Thursday, March 18, 2004
Writing On Your Palm Says it's "Ford vs. Chevy"
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 08:00 AM
"Since PalmSource's DevCon last month, there's been a lot of bickering about PalmOS Cobalt's ability to multitask compared to Windows Mobile. It's not really an issue, and here's why. I've been trying to stay out of this. I burned way too much time and energy on OS advocacy debates in the past (search for Kirvin on comp.sys.os2.advocacy in Google Groups to see what I mean) and as I pointed out in my column last year called "Parity", PalmOS vs Windows Mobile really has become a Ford vs Chevy kind of debate.
That said, there's some serious confusion out there about how Cobalt (the OS formerly known as Palm OS 6) will handle multitasking. I happen to think it's pretty slick and elegant, not to mention a far more efficient paradigm for resource-constrained handheld computers. So I thought I'd take a shot at explaining how Cobalt will handle multiple applications working concurrently and compare it to the way Windows Mobile does the same thing. I'll try to keep the technobabble to a minimum..."
Jeff has put together an interesting article here, and it's worth the read (PalmSource was certainly clever in their implementation), but I don't agree with his conclusions for one simple reason: Palm is relying on developers to write a specific type of code to make their apps work in a specific way. That's all fine and well, but let's face it, not all developers will do that. I don't mean to offend developers out there, but the reality is that not all of them write clean code and do things the way they're supposed to be done. On my Motorola MPx200 Smartphone, if I leave a certain game running in the background (there's no exit function of course :roll:), my battery will drain from full to dead in less than 24 hours. Relying solely on developers to get things right can be a risky proposition. :?
That said, there's some serious confusion out there about how Cobalt (the OS formerly known as Palm OS 6) will handle multitasking. I happen to think it's pretty slick and elegant, not to mention a far more efficient paradigm for resource-constrained handheld computers. So I thought I'd take a shot at explaining how Cobalt will handle multiple applications working concurrently and compare it to the way Windows Mobile does the same thing. I'll try to keep the technobabble to a minimum..."
Jeff has put together an interesting article here, and it's worth the read (PalmSource was certainly clever in their implementation), but I don't agree with his conclusions for one simple reason: Palm is relying on developers to write a specific type of code to make their apps work in a specific way. That's all fine and well, but let's face it, not all developers will do that. I don't mean to offend developers out there, but the reality is that not all of them write clean code and do things the way they're supposed to be done. On my Motorola MPx200 Smartphone, if I leave a certain game running in the background (there's no exit function of course :roll:), my battery will drain from full to dead in less than 24 hours. Relying solely on developers to get things right can be a risky proposition. :?
