.FLYINGHEAD INDUSTRY ANALYSIS
.TITLE The future of the Palm platform: rosy or uncertain?
.AUTHOR Jason Perlow
.SUMMARY Recently, ACCESS briefed Computing Unplugged on its new strategy to bring the Palm OS to embedded Linux. We also discussed how it intends to transition its traditional Palm OS developer community over to its new ALP, the ACCESS Linux Platform, which is now confirmed to be based on Wind River’s Platform For Consumer Devices, Linux Edition. In this article, we take a close look at the details of the ACCESS plan.
.FEATURE
For close to a year, there’s been intense speculation as to what would befall the fate of Palm OS, ever since PalmSource (the company that owns the OS) was spun off and then became an acquisition target.
In early November 2005, ACCESS Co., Ltd., a little-known Japanese software company with expertise in mobile computing, completed its acquisition of PalmSource, the Palm OS spin off company of Palm, Inc.
.CALLOUT From a strictly technical perspective, there’s a lot to like in the new ALP OS.
Recently, ACCESS briefed Computing Unplugged on its new strategy to bring the Palm OS to embedded Linux. We also discussed how it intends to transition its traditional Palm OS developer community over to its new ALP, the ACCESS Linux Platform, which is now confirmed to be based on Wind River’s Platform For Consumer Devices, Linux Edition.
.H1 What we know
From a strictly technical perspective, there’s a lot to like in the new ALP OS. The traditional single-tasking Kadak kernel in today’s Palm OS "Garnet" has now been replaced entirely with the multasking 2.6-based Linux, using embedded systems veteran Wind River’s modified real-time Linux kernel and Eclipse-based developer tool set.
.TEASER There’s a lot you should know. Tap here to read the rest of this important article.
This, combined with the GStreamer open source multimedia framework and the ability to run J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) applications, and the SQLite database engine results in a truly enterprise-class embedded operating system that is fully equipped to run the next generation of network-aware multimedia applications. An architectural diagram, provided to us by ACCESS, is shown in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A Here you can see ACCESS’s architectural overview of the ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP).
With the ALP, very little of what we know today as "Palm OS" actually remains. Like with the current Palm OS, the current base of Palm applications will run in a execution layer that emulates the Motorola 68000 Dragonball EZ processor, the chip which ran the first several generations of PalmPilots and Palm/Palm III/Palm V/Palm VIII/Palm m series PDAs (and several Palm OS OEM units such as the TRGPro and Handspring).
The 68000 processor was eventually retired around 2004 in favor of the ARM architecture used in today’s Palm Treo handsets. Some manufacturers, such as Samsung and Kyocera, continue to use the Dragonball architecture in their handset designs, and thus it’s unclear as to whether these companies will switch over to the new ALP reference architecture or decide to do something else.
Motorola, for example, has introduced its own embedded Linux platform, based on Trolltech’s Qt Embedded (the very same platform that ran Sharp’s Zaurus Linux handheld) for its own smartphones, as a result of its acquisition and then spin-off of both MetroWerks (the developer of the CodeWarrior C/C++ compiler toolkit) and embedded Linux vendor, Lineo into what’s now being called Freescale Semiconductor. Nokia also has its own internal version of Linux as well.
It is expected that current Palm OS "Garnet" applications will be able to run without modification in the new platform using the Dragonball emulation, thus any current investment in existing applications by end users is not likely to be lost.
Native ALP applications, however, are a totally different ballgame. The GUI, named MAX, will be the main "Launcher" application by which end-users will interface with the new ALP-based digital convergence devices.
Presumably, the user environment will contain the typical PDA stack: Home screen, Contact Management, Calendaring, and personal Notes, in addition to messaging applications (IM, email), a Web Browser (NetFront, ACCESS’s internally written browsing application) and a phone dialer.
Figure B shows an example GTK+ application for the GPE Palmtop Environment (at http://gpe.handhelds.org) another embedded Linux platform, as shown on a Linux-based Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The ALP, also written using the GTK+ toolset, will likely inherit much of the traditional look and feel of the Palm OS.
.FIGPAIR B This is a very Linux-like ToDo application for the GPE Palmtop Environment.
While we haven’t actually seen the MAX interface, we would have to guess that ACCESS and PalmSource would be looking to replicate most of the look and feel of the traditional Palm platform, while still being able to leverage some of the newer developments in embedded Linux GUIs.
