View: What I dislike about Palms By: Larry Garfield, Friday 13th December 2002, 17:49 GMT
Although Larry Garfield for the most part likes Palms, he isn't entirely happy with absolutely every move made by the designers of the Palm OS. Today, he sounds off.
I like Palms. I recommend them to most people for many reasons, not the least of which is the excellent design of the OS and included software. Still, there are some nagging annoyances that PalmSource really needs to address. Last week, Jorgen gave a few pointers to the Pocket PC crowd, and fair's fair, so here are some key gripes with the Palm Economy.
With Palm OS 5 now including a new-and-improved polyphonic and Hi-Fi audio system, why is there still no way to manage basic midi sounds on the Palm? There are a few third party midi collections, but the managers are all proprietary and generally unimpressive. Sony has a very well designed Sound Util applet for their audio system, complete with a desktop converter, but it only works on Sony-based audio files. That sort of utility belongs in the core OS distribution along side Card Tools, complete with a Palm Desktop midi converter component.
Palm OS does not use desktop-style files, which is a good thing. Desktops use "bit stream" files, that is, disorganized lumps of data. Palm OS uses record-based files that provide more internal organization for programs that use it. That works great for most Palm OS programs, and actually makes the coding easier, but that idea breaks down when a program wants to be compatible with desktop files. Most programs solve that problem by having their desktop conduit parse the desktop file and pack it into a record-based format for the Palm app, but that only works so well. For one thing, that breaks inter-program compatibility. Why should presentation editor Dataviz Slideshow To Go not use the same files on the handheld as presentation viewer Margi Presenter To Go, when both are simply packing up MS PowerPoint files? PalmSource hoped that VFS and cards would solve some of that problem, but it hasn't due to insufficient support for that sort of use. A better solution is right under their nose.
There is support in the Palm OS for desktop-like, unorganized "bit stream" files, but most developers don't use them because the mime-type support for them is still unimplemented, and most importantly the HotSync protocol doesn't support them very well. Adding decent mime support and fixing HotSync to properly support non-record-based files would open up the potential for storing a "PowerPoint" or "Word" file on the handheld in RAM in a common format, the desktop format, and having it then be accessible to all programs equally. It's not a difficult fix, but would open the floodgates for better file handling and interaction with other systems. OS 6 is a perfect time to do that.
Palm is putting all of its weight behind the SD card format. Sony, of course, believes its Memory Stick is the answer to all the world's problems. Why is it that the company that started the multi-card craze, Palm OS licensee HandEra, is the only Palm OS company to realize just how useful multiple card slots are, especially Compact Flash? CF is the most widely used card format in the world, has the largest capacity, and has the most accessories available for it. Of course, while an expansion card accessory is in use a storage card can't be, which is why multiple card slots are so useful. Sony almost figured it out with the CLIE PEG-NX70, but copped out and refused to include drivers for the CF slot in order to continue being proprietary. CF and SD together are fast becoming standard on Pocket PCs, and with good reason. Palm would be wise to follow suit, especially when dual CF/SD slots do not take up a huge amount of room.
Palm OS and its core applications are still, in general, far more user-friendly than their Pocket PC equivalents, but one place where the Pocket PC shines is the Today screen. A simple at-a-glance view of all PIM data is such a useful concept that it is duplicated by almost all Date Book replacements, but none as cleanly as a dedicated Today popup would be. The split view of the default Date Book just doesn't cut it. Forget the pop-up clock on Palm-branded devices, that's where a clear, colorful Today screen belongs, including a clock. That is one innovation that Palm can learn from the Microsoft set (one of very few).
That's not to say that Palms are not good products. The core OS is faster and more efficient than anything else on the market, and its modularity keeps the overhead small. The overall design and interface is far more user-friendly and easily learnable than any competitor by far, with an attention detail that few companies can even dream about. And of course, Palm and PalmSource have always made a concerted effort to avoid stamping out 3rd party software vendors (unlike Microsoft's inclusion of their own office suite, warning off any attempts at replacements), which is why there is very strong and very healthy competition in virtually every area of the Palm OS software market. Users and buyers win all around.
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