Palm exfoleates
Now onto the the detoxifying mud bath...
Ed Colligan has written an open letter to the Palm Economy of Customers, Partners and Developers canceling the Foleo and explaining that decision.
From a developer point of view there is good news and bad news.
I am one of the people who actually saw the Foleo and had a chance to work with it briefly. I think that canceling the Foleo is a good decision for Palm. The Foleo was awkward. My intuition is that the current market, like a school play ground, would not have been kind to Foleo. The iPhone and Nokia 800 would have taken the Foleo's peanut butter sandwich and milk money.
It is good that Palm did not spend any more of its budget on marketing and manufacturing for the Foleo, because that will give them more leeway to create something better. The new management at Palm now includes Jon Rubenstein, the former head of Apple's iPod division. The "something better" could turn out to be substantially better than the Foleo.
I admire Ben Combee, who was one of the people working on the Foleo project, and I know he will thrive and prosper going forward. He says that he is okay with the decision, and that "a lot of the expertise that the Foleo team developed in working on the kernel, building drivers, creating test systems, and producing embedded middleware should be reusable on our smartphone systems." I'm glad that Ben and the team will be able to salvage some of the good work that went into the Foleo. I think customers will ultimately benefit from not losing all of the effort that went into the Foleo, and from Palm focusing its attention on one flavor of Linux.
Which brings me to the bad news. From a developer perspective, the decision to cancel the Foleo has the side effect of being yet another OS rejected by Palm. Just as PalmSource was porting Cobalt to run on top of Linux, they let Access buy PalmSource out from under them. They decided not to license the Linux-based ALP back from Access. And now they are not using the Foleo Linux. Palm has left us to cope with the constraints of an outmoded Garnet operating system for a while longer. We'll do the best we can to continue to work with what we've got while they figure out what's next.
I trust the folks who have told us that Palm has a good Linux based OS in the pipeline. When it reaches us, I'm sure that we'll be able to put it to good use. I hope that the decision by Palm to "offer a single, consistent user experience around this new platform design and a single focus for our platform development efforts" will make it easier for Palm to communicate with developers, so that we can be clearer about what's happening on that platform to our customers too.
Comments
Hi there May C, It is hard
Hi there May C,
It is hard to see any big project get cancelled. In this particular case, we are fortunate that we did not have a lot of time invested in programming for Foleo, although obviously, we have friends and colleagues who did. It is easy to forget that there are so many people involved in making the technology products that we take for granted everyday.
Best wishes,
--Catherine--*
Hello! You bring up a very
Hello!
You bring up a very important point, and one that has been worrying me for a while. The way I see it, Palm has no clear direction ahead, and their handhelds are rapidly declining in market share and daily usage.
I am the last hardcore Palm-user in the office, and even though I've used Palm's since the initial "Pro"-version way back, I am now seriously considering dropping it from my tool set. I have a Nokia phone that now syncs all my Lotus Notes contacts and calendar entries automatically, and the pesky Bluetooth implementation of my T3 really doesn't let me do what I need anyway (direct dialling, SMS messaging).
The one app I really can't get anywhere else, is Life Balance. I'd hate to give up the mobile part of it, as the "Places" concept is so useful - and it's especially useful when away from the laptop.
So - what I am wondering about is the future direction of Life Balance. What are your plans if the Palm goes away completely? I could imagine using a "light" version on my phone (Java) or on my iPod that only keeps track of "Done" status and allows to view different places. All input would be on the PC, and you sync updates down and any status changes back.
The above is just one scenario, and of course, a "lesser" mobile client than the current Palm version. However - the value of being able to take the data with me easily on a more "current" device is much larger than my needs for a rich mobile feature set.
Thanks for any comments you may have on this.
peace,
Tormod in Stockholm, Sweden
Nice to read a developer's
Nice to read a developer's point of view on this. I feel very sad and angry for the developers that spent so much time on the Foleo only to have the rug pulled from under them so suddenly without any notice. Not even much of an apology. How can they compensate the developers for the lost time, effort and energy? What's to stop them from doing it again? If I were a developer, I would seriously think twice before plunging into any new development for Palm since so far, as you have pointed out with Cobalt and the whole mess that most of us have long forgotten, nothing has really come to fruition. We've been hyped and excited over nothing.
I totally agree that Palm really needs to establish a much better relationship with developers as *they are* what makes Palm great. Without all the third party programs, the Palm is just a basic device. Here's to hoping for better times. Fingers crossed.
Hi there Tormod, We've had
Hi there Tormod,
We've had experience of a lot of mobile devices going away... we originally wrote Life Balance for Newton MessagePad! We did some work to support special features for Sony on Palm. TapWave. I think we've been more stable over the long haul (14 years now!) and less dependent on hardware, than some other mobile developers might be. Basically the technical terrain we work in is constantly changing around.
Life Balance may be one of the few mobile product lines started in 1993 that is still out there going strong -- on different platforms now -- doing what we do. The ideas behind Life Balance are useful and powerful. Life Balance isn't about this or that gadget, it is about living well, with zest and gusto. That is what makes it meaningful to people.
I'm certainly sympathetic to your situation. We want to get through the Mac release first and then we'll look to see where we are. We just have to take it one step at a time right now and regain some momentum and push through. We are working a lot on sync services support and iCal integration. That may give you enough to get by with the iPod until you are back at your desktop. I'll be interested to see how that might work out for you. I think the to do list on the iPod is view only, though. So, compared to Palm... not great for Life Balance.
