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Who"s davidlian?

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davidlian is an ultra-geeky chinese dude that works for a technology PR agency. He loves fiddling with techno-toys, plays Warhammer 40K, and shoots pictures wherever he goes. Here, he rants about PR, Technology and anything else. Don't expect balance and un-biased, he ain't no journalist. Anything said on this blog are solely davidlian's personal views. Don't confuse them with company mantra, client's views or views of any organisation he may be part of.

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Tuesday, February 17, 2009

*Mourns the death of Palm OS

Palm CEO Ed Colligan announced the death of the Palm OS last week. I couldn't help but shed a tear. The Palm OS has had a lasting impact on me. I'll never write the letter 'E' properly ever again thanks to my seven or so years using Palm's Graffiti and Graffiti 2 handwriting method.

Palm IIIe - Share on Ovi

The world's abuzz with touchscreen phones today, and it'd be a shame not to credit at least some of this to Palm's venerable OS. From the simple grid based icon layout to third-party apps, all these trends have their roots in the venerable Palm 3.x OS and every generation after that.

Third-party apps
The third-party apps thing is probably the biggest. Way before Apple had an AppStore, hundreds of thousands of crazy Palm OS users were busy adding fun but ultimately useless apps to their Palm devices. One of my favourites was Yoda - a simple app where an animated Yoda spouted tidbits of Jedi wisdom. "There is no try, do or do not."

There was also that calendaring application. The note application. The list application. That campy 3D RPG game in black and white (Dragon's Breath I think it was called). And the Gameboy emulator. Don't forget the MemManager that helped you maximise your RAM and the nifty SimCity 2000 port too!

If you ever needed an app, there were millions (number exaggerated, but you get the point) to choose from.

Accelerometer Games
Few people might know this, but one of the coolest things people did with their Palm devices was to slap an accelerometer mod on and play games with them. Yups, I remember the tricky ball game I played where you had to tilt the device to guide the ball where you wanted it to go. Just can't remember the name.

Grid Icon Layout / interface
Couple of years after Palm got the early lead out of the door, Windows CE (as it was called then) came out and introduced the taskbar to the mobile PDA. Today, every mobile computing platform is using the grid layout, even the one that's got a taskbar still. I'm so glad Palm won that battle.

So, even as we bid goodbye to our dear friend the Palm OS, I'd like to record a little thank you and say - hey, it was great to have you around.

Next post, I'll post a couple of pics and my brief history with Palm devices.

6 comments:

KY said...

out with the old, in with the new, can't wait for WebOS!

davidlian said...

I can't either. But you know I'm partial to S60 right?

Just BoB said...

I used to sell these when the first came into malaysia. In fact, i think we were the first ones in malaysia to bring Palm ( that time was Palm Pilot) here and was selling those in one utama. Tech Stop? anyone?? no?

well... i was an avid palm OS fanboy up until Nokia came out with S60 series. pretty much the same thing but abit more polished.

With WebOS out i think its gonna give the Iphone a run for its money. MULTITASKING, Cut and paste and what nots... I like the WebOS. It has potential. but the phone design sucks a little. :P hehee.

davidlian said...

Yes I remember TechStop.

You guys were at One U right? I upgraded my Palm IIIe from 2 MB to 8MB for RM 270 or something then. :)

Just BoB said...

Yeah. in one utama...the good old days :D

the only person i know that can do that upgrade was either leslie or lawrence. :D

Was werking there till the last day. it was a sad sad day. Then later on, there was more PDA based shop that opened. :D

davidlian said...

@JustBoB: Yeah, sad day. But now you can sell Mobile phones. :)