Dedicated Palm OS users, it looks like your long, solitary walk through this world might not end in tragedy or violence. According to Dieter over at
PreCentral, during a new video demo of the company's forthcoming phone, an icon of what appears to be an older Palm device with the label "Classic" below it can be seen within the webOS launcher. Since we know they've got a forthcoming announcement today at the Web 2.0 Expo -- and we can be pretty sure Palm won't be dropping price or release date information without Sprint around -- it looks like this might be what
all the fuss is about: support for legacy Palm OS apps in the new operating system. Of course, right now this is speculation mixed with hopefulness, but we should know in a few hours when Palm's SVP of application software and services Mike Abbott gives a keynote at the conference. Until then, just hold tight.
posted Apr 1st 2009 3:02PM
God damn it I want a release date.
God damn it I want a "First".
Try wiping yourself with a broken bottle.
Talon Trax, just wait till 5pm PST, or 8pm Eastern, when they announce stuff.
oops that was actually at Jonathan.
weak!!!!!!!!release already. we want to see how hard u fall on your face n fail..i want to see if u can beat zero to 1 million record.,72 hours set by iphone on july 11,2008..anything less thant that would be an embarassment.Palm been making cells forever,all of a sudden new kid on the block ,iphone comes out n not only schools u but rapes u at same time
This would be great. Though I wonder how well some of the stylus-driven app interfaces would work on the Pre.
This is more a capacitive screen question, but would a stylus with a metal tip work on a capacitive screen?
Many of the older Palm apps a rightly pointed out were stylus driven.
If it's an emulation mode, I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to write translation software to determine where the 'center' of a press came from on the screen, then translate that into something the legacy software could understand.
It'll probably feel a little 'off' on the first short while, on a user by user basis, depending on if one is more of a one-handed 'thumber' or a two-handed 'fingerer'.
@kjb434
it might. I remember seeing someone making a winter glove with a piece of metal at the finger tip so you could still use the iphone with your gloves on.
If anyone has a capacitive touch screen phone, try putting some aluminum foil on a pencil or something and see if it works.
@kjb434 - Yes, there is a stylus that will work with capacitive touch screens, but it is a special type of stylus. Do a search for "iPhone stylus" and you'll get a full array of sites that offer capacitive touch screen styluses.
The only thing that could better make my day is a release date. Apart from that, this makes me happy.
Release date won't be as exciting for me because I have to wait till September to "re-up" and get the phone, but hopefully the news is good regardless.
I will only get excited if the new Web OS software can be ported to older devices. This Palm Centro UI makes me sick!
Then get the TealOS beta and have yours look like webos but get it soon
Umm.... there are like a million launchers you could try:
TealOS
Zlauncher
Touchlauncher
LauncherX
Ultimatephone (kinda)
What's that icon between Fandango and Pandora?
I don't know, but that's a very good question.
My guess is a Disney app. Looks like Tinkerbell.
I'm straight. I have a daughter.
Well, after enlarging the pic, I am wrong. It almost looks like an updated logo for Hot Sync. Since everything is done in the cloud, I don't think that's it, though.
The icon is for an application called FlightView. I don't know what it does, but i imagine it has something to do with this: http://www.flightview.com/
No, this isn't good enough. I want a release date...month...hell, even confirmation of this quarter would be better than this.
[Shakes fist at Palm]
I think the official release date for this feature is APRIL FOOLS DAY. Man, you guys get fished in so easily.
Well considering the first quarter just ran out and they've never budged on it being launched in the first half of this year, consider it confirmed that it will be in the second quarter.
The Phone is not ready, I don't care what anybody else is saying this phone will not show this summer.
uh... april fools?
the phone seemed pretty polished at CES 3 months ago. I'd imagine it's actually quite close to production.
Ya, I'm going to have to agree with calling shenanigans on that. If they let Joshua go on Jimmy Kimmel and wave it around I'd have to imagine they're just f'ing with us now.
I wonder if this is a way of getting around the potential lack native apps compared to the fruity company when they launch.
if this is true, then I think we can all join in on a big HELL YEAH!!!
plus, this just makes the phone that much stronger against the iphone. Everyone talks about how the iphone has thousands of apps. Well if this is true, then on launch day, the palm pre will have more apps than the iphone.
weak!!!!!!!!release already. we want to see how hard u fall on your face n fail..i want to see if u can beat zero to 1 million record.,72 hours set by iphone on july 11,2008..anything less thant that would be an embarassment.Palm been making cells forever,all of a sudden new kid on the block ,iphone comes out n not only schools u but rapes u at same time
Oh joy!!
april fools!
That icon looks like an original Macintosh to me...
If true that's great. As a happy Treo user, it makes a transition to the Pre a lot more desirable, likely and sooner.
Well if thats what it is, I am pretty much sold. WinMob phones have been too flaky of late, and I've got a Touch Pro. I wouldn't mind giving Palm another turn, but classic support is the make or break for me. I've got lots of stuff I from my old Palm days, and using it again would be quite handy.
Honestly, backward compatibility is a non-issue to me - the only non-Palm apps I use on my Treo 755 are Hobbyist Software's hacks and utilities, which will obviously be of little use on the Pre. The only people I see this really being a win for are doctors and other people who have bizarre single purpose apps whose authors flew the coop long ago.
This isn't going to be the big announcement though - the session tonight is about how webOS will change the way people look at web apps - not seeing how POS back-compat fits in with that.
Yeah that's my other problem with this being their big annoucement, who goes to a Web 2.0 conference and announces an emulator for a 8 year old PDA OS?
Shurly shum mitike?
If it's a emulator app, why the icon have the styles that palm have added for "settings" - if you watch the video floating around the web, settings such as Volume, lock, wifi, bluetooth, clock etc all have an rotated square background, none of the apps we have seen have this background, yet this classic tap has that type of background.
One push to reset your icons to their default positions? That's it's purpose?
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a prefs panel, and actually would make sense. An abstraction layer to run Palm OS apps. Would make the integration much more seamless than running a virtual machine app.
yayyyyy!
EXCITED! :D i may be able to retire my Treo 755p afterall...
honestly.
nobody want's the old os applications.
if you do.
it's simple.
don't get the pre and keep your pink centro.
if you were familiar with the amazing volume and diversity of the software available on the palm os, you might not say that. there were multiple dictionaries, for example, but that clearly isn't one of your interests. the original palm pdas with graffiti were also well ahead of their time as hardware. not only could you cut and paste from day 1, they had removable batteries and handwriting recognition. unlike the iphone (until so very recently), they synced not only your notes (duh), but all 3rd party applications, as well. in my sad experience, there is nothing today so versatile or easy to use. my green handspring visor, which i used until it finally died a peaceful death, was the best pda i ever had, and perhaps the single best piece of electronics i ever had.
weak!!!!!!!!release already. we want to see how hard u fall on your face n fail..i want to see if u can beat zero to 1 million record.,72 hours set by iphone on july 11,2008..anything less thant that would be an embarassment.Palm been making cells forever,all of a sudden new kid on the block ,iphone comes out n not only schools u but rapes u at same time...
You idiot... the iPhone3G record you refer to was in multiple countries as well as a much larger carrier and a second iteration of the device...
I so hope this is true, there are so many apps out for palm os that actually do things rather than entertain you for 15 minutes.
I awake and its all still true! So now for the GSM version...