't get traction among Mac users.)

So take off your shoe, and roll up a sock and stick it in Larry's mouth.

(Ironically, Be, Inc. could be troubled to rewrite an entire OS to be compatible with Mac back in 1996 when they were competing with NeXT to be bought out, but in 2004 when computers build so much faster, they can't be troubled to devote a couple programmers to update tiny little HotSync. Go read Larry's comments with that perspective, they're quite amusing especially when you consider what 15% of 20-30 million users is. Then again, he said something about the RAM based filesystem's future in the Palm, which, given Be's innovation in the area of metadata and filesystems makes me wonder if he even understands BeOS at all...)

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terry chay

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