Don't drop the hamsters
A juggler keeps many balls, chainsaws and hamsters in the air at once. We have a network of computers that we keep amazingly busy, especially when we are in the middle of a beta. Many things are going on all the time. We have computers that are compiling code. We have computers where we are talking with our customers. We have computers that are busy printing out flyers, doing web work, running backups, or what have you. Many times, we will set up an otherwise idle computer to run "Gremlin Hordes."
Gremlin Hordes are one of my favorite features of the Palm OS Emulator, or POSE. A gremlin horde will run automated repeatable tests that run around tapping everything in sight to find memory leaks, bugs, and places where we are doing stuff that will break under heavy consumer use. The simulator is a different tool that can does less "smart" checking, but the idea is pretty much the same. You can tell the desktop machine to pretend that it is a Palm handheld, and make sure that you are running successfully. Some of the devices don't supply a ROM, and then developers may not be able to test that device as thoroughly, and you test for some other device running the same version of the Palm OS and hope for the best. That makes us nervous, but it isn't always cost effective for us to go out and buy every device either.
In some cases, running your code in the simulator or the emulator can be like cutting your hair in the mirror. Theoretically, it should look okay. However, most likely you will have to explain to your barber that you made a mistake. We depend on the emulator and the simulator to make sure that Life Balance is very very stable. However, there are some devices, that you just have to use in real life with the software to get it to feel right. We recently have been through this process with the Treo 600.
The Treo is also more connected by phone, email and text messaging than previous Palm devices. It feels more like a little teeny weeny portal to the world. You can get stuff done with it, no matter where you are. A wonderful handheld for Life Balance. In short, this is a device that suggests features to you as you use it. Things that you might not see if you were just running Gremlin Hordes.
For some devices, you just need to do both kinds of testing.
The Treo 600 supports a much more complex notion of what single handed navigation should be like than the Sony JogDial. Each button needs to highlight, select and move in a logical order to the next button. The choice of navigation order can be remarkably subtle, and there can be more than one choice that might be useful. So we've dubbed Stuart to be "Lord of the Focus Rings" and you might notice that there is a glowing blue halo installed over his head.