The new GUI API is no other than an optimized version of the Gimp Toolkit (or GTK+ for short) for embedded devices — the very same GUI toolset that powers the GNOME desktop user interface in many Linux distributions, such as Red Hat, Ubuntu and SUSE.
Therefore, its within the realm of possibility that many GTK applications will be quickly ported to the new ALP platform. GTK is also highly extensible through advanced scripting languages like Python and can act as a common presentation layer by which the new ALP applications, traditional Palm applications and Java applications are able to run in a seamless manner. Many other libraries have been written for GTK, such as Mono, which is the Linux equivalent to .NET.
.H1 What we don’t know
Many things, however, remain unclear. While Palm, Inc. and PalmSource have a technology licensing agreement through 2009, it’s not known whether Palm, Inc. will migrate to the new ALP with the Treo devices, or simply continue to use the existing Palm OS platform under license for lower-end stuff and then move to something else such as Windows CE for Smartphones. This they’ve already done in a limited fashion with the introduction of the Treo 700w for Verizon Wireless.
We also don’t know which third-party handset vendors have lined up to license ALP in their devices yet. We already know that Motorola is going in its own Linux smartphone direction, so that leaves Samsung, Kyocera, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG, Siemens and any number of other small manufacturers up in the air, and so far Blackberry has been pretty hush-hush on anything they’re doing in the future, given the litigation mess that they are currently in.
We also don’t know what sort of tools and resources will be given to traditional Palm application developers in order to port their applications over to ALP. The GTK+ environment is rich and will be a breath of fresh air to anyone doing Linux GUI development today. It will also be welcome to those who are familiar with tools like the GNU GCC compiler tool set (at http://gcc.gnu.org), Eclipse (at http://www.eclipse.org), and the GTK development libraries (http://www.gtk.org).
Unfortunately, developing in the GTK+ environment would require a considerable learning curve for traditional Palm OS coders to completely redesign their applications to run in the MAX/ALP environment, unless there was some sort of porting tool set available to facilitate the transition. So far, ACCESS and PalmSource haven’t yet made those details public.
While we know that the Linux Kernel, GTK+, Eclipse, SQLite and Gstreamer are all open source projects, we don’t know what proprietary extensions will be part of the ALP environment. We also don’t know whether or not code or intellectual property coming from ACCESS will be released under an Open Source license (GPL? LGPL? Other OSI-compliant license?) or if they will remain proprietary and closed-source.
We would expect that the portions of the OS that relate to the running of legacy Palm OS apps to be closed, as would any number of licensed device drivers and software libraries, such as those having to do with Digital Rights Management. Traditionally, Palm and PalmSource have been highly secretive about system internals and haven’t really allowed developers to collaborate in the development process of Palm OS itself.
With a new Linux-based infrastructure, much of that will have to go out the window as ACCESS tries to garner support from both the Open Source development community and its Palm OS cadre. Will they be able to pull it together and open the kimono to the satisfaction of the developers? Only time will tell.
.H1 Lessons learned
From December of 2002 through February of 2003, I was Software Developer Liaison for Sharp Electronics’ Zaurus. As some of you may recall, the Zaurus was also a Linux PDA, which shared many similarities with the ALP platform, and like ACCESS and PalmSource, the Zaurus was also the product of a Japanese company.
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Next week, I’ll discuss many of the lessons learned learned from the failed Zaurus product and provide insights into what ACCESS must do to avoid repeating the sad fate of the Zaurus.
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on ACCESS, visit http://www.access-us-inc.com.
For more information about PalmSource, visit http://www.palmsource.com.
For more information about WindRiver, visit http://www.windriver.com.
For more information on GStreamer, visit http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org.
For more information on J2ME, visit http://java.sun.com/j2me.
For more information on SQLite, visit http://www.sqlite.org.
For more information on Trolltech, visit http://www.trolltech.com.
For more information on Freescale Semiconductor, visit http://www.freescale.com.
For more information on GTK+, visit http://www.gtk.org.
For more information on GPE Palmtop Environment, visit http://gpe.handhelds.org.
For more information on Mono, visit http://www.mono-project.com.
For more information on the GNU tools, visit http://gcc.gnu.org.
For more information on Eclipse, visit http://www.eclipse.org.
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.BIO Jason Perlow is a long-time contributor to Computing Unplugged and a mobile technology enthusiast. He can be reached via email at jperlow@gmail.com. Jason’s food and technology exploits are chronicled on his blog, Off The Broiler, at http://www.offthebroiler.com.
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