Friday, April 06, 2007

Palm needs better software... on the desktop

Palm Desktop is a solid, but aging application that handles personal information management well, but is totally overshadowed by Outlook and lacks integration with desktop email and messaging. Even so, it's a big improvement over Nokia PC Suite (last I tried that).

The contract under which Palm re-acquired substantial development rights over Garnet OS has been published (in partly redacted form) as a Form 8K on the SEC website and it shows that Palm acquired development rights not over just the operating system, but also some rights to Palm Desktop. Palm has an option to get access to the source code that it can exercise any time over the next 10 years for $3M. By my reading it sounds like Palm got the perpetual right to distribute and modify the Mac version of Palm Desktop and that ACCESS is washing their hands of any responsibility to support that—at least as far as Palm is concerned.

I think it's time for Palm to ditch Palm Desktop for something that's more open and user-extensible the way the Palm OS itself is. Palm would do well to develop a replacement based on Eclipse RCP so that users could easily download and plug in new functionality and developers could use cutting edge tools to deliver these plugins (Java and SWT instead of C++ and MFC). RCP works great on Windows, Mac and Linux since the GUI is native. Users would have no idea that they were using Java under the hood and Palm could consolidate on a single code base for all the major desktop platforms. In our last project David Orme and I developed a nice Day/Week/Month calendar control in SWT that would be perfect for this. If Palm (or ACCESS) was interested in talking about developing a modern, cross-platform desktop companion that could open its PIM suite up to integration with email, music, images, RSS, bookmarks, SMS, IM, VoIP etc, Pikesoft would be happy to develop this for them. B-)

Posted by cervezas at 14:29:43. Filed under: Palm

Comments

I often feel like I am the last person who uses Palm Desktop. Nothing against Outlook-I just don't see the needs to buy a license, as Palm Desktop and Thunderbird suit my needs reasonably well.
The lack of any advancement on Palm Desktop is annoying though. VoIP? I would be happy if I could just *copy and paste an appointment*! And if I could export *all* my calendar data, not only a single event!
Everyone seems to prefer the wireless way these days-but at least where I live, accessing internets with my mobile is incredibly expensive compared to the benefits. But, as I have setup a bluetooth network connection between my 650 and my debian server, and my laptop was out for 2 weeks for repairs, I had the opportunity to test a mobile-device-only way of life. I edited Documents with docs2go, I surfed with Blazer, I responded to emails, I was even able to access my Palm archive through smbmate. But still, when the laptop came back, it was a relieve. For me, syncing is still the most precious feature a mobile device has. Copy and paste flight booking information into a calendar event months ahead and forget about it, or the PalmTTD manual into a memo, or reading my progect files on PDesk. When was the date of that Seminar I will prepare for by reading a bit on Wikipedia? I don't bother to pull out my device, I look into Palm Desktop and copy and paste from there.
In short, when working on my PC, I use Palm Desktop as my big notebook inside my notebook so to say :). But there seems to be no advance at all on the software. Palm seems to bundle it because it always did, with no interest on enhancing it in any way, automatically expecting everyone to use Outlook anyway.
Related to this, Palm seems to have no interest in Hotsync as well. Why is it that almost every mobile phone uses SyncML these days, except the WM and Palm smartphones? It is obviously difficult to develop for Hotsync, as so many old conduits are broken and so many mobile applications lack one where it would be desperately needed-like my two favourite 3rd party apps on my Palm, MaTirelire and Keyring.
I think of all the needed enhancements of Palm Desktop and Hotsync, which should have happened years ago, and I can't see that Palm will deliver anything substantial in the coming years. For me, it is the most important feature my device has: To have access to its data on my PC, or better, syncing with my linux machine with a web interface to edit it. Yea, phpgroupware syncing with the Treo using SyncML, that would be a revolution. Will that ever happen? I doubt it. I would switch to another platform that would offer that-only to my knowledge, there is none. So I stay with Palm, because it offers little, but what it offers is so stable I don't have to think about it. Loosing calendar entries or todos during a sync would make me crazy. So, instead of a new PIM-Suite, I would suggest to look into making a reliable, reliable, reliable sync work between phpgroupware, or Funambol. Cheers for your post though, finally somebody took notice!

Posted by em at Friday, April 06, 2007 17:26:47

You are not the last one using Palm Desktop, believe me. I considered switching to outlook, but switched back to palm after a short time because I missed it's simplicity. It is *very* annoying that palm seems to have abandoned it's development. It makes me wonder if they have abandoned the whole palm OS...
I am amazed that there isn't anything useful out there between the two. It seem there is huge chance for success if someone would develop a simple, modern, and easy to use notes/address/calender desktop application.

Posted by nlib at Saturday, April 14, 2007 18:28:09

The simple "it just works" pairing of Palm desktop with the handheld has yet to be equaled - and it makes me sad that so little evolution has happened in this regard.

Now that I live on a Macintosh I appreciate having Markspace's MissingSync tying me to iCal and Mac AddressBook. But even so - I wish there was a great desktop device management experience possible.

When I first started at Palm (in 2000, gads!) I wrote a proposal to evolve the Palm desktop and integrate it with POSE to allow for all your handheld apps to actually be usable from within Palm Desktop. That would have been technically doable, and would have opened up amazing doors for innovative uses.

Sadly - even then, the focus on the desktop experience was shifting away, and there were no resources that could be spared to work on anything more than the bare minimum. Sad.

I hope the "new" Palm does a better job.

- chris // http://www.radven.net

Posted by radven at Monday, April 16, 2007 21:58:44

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