Talk:Palm OS

Link spam

Okay, the links are getting a bit out of control here. What criteria is suggested to determine which should stay and which should go? --Steven Fisher 02:52, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

You're absolutely right. People are using this article to promote their websites. I'm a PalmOS developer with a website of my own (but to avoid hypocrisy I won't even plug it here :D), and this clearly isn't fair.

Here's my rundown:

1. PalmSource - Palm OS Operating System Company. YES, obviously
2. Palm - Palm hardware. YES, duh
3. 1src - well-known Palm forum YES (thousands of users, covers every PalmOS PDA imaginable)
4. Pdabell - Palm Software for education and Palm Game. NO, limited amount of software, just one of thousands of third party developers
5. Palm Evolution - Evolutionary Tree of Palm OS Devices. YES, informative, no obvious profit motive
6. Intorine - Palm OS games developer - NO, just another developer
7. PDA México - The first PDA Palm OS website in Latin America. YES, I guess Spanish-speakers would find it helpful
8. AlphaSmart - AlphaSmart Dana hardware. - YES, a well-known PalmOS hardware vendor
9. Handango - Online store that sells PDA software; Palm, PPC & Symbian Software. - YES, one of the most popular software vendors
10. PalmGear.com - Freeware & shareware for Palm devices. - YES, same as above
11. FreewarePalm.com - Freeware for Palm OS. - YES, many PalmOS users use this
12. PalmInfocenter.com - Palm OS News and Reviews. - YES, ditto
13. Palmfórum - Best Brazillian PDA-related forum. - YES, but remove the word "Best"
14. PalmAttitude - French-speaking PalmOS-related website: forum, news and tests. - YES, the French use PDAs too :)
15. PalmOpenSource.com - Open Source software for Palm OS. - YES, reputable Open Source foundry
16. EuroCool - Palm software. YES, not an enthusiastic Yes, but there are over "5,000" programs listed from a variety of developers
17. Nexave - biggest German Palm site and forum - YES, Germans too
18. TamsPalm - information for developers and users of Palm OS - NO, some guy's blog. If he can do it everyone could.
19. PDA Hotspots - List of websites that adjust to the small PDA screen - YES, genuinely useful
20. PalmFLYING.com - site that focuses on using PDAs in Aviation. LINK DOESN'T WORK, maybe the website is down, I can't judge it removable at this time
21. AbsoluteWord - multilingual dictionaries and encyclopedias for Palm OS - NO. A lot of software there, but it's all one developer... Wikipedia isn't for free advertising BUT it's for information, and their software does seem quite informative... this is the only one I had some difficulty in deciding on
22. Antioch Bell - A leading developer of Palm so- NO NO NO, a few bits of software and a whole load of religious propaganda... "leading" is also a blatant lie

So I'm going to remove some links here :) --craigTheBrit 16:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

no multi-tasking?

according to Sony FAQs for my Clié, PalmOS is not multi-tasking (even though it's possible to play music in the background, etc) - maybe that should go into the article, dunno where though (maybe a section "technical" ?) (clem 22:23, 13 July 2005 (UTC))

Interesting point. As with many things, it is not quite that simple, but... --Steven Fisher 22:36, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

yeah, you're probably right - MS-DOS wasn't multitasking either, but it was possible to play midi/mod in the background using TSRs, so the line here is blurry (clem)

Technically, what Palm OS lacks is the ability for application developers to create threads and other operating-system supplied ways of multi-tasking. There's always multiple threads running, though. I've heard this is due to the kernel Palm picked and the license they got for it, but I'm not really sure of this and don't feel comfortable putting this in the main article. It's also worth noting there are other forms of multi-tasking available to application developers. Multi-tasking is a pretty broad term.

In general you can't start an application, switch it to the background and do something else while it continues to run - the application is suspended when you switch away from it.

--Steven Fisher 23:58, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

About the Sony Clié: The reason that the Sony Cliés play music so well in the background is that the built in music application invokes the DSP or Digital Signal Processor. This is another chip inside of the device that acts as a second processor, but only for decoding media files. This is also the reason why battery power can be sustained for so long while playing music on the Clié.

Playing music in the background can also be done on many other Palm powered devices that don't have a DSP using system API's designed to run asynchronously specifically for sound synthesis.

Memory function

Stinks. When the battery runs out, all data gets erased on the memory stick. Don't know if its the memory stick or the OS.--Jondel 06:53, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Are you sure you mean memory stick or external memory? Sounds like a complaint about internal memory, which is a hardware limitation that only affects some devices. (Could probably use at least a brief mention, though, I'll add it.) --Steven Fisher 18:15:22, 2005-08-11 (UTC)

Why no more Palm OS?

I have heard that Palm will repleace its OS with Windows Mobile, so I wanna ask if: It's only for the New Treo (Comming 2006)? It's better ot have Windows Mobile than Palm OS?

The new Treo (dubbed the 700w) spoken of above has now been released and does in fact run Windows Mobile. This, however, is not the end for the Palm OS as another Treo running Palm will come out some time later this year. This device will be running the "Garnet" flavor of the Palm OS.

The world will probably never get to see a "Cobalt" device because the Palm OS has now been completely reworked to include a flavor of Linux.

It remains to be seen whether Palm OS will survive. Windows Mobile has gone from very poor beginnings to being completely superior to Palm OS. I say that as someone who used Palm devices and sang their praises for many years. The endlessly delayed, long promised and much needed revamp that was Palm OS 6 effectively never materialised. Meanwhile PalmOne have been releasing hardware with serious problems which they refuse to acknowledge or fix. Windows Mobile is now the lesser of two evils.

Requesting - Application development for Mobile development

If anyone working on this page can fill out the Palm OS columns on Mobile development, that would be a huge help - someone added the column, but didn't know any details. Thanks! 24.7.66.15 08:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Best-selling

I look over the list of "Best-selling Palm OS software" and wince. Most of these I have never heard of, and the onces I have heard of... well, some of them are free. It looks like nothing but spam bait to me, and like several people have taken the bait. If anyone has any ideas on cleaning up this section, please speak now. Otherwise, I'm probably going to delete it. -- Steven Fisher 01:15, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

You have my support to delete it. --Kio 03:19, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Poor service and product.

Palm has just about totally dropped off the radar these days. This article should have an unbiased mention of how they rely heavily on 3rd party products to replace their handhelds' inferior (to windows mobile or Linux PDAs) software. The OS is very finnicky. Contacting Palm support is such a useless experience you don't even attempt to re-explain your point to them. You know they'll just misunderstand you again. This company deserves to go on the record as having some real customer service & relations problems. - atrauzzi@gmail.com

Dead link

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.palmstamp.com/
  • In Palm OS on Sun Jul 16 21:28:09 2006, Socket Error: (110, 'Connection timed out')
  • In Palm OS on Mon Jul 17 17:27:18 2006, Socket Error: (110, 'Connection timed out')
  • In Palm OS on Thu Jul 27 01:13:59 2006, Socket Error: (110, 'Connection timed out')

---

maru (talk) contribs 05:14, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Clean Up External Links list

I have started cleaning up the list of external links. I believe most of the links should be removed as they bring no obvious info other than promoting somebody's little software or ad-filled blog. Anybody willing to help?? Riadlem 20:13, 7 August 2006 (UTC)