September 26, 2005 09:30 PM
Living the "now": the post Windows-Mobile PalmOS
The big news this week is certainly the much rumored Windows-Mobile-based Treo 700w. We all had read a lot and wondered whether this was going to be a real device: a device manufactured by Palm running the Microsoft operating system.
Now there are many thoughts on what might happen to PalmOS. Cobalt, their next-generation OS is functional, yet not implemented on any device yet. Another possibility is the development of a Linux-based system, which would obviously be very costly to develop. I read an article today mentioning that it would be too cumbersome and costly to develop 2 completely different operating systems by the same company, without having a clear plan. For example, if Cobalt is only a very temporary solution until a Linux-based OS comes along, why spend all that money in development ?
The matter of the fact is that we have a good PalmOS (5.2) that works well and has tons of satisfied customers. On the other hand, this operating system is at its limit... no matter how much further development, 5.2 does not multi-task and it has to be patched to work with newer devices such as Treo's and other multimedia gadgets. It will be very difficult for PalmOS to compete with Windows Mobile, with Microsoft gaining market share daily. An option would be to maybe open-source PalmOS and focus on developing hardware once again... maybe helping transition to a Linux-based system. It would be really awesome to have something parallel to Linux, only in the mobile arena.
Posted by leo at September 26, 2005 09:30 PM
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