Now if we can get you all to send feedback (politely) to Apple about third party developers still needing an SDK to make Life Balance which you want to run on the new iPod Touch, or the iPhone, that might also get interesting. :-)
Oh boy - that new iPod Touch
Oh boy - that new iPod Touch is one sweet little thing! Too bad my current iPod is only 7 or 8 months old - I really can't get a new one in a while without jeopardizing my marriage :-)
But, by all means, that would be the perfect fit for a new version of LB. I'll get right on with that letter.
peace,
Tormod
Thanks so much! Peace to
Thanks so much! Peace to you and your family too!
-c-*
Hello, Would the Mac version
Hello,
Would the Mac version you're working on still be compatible with the Palm software?
Thanks!
krew.
Hi there Krew, Oh my! Of
Hi there Krew,
Oh my! Of course!
There will be a new Palm version too. The next Palm version itself has only minor changes this time (mostly due to the MAJOR changes on the Mac -- that is NOT a comment on the Palm or Windows platforms, just the need to focus our effort under the current circumstances). There are also significant enhancements to the Palm conduit that will be part of the release we are working on too. The conduit changes are a big deal because we're supporting sync services, but more than that, there are changes to reduce the number of cases that might cause duplicate events in the calendar, and new support for calendar categories in the conduit, which is something that people have asked for.
Ironically, we're taking advantage of the fact that Palm has left us here alone with Garnet, to break free of some of the Operating System constraints that we've been under. Palm had previously warned us developers to not work around some of the constraints for reasons of "future compatibility" with OS changes. But now that they are pretty clearly going with Linux in the future... why not change the rules... a little. :-)
Best wishes,
--Catherine--*
When PalmSource announced
When PalmSource announced Cobalt, I was at the conference, and ended up not really doing a lot with it. We decided that we would take a wait-and-see approach since our market (K-12 schools) would more than likely be late adopters anyway. Good move.
When the Foleo was announced, we again decided on the wait-and-see approach, again because our market is late adopters. Good move.
Hey, has Apple released an SDK for the iPod touch yet? ;-) (I just sent my email request, btw...)
Hey there Tom! Wow! Good to
Hey there Tom!
Wow! Good to hear from you! I can see how that watchful strategy would work out well for you. Our customers have tended to be the early adopters... which is fun and interesting, but it is sometimes precarious. We did take a wait and see approach on the Foleo... which was a good call on our part in hindsight. Cobalt... uh... as you may remember, was another story. We had quite a bit of code parked in that lot, and then, calamity... we lost our ticket! Had to pay for the full day... :-)
I think our friends at Normsoft did a lot of work to support the Foleo. So, they are probably feeling a bit queasy, but they are smart folks -- pretty light on their feet. I hope they aren't drowning their sorrows over at Acapulcos (our local Mexican restaurant.)
Thanks also for sending out an email to Apple! That's cool!
Thank you! Thank you!
Hi Catherine Great to hear
Hi Catherine
Great to hear about an updated Palm Version! :)
to Tormod: I am another hard-core Palm user. And still live of hope. Because I whole heartedly love this Palm sauce, this Palm ZEN, this great straight forward simplicity of Palm OS. Looking forward to Palm OS II, based on a proper multitasking Linux kernel and with the Palm ZEN style GUI on top.
back to Catherine:
I hope the next version brings in those long time wished structure elements. (Please.....) :)
Anyway, great to hear a path forward with the Palm version.
I am using my LifeBalance heavily on a daily base.
(Not completely as designed to, but as the greatest tool to implement GTD (Getting Things Done.) :)
Thank you for this great application.
Would Llamagraphics consider
Would Llamagraphics consider what role Java/J2ME could play in the line-up?
It looks like there are IBM Websphere JVM's on Palm and Windows Mobile. The Blackberry's environment is Java-based. I'm not saying it's one swing and a home run. Far from it. Llamagraphics has executed a platform shift before, and done so well. There is so much uncertainty now as to what platform to target, that I think a flexible solution's value goes up in comparison to purely native code on each platform. It appears that a java-based approach is at least worthy of some of the highly valuable staff time for evaluation. I respectfully submit that it is worthy of a spot on the e-mail interest webpage.
It will be a sad day, if ever, that they pry my 6 year old PalmOS based Handera 330 from my hands, but I've got to look at replacements, and the Blackberry's have a lot of the same things going for them now, that PalmOS did years ago:
There's publicly available simulators, great for trying before buying.
Desktop software that works with current OS releases, including Vista 64bit.
A community for developers and users.
Java-based tools environment.
For developers, it seems that Blackberry apps can command higher prices.
My crystal ball is as cloudy as the next guys, but I've got a good feeling a lot like I had with the 330.
"Now if we can get you all
"Now if we can get you all to send feedback (politely) to Apple about third party developers still needing an SDK to make Life Balance which you want to run on the new iPod Touch, or the iPhone, that might also get interesting."
Apple has announced that they will release an SDK for the iPhone in February. So, will I be able to use Life Balance on an Apple iPhone like I did on my Apple Newton; LB going full circle? If the iphone, and iPod Touch, are coded in Objective C, or other standard OS X languages, it could make the transition easier.