PalmSource Introduces Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 for Smartphones

PSRC is releasing the .1 upgrade 10 months after releasing 6.0. P1 is about to release a unit(s) w/ OS6 in a few weeks in my estimation. It will take cell manufacturers as long to prepare an OS6.1 device + many more months to get such a device thru the "red tape" of cell carriers. My thots on the 1st OS6.1 device in a local store is Q1 or Q2 of 2006. I wouldn't call the Verizon store tommorrow to see if their in yet in other words.

I don't see any hidden admissions of failure here. Although, those beautiful apps will make TT5 owners a little jealous. If the TT5 has Garnet, there may not be any TT5 owners. :-)

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

So release a Beta (art best) product and upgrade it later.

Works!

Regarding the update, if there is a rumor that TT3 and T|C can receive 6.0 then it is possible that TT3, T|C and TT5 will receive 6.1. Anyway, I won't be holding my breath for that.

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Current fan of a 320x480 tablet shaped Palm with built in BT+Wifi for less than US$450

No - i think PIC's headline is a little misleading. This is Cobolt 6.1 - NOT "Cobolt 6.1 for Smartphones". They have added more wireless and smartphone features to Cobolt in 6.1 - but it is not a different smartphone version of the OS.

I think the Cobalt 6.0 and 6.1 is like Windows XP Home and XP Professional. As for Garnet, it is more like Windows 98. I think Garnet eventually will be phased out in the future.

Cobalt, of course, is backward compatiable.

For a (somewhat) forced comparisons with the evolution of Windows, I would suggest that it's probably closer to:

Garnet -> Cobalt 6.0 -> Cobalt 6.1
Windows 3.1 -> Windows NT 3.x -> Windows 2000

In the core technology, there are many things in 6.1 that are on par with XP or Mac OS X or even what Microsoft plans for Avalon. For example, we now fully support window translucency effects -- with a single API call you can set the alpha level of your window, or even do very sophisticated arbitrary alpha compositing, all live, with no screen flicker. This is used in the new UI to do the fullscreen graffiti effect, true composited window shadows, etc.

Cobalt 6.1 is very much just the next version of Cobalt -- it is not at all a "new OS" in the way the transition from Garnet to Cobalt was. In fact much of what you are seeing in 6.1 is simply fulfilling the potential of the foundations that were already there in 6.0 but weren't completed due to deadlines. And trust me, there is plenty more remaining potential that we will be revealed in future releases. :)

> More like 6.0 was a release of whatever they had to meet
> the deadline they had foolishly pre-announced. With that
> out of the way, they got to work on a system that would
> actually be usable, 6.1.

While it is certainly true that what we could get in to 6.0 was greatly limited by the schedule, that in no way means that 6.0 (or really 6.0.1) was not a "usable" a release. There was nothing foolish about getting it out when we did -- in fact, given how different Cobalt is than previous versions of the OS, it was far more important to get a real product out and into the hands of the licensees as soon as possible rather than take more time completing additional unnecessary features like a revamp of the UI.

> Wasn't this pig given to licensees in December 2003????
> What the hell has been going on in the last year????

There is usually quite a lag between the time a new release of the OS is delivered to licensees and when it ships on devices. Our licensees tend to do a lot of customization of the OS for what they want to accomplish with their device, so it's not like in the desktop world where the platform vendor can just target a generic piece of hardware and all the hardware manufactures can basically use the result as-is.

Plus, in the case of Cobalt we have what is essentially a brand new OS. Much of the custom work the licensees have done in the past on Garnet needs to be ported to Cobalt, and these things are often... ah... "intimately tied" to the OS architecture, requiring significant effort to port over. (Often licensees have to do the same things we did three years ago, when we for example sat down and said, "okay these Notification Manager APIs... how are we going to get them to work in a new protected memory OS?")

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Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

Just a little addition in therminology.

Everyone is confused because of "smartphone" word in news. I think, that PSRC just means every GSM/CDMA-connected PDA. As long as Treo 600 can be called both Smartphone (for a shape) or Communicator (for a functionality).

Actually, i think, that Cobalt 6.0 simulator has NO multithreading at all - as long as i found NO multithread program-code at all (good, i could have looked bad, but:)

The New Web Browser 3.0 works NOT in background mode on Cobalt 6.0 Simulator! It works good with three (not more %-( ) pages, opened within it, but as i tap Home button, it goes all off...
I'm waiting for 6.1 Simulator, but if this problem still there... That's a shame on PSRC...

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Future Online!
Sorry for my bad english :(

I can't tell you how much your presence is appreciated here, at least by me. Of course, we're largely enthusiasts and I would say people show a great deal of passion about your products, but so often it feels like both PalmSource and palmOne are unreachable. Thanks.

It was my "foolish" comment that was one of the ones you answered above. Note that I did not say you releasing an early version of Cobalt was foolish, only that you had pre-announced the date, which no doubt put artificial pressures on you as to what to include or exclude.

There is a lot of confusion now about Garnet and Cobalt, I would have to say. First we are told that the OS's are being renamed (from PalmOS 5 and 6) because they are both relevant to future devices: Garnet for SmartPhones and Cobalt for (presumably) other PDAs. Then you announce 6.1 which includes extra support for SmartPhones. However, no similar release of Garnet is made to add those very same features (none that I am aware, at least). Ya gotta expect that we would get confused by this. Why would SmartPhone manufacturers want to stick with Garnet if all the cool new development is happening only on Cobalt?

