ALP Component Released to Open Source Community

Not exactly "lite". PSRC needed some way to provide PDB-like support, and I suppose this will do that.

I never thought about the value of being able to do file system operations with support for concurrency and transactions, but it seems to make sense in a circumstance where a resource could potentially be getting modified by a user process and a remote device management process at the same time.

yeah. Hans Reiser thinks Reiser FS is the way to do that, but it strikes me as a pretty large junk of code for an embedded processor.

May You Live in Interesting Times

Briefly, ALP is looking pretty darned good. Naturally, it's still under development but PalmSource says they're on schedule for the promised end of year release to licensees and I have no doubt from what I saw. They had several of the Haier N60 handsets used in Barcelona on the expo floor running ALP and were drawing good crowds. The MAX framework is in place now, sporting a nice-looking themable launcher this time, and there were early versions of several ROM apps that are written against the new API--along with Palm OS and GTK apps. While everything is still in flux ("pre-alpha" was the term I heard used) I think Palm OS folks will be pleased that ALP isn't a radical departure from the Palm OS GUI at all--updated, of course, but I get the feeling that ACCESS is making a real effort to deliver something that strikes people as the successor to Palm OS. All the Palm applications I saw tested at the Compatibility Station (including my own) ran well in GHost with no modifications. And the developer tools seemed pretty complete and solid for the couple of hours I spent working with them. I've got a couple of pictures I captured of ALP running on the PalmSource-provided Linux laptop I worked with during the developer sessions, so stay tuned.

Back to writing my articles, now! :-)

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

Definitely not. Not the same as they showed at 3GSM in February either. And ACCESS never that I'm aware of said that they had "little interest in retaining the Palm UI." Show me a link.

I don't want to spoil too much before the article is published, but my reaction to the user interface was that so far it is more like Cobalt and less like Rome than I expected. (Granted, we never actually saw the Rome interface, but the words that were used to describe it gave me the impression that there would be more of a departure.) Consider that Palm and PalmSource have already done a lot to make the Palm OS navigable without a touchscreen, so PalmSource is using that work as a departure point that gets them pretty far along the road to working on non-touchscreen devices.

One thing I'll say is different: don't expect the launcher and applications to have a plain white background or flat grey-white or pale blue buttons like in the past. The whole UI is skinnable with scalable vector graphics now and the operators will surely put their mark on it to differentiate their handsets. I imagine there will be an active marketplace for third party ALP skins if the network operators will allow it.

And what exactly do you mean by pre-alpha? That makes very little sense given their RTM timeframe. How can ALP be in a pre-alpha state if it is to ship by years end?M.

The term "pre-alpha" was used by one of the engineers in the course of an informal conversation. In context I took it to refer to the fact that we still have, for example, some ROM applications missing--at least in the demo handsets. Among the native MAX apps I saw were Contacts, Calendar, a music player, the browser, and a glimpse of the new sync system, but they weren't showing (or I didn't notice) native versions of the Phone application, email client, To Do, Notes/Memos, messaging or a camera app. There were a lot of features and whole applications that I had no time or opportunity to evaluate. If you think about it, it would take quite a while to figure out how complete a Palm OS device was, and when you've got a crowd of people waiting their turn it's pretty hard to make a realistic assessment. Of the things I could see were missing, though, none of them were things that couldn't easily be completed with the time and resources they've got.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

I honestly think the Q and the newer phone-style BlackBerries are the harginger of the future of mobile "smartphone" devices...slim, light on the features, and devoid of a touchscreen.

I think touchscreens are "so 1990s" in the eyes of many--they are fragile (relatively), prone to digitizer drift, and cost more to implement than a regular LCD. The stylus silo also takes up valuable room inside the casing that could be used for...something else.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

This is a marathon race and WINMOB is about to cross the finish line and ALPO is still sitting on the couch eating potato chips.