End of the Line for the Fossil Wrist PDA

"I'll bet Beersy's kids will turn out to look a LOT like the mailman."

Ipso facto I was surprised with his "working" OS choice. He seemed to be like a real MSBasher...

Naio

Uahuahuahuahauhauhah!

Being a multi-platform developer with one single-beloved OS must not be easy... :-)

Ivan

Pulllleeeeeze! Microsoft bashing is so 1999. People bash Windows in order to look more savvy and sophisticated than all the other Windows-using lemmings. This behavior had its charm when it first began a few years ago. Today it just makes you look like a newbie. It has become "politically correct" to attack the dinosaur in Redmond. Zealots believe they actually look more intelligent if they attack Microsoft and its products at every opportunity, especially in online forums. Whenever I read a comment posted by some slack jawed dork using words like Winblows, Micro$oft, Microsloth, et al., I don't even bother reading the content of their post because it's usually coming from a Linux/Open Source fanatic suffering insecurity issues. Here's a little therapeutic tip: If you feel the only way your platform of choice can succeed is by constantly bashing the "other" platform in an endless campaign of slander and fear mongering, then perhaps there is something wrong with your platform? After all, I don't need to trash talk Pepsi or its consumers in order to enjoy my Coke, do I?

At the risk of sounding like an elitist snob, those of us who really are technically skilled, having worked with various platforms for many years, are platform agnostic. We don't hold religious devotion to any one operating system. Oh sure, we may have our preferences, but only just. Operating systems are merely the canvas upon which art is created. Applications are the tools which play a far more important role. It is the USER that is the artist, not the OS.

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Editor, http://Pocketfactory.com
Contributing Editor, http://digitalmediathoughts.com

After all, I don't need to trash talk Pepsi or its consumers in order to enjoy my Coke, do I?

Pepsi sucks.

And anyone who drinks Pepsi sucks.

If we'd held the industry to higher standards back in the day, finding things to whine about platform mumble wouldn't be like shooting fish in a barrel now.

And PalmOS sucks too.

So does Windows Mobile.

And Symbian.

And Linux.

Windows XP as well.

And not to forget, the suctastic MacOS.

Amiga sucked, EPOC sucked, Atari sucked, Commodore Vic 20/64 sucked, Coleco Adam sucked, DOS sucked.

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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
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The Palm eCONomy = Communism™

The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823

Actually, I've heard that despite their fuel economy, the premium price of those hybrids and their requirement for expensive replacement batteries every 7 years or so makes them no more economical in the long term than a standard non-hybrid car.

Foo, I'm getting the feeling you don't have a lot of respect for open source programs. While I agree that a lot of them are badly designed, half-finished usability nightmares (see Linux, XMLTV, dozens of others) there are some open source projects which have developed quite nicely: Mozilla, FreeCraft, others. Yeah, the "movement" produces a lot of idiots and bad software, but there's a definite upside for it.

> "Foo, I'm getting the feeling you don't have a lot of respect for open source programs. While I agree that a lot of them are badly designed, half-finished usability nightmares (see Linux, XMLTV, dozens of others) there are some open source projects which have developed quite nicely: Mozilla, FreeCraft, others."

I'm not implying that all open source projects are bad, but in general that has been the trend. Firefox and Thunderbird are good examples of Open Source done right, however it's important to keep in mind those applications originated as COMMERCIAL software designed by highly skilled (PAID) developers who understand software design, and usability. In cases where commercial software BECOMES open source, the development model works well. Another example is a server-side open source Content Management System (CMS) that I use quite often when designing websites for clients, called Mambo. This software too originated as a commercial software developed by an Australian company named Miro. Mambo is fantastic, though not without its flaws. And now a recent spat within the Mambo community resulted in secession of a large portion of the community who then created a new branch called Joomla. It's like the bloody civil war in the mambo forums now. One need only mention certain topics, and the battle of BullSh1t Run begins.

As I said, in cases where commercial software goes open source, the model works. In cases where software begins purely as open source, designed entirely by amateurs, the results are badly designed software. Open source advocates constantly extol the fact their software is free! That's not an endorsement...it's an indictment. Open source software is free because no one would pay for it. It's usually not commercial quality software. Just look at Linux. While I love it for its virtues as a server platform, and use it quite often for that purpose, it is absolutely worthless as a desktop client platform. The interface is a poorly designed Windows-clone, inconsistency abounds throughout the GUI. My greatest criticism is that I don't see Linux (desktop) as an innovative operating system. It current GUI lags FAR behind it's commercial cousins; namely OSX and Vista. Even XP outshines it in terms of ease of use and software availability. I've followed the development of this OS since the late nineties, and each time I install in on my machines, I end up removing it from my Hard drive soon after. The usual argument I an others get from GPL zealots, in lodging these criticisms against KDE and Gnome, is that I'm a Windows drone afraid of learning something new. Sorry, that dog won't hunt. Just the opposite is true in my case; I'm always first in line to try new technology. A few years ago I migrated from Windows to the then "new" OSX as my primary home desktop. Quality and innovative design are what interests me, and Linux has neither.

Linux still cannot install reliably or consistently across various hardware configurations. I was recently reminded of this when I attempted to install Ubuntu on one of my old Pentium 4 systems, which failed to take not once, not twice, but thrice! I gave up a burned a copy of OpenSuse 10.0 which installed flawlessly. But the end results are always the same; Linux continues to improve in tiny baby steps with each passing year, but not enough to challenge commercial operating systems as a serious desktop.

That said, watch out for Novell. They are pumping serious R&D into their distribution. And for the first time we're starting to see some real innovation that could result in a Linux desktop that is every bit as good as OSX or Vista. Novell recently unveiled its work with XGL, a hardware accelerated desktop based on the next iteration of OpenGL. This allows Linux to perform all the fancy eye-candy feats that OSX and Vista are doing, such as animated windows and transparency effects. Here are some mockups of Novell's desktop concepts...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gamehack/sets/1506658/

And some rather interesting videos of Novell's new XGL desktop. Very cool stuff...

http://www.novell.com/linux/xglrelease/

Of course, all this illustrates my point that open source does best when it either originates as, or is co-developed with commercial support.

Mark my words...Novell is going to put desktop Linux on the map...FINALLY!

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Editor, http://Pocketfactory.com
Contributing Editor, http://digitalmediathoughts.com