More blurb on the upcoming Palm OS aka ALP by David Beers
I follow the guy's blogs because he's a developer and thus able to provide a different perspective on Palm OS compared to other blogs which tends to focus on the hardware. This guy shares much about Palm OS - the operating system and its software. His recent post about ACCESS Linux Platform is certainly a jewel of a post which manages to reveal much about ALP for those that had not had a chance to attend any Palm OS developer conference. The post doesn't dwell too much on the technical side of things, though it does throw around a few technical terms.
From his post, it looks like the future of Palm OS is certainly bright, provided ACCESS can execute whatever they have in store. Here's what I think about ALP after reading his post:
- it's easier to develop for, thanks to open-standards compliant SDK and tools (Eclipse - yay!)
- it should be able to run (most?) legacy Palm OS because of GHost
- it has a better web browser - Netfront. Even goes as far as offering NetFront as a widget allowing software developers to plug the browser into applications (maybe?)
- it will finally be a modern OS - multitasking capable, runs services, has a powerful file system (using a database no less). Hopefully, ALP will also be able to some how tap into open-source drivers development to enable support for a wider range of hardware. Note** the default multitasking behaviour of ALP will be similiar to Palm OS - applications will stop running when exited unless programmed to run in the background.
- it will have plenty of software to boot - GHost runs legacy Palm OS software, while being based on X-Windows and GTK means it is possible that Linux applications will be portable to ALP with minor effort. (1) will also ensure plenty of newer applications.
- ALP will be more widespread than Palm OS considering ACCESS has leverage in the mobile phone industry. Hopefully, ALP will end up on PDAs as well to cater for those that wish to have separate devices.
Any comments?