So, PalmOS ends up in the hands of an Japanese mobile browser company that almost no one has ever heard of. It's a sad sign that expectations for PalmOS software have been so low, for so long, that PalmSource stock leapt 70 per cent on the news.
The origins of this decline have been well documented here at El Reg, we'll only recap the key mistakes before raising a spectre that haunts this tale of Silicon Valley history: a spectre called Apple.
In 1999 Palm announced a partnership with cellphone alliance Symbian, promised joint roadmaps combining the best of both, but failed to follow through. An alternative history, where Palm brought its human interface expertise and US marketing strengths to a solid operating system, never materialized. Which is a pity. Although Nokia pretty much runs the Symbian show these days, its popular user interface still lacks the usability that has always been Palm's hallmarks. (Nokia's Series 60 wouldn't have survived the ruthless click monitoring that Palm enforced, ensuring basic tasks could be performed with as few steps as possible).
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Sep 11, 2005, 12:46 PM