As for the "usability" of 6.0, I'm sure it was usable, to some degree. I also note that 9 months have passed since the release and there is no hint yet of a Cobalt device (and this community is not bad at ferreting out advance leaks, as you probably know). PDA's and their operating systems are pretty much your and palmOne's only products and it takes over 9 months (probably will end up being 15 months) to get a new OS into a working device?? Lucky for you that you and palmOne have become independent companies because now you can each point your finger at the other one as to why this is so.

My opinion is that this industry is moving faster than you are. Other companies like Microsoft and HP are, together, releasing a plethora of mobile devices each year, even though this is not either company's main market segment. One can argue whether this is a good thing or not, but I'd have to say the rate which the OS and devices are being advanced in the Palm world is much too slow.

Perhaps you are doing what you can within the budgets and schedules you're given and we are just a bunch of impatient early adopters! I don't know. I do know that it would go a LONG way to have the type of communication you're providing here on an on-going basis. We've gotten a rash of info from Ben Combee, from Michael Mace and from yourself over the last couple of days, coinciding with a big show. How about coming in to talk to us on a more regular basis? You don't have to give away secrets (well, one or two maybe :-). But talk to us about the things that bug us. Even little things. What about the fact you can't pull up the Command Bar when the DIA is collapsed? What about the fact you can't move to the end of a 32K memo except by a laborious scrolling process? What happened to delight the customer? What does your market research say? Are we delighted?

>>First we are told that the OS's are being renamed (from PalmOS 5 and 6) because they are both relevant to future devices: Garnet for SmartPhones and Cobalt for (presumably) other PDAs. Then you announce 6.1 which includes extra support for SmartPhones. However, no similar release of Garnet is made to add those very same features (none that I am aware, at least).

I'm sorry for the confusion. I don't know how you got the message that Palm OS Garnet was for smartphones and Palm OS Cobalt was for other types of devices, but it means we did something wrong in our communication.

We went from numbers to names because it was clear that both Palm OS Garnet and Palm OS Cobalt were going to coexist in the market for some time. That's still true. But neither version of the OS is targeted intentionally at just one type of device.

I personally think Palm OS Cobalt is better for developing more innovative, advanced devices of any type -- precisely the sorts of things that take longer to develop. Meanwhile, Palm OS Garnet is great for devices that are more similar to today's handhelds and smartphones, and I think it's very good for them (look at the Treo 600). That was the positioning we tried to use with the press when we announced Palm OS Cobalt.

In practice, we're finding that new licensees who haven't done a Palm OS product before are often looking at going straight to Palm OS Cobalt. Existing licensees are sticking with Garnet longer because:

1. They have already implemented some of the features that are in Palm OS Cobalt, so they have less of a need to go there urgently (for example, palmOne has already implemented some of the wireless features we just put into Palm OS Cobalt).

2. The more custom software a licensee has done, especially software that touches the PIM databases (address book, calendar, etc), the more work they'll need to do to port that to Palm OS Cobalt, because we changed the database formats. That slows them down.

Regarding what Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 (the new one) is for, you should think of it as wireless-focused, not just smartphone-focused. It includes a lot of work on WiFi and Bluetooth (plus a lot of other new features that have nothing to do with wireless).

I hope this helps...

Mike
CCO, PalmSource

Excuses are like a**holes, everyone's got one.

Can you elaborate on this? What exactly changed and why?

Ouch!

Gekko, you potty-mouth! Your Mommy needs to teach you some manners, young lady!

Some would say you have TWO a-holes. That would explain all the verbal diarrhea constantly spewing from your lips. You're not going to embarass Mike Mace and company into making the Palms of your dreams. They just don't have the funds to do überPalms - even if they wanted to - so don't bother asking. Sony is/was your only hope for cutting edge design. And guess where Sony is now?

Palm's circled the wagons and is pushing smartphones (where the money is) and (cheap) incremental upgrades of their current lineup. Prepare to be underwhelmed until the next Tapwave is released in July, 2005. Sorry, pal.

Rumor du jour: ENGLISH version of CLIE VZ90 was spotted in San Francisco last week. If some enterprising soul ;-) can obtain a ROM dump from Sony's white (pink?) elephant, Dynamism will be doing massive sales pretty soon. That's the beauty of Palm: it's so simple. (Kinda like some posters around here!)

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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

Let him do his job of CDO, (Chief Damage-control Officer) without mocking him any further...

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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

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Dianne
PalmSource Application Frameworks Manager

Dianne, a few of questions:

1) When will Cobalt REALLY be finalized?
2) When will we see Cobalt SHIPPING in a real PDA?
3) Have you been seeing many legacy apps breaking under Cobalt?
4) When will all of the bugs in PalmOS 5.4 finally be fixed?
5) Do you ever get up to The City these days? ;-)

Remember, the safe word is "PPC".
;-)

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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.

Anyway, you'll be happy to know that Mike Kelley is telling the trade press that PalmOS Linux will ship to PalmSource (Access) customers in '06, and I, for one, believe him.

Marty Fouts

I survived PalmSource '05

Mike
CCO, PalmSource Inc.
At the developer conference in Munich