.KEYWORD macintosh
.FLYINGHEAD THE ULTIMATE GUIDE
.TITLE PalmPilot and Macintosh: together at last
.OTHER
.SUMMARY Apple is bouncing back from the brink. It’s been a pretty amazing year for a company that was written off at the beginning of the year and now has broken all sales records with it’s amazingly popular iMac. And with Apple’s renewed success comes great software for Mac users. In this article, best selling author and contributing editor David Pogue examines some of the Palm organizer treats in store for Macintosh enthusiasts.
.AUTHOR David Pogue
For the first two years of the PalmPilot’s existence, its maker, 3Com’s Palm Computing division, acted almost as though the Macintosh didn’t exist. The Windows version of Palm Desktop was upgraded not once, but twice (to version 3.0), though the Macintosh front-end software remained stuck in its crude, original incarnation, Pilot Desktop 1.0.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the marketplace: something called Windows CE. Microsoft’s PalmPilot wannabe devices are generally the same shape and size as the PalmPilot, although that’s like saying that the Hope Diamond is about the same size as the hunk of moldy Cheddar in my refrigerator right now. Windows CE palmtops don’t offer nearly as many available programs, aren’t nearly as fast as the Palm OS, and chomp through batteries in a matter of hours, not months. (No wonder the critics of these machines abbreviate "Windows CE" to "Wince.")
Nonetheless, whenever Microsoft enters the market, its competitors are wise to sit up and pay attention. In Palm Computing’s case, this attention-paying appears to have given birth to a startling realization: there’s one group of enthusiastic computer users who are guaranteed never to buy Windows CE devices. That’s right: Macintosh fans. Windows CE devices can connect to Windows computers, but not to Macintosh machines. And therein lies a competitive advantage for Palm Computing.
.H1 Palm acquires Claris Organizer
Perhaps in recognition that it had a potentially captive audience on its hands, Palm Computing did something rather remarkable: it decided to pump substantial dollars into bringing the Macintosh side of the PalmPilot experience up to par. Instead of trying to repair the hopelessly crude Pilot Desktop program, 3Com instead bought what had been one of the leading Macintosh Rolodex/calendar programs. Claris Organizer (which was in Apple’s custody, having been orphaned by the dismemberment of Claris Corporation) was now a Palm Computing property.
The good news is that the upgrade to this new Macintosh Palm desktop software will be free to registered Mac users. Unfortunately, the release date of the finished software has now been pushed back to December. As enthusiastic as Palm may be to win back the Macintosh crowd, the Macintosh programming staff in the company isn’t enormous.
Nonetheless, a look at the existing Claris Organizer product makes us realize just how much we have to look forward to. The program does things so elegantly that it’s Windows users who, for the first time, will be looking over the fence with envy. For example, Organizer automatically formats your phone numbers with parentheses and hyphens. If you type "Albe" in the City field, the software proposes "querque" as the rest of the word automatically. Organizer also lets you choose from a number of different looks, or themes, to suit your every mood. It can even automatically synchronize with your PowerBook laptop in addition to your PalmPilot. It’s a fine piece of Macintosh software, created by programmers who clearly love the Mac.
.H1 Conduit news
The new Macintosh desktop software is so good, you might not even care about what is really more significant news from Palm: the company has finally written a universal conduit for the Macintosh.
A conduit is a small software widget that serves as a translator between the PalmPilot and the programs already on your desktop computer. Windows users have enjoyed a PalmPilot conduit for years — it’s the software doodad that explains why Windows users can choose from such a wide variety of Rolodex/calendar programs to synchronize with their PalmPilots. Windows users were never stuck using what 3Com provided in the package (the Palm Desktop software); they could continue using whichever calendar or contact-management software they had always used. For the first time, this option will be available to Mac fans as well.
Within days of 3Com’s announcement, dozens of companies announced that they would be modifying their products to take advantage of the new Macintosh conduit. For example, if you’re still pining away for Now Up-to-date and Now Contact, forget it. Now Synchronize, that crude simulation of a PalmPilot conduit, never worked properly. Qualcomm (who bought Now Up-to-date and Now Contact with a promise to integrate and update them) chose not to include PalmPilot connectivity in its revamped software, now known as Eudora Planner. Instead, consider the new, highly regarded Chronos Consultant. It’s fast, its integrated, and it offers PalmPilot connectivity today — the first significant Rolodex/calendar program for the Mac to take advantage of the new PalmPilot conduit.
But the beauty of a conduit, of course, is that it opens possibilities that go far beyond addresses and appointments. For example, programmer Rob Tsuk is developing a link between FileMaker, the Mac’s leading database program, and JFile, a leading database program for the Palm Organizer. (In fact, he’s looking for testers as he finishes up his conduit. If you’re interested, visit http://www.tsuk.com/fmc/alpha.html.)
.H1 iMac potential
And then there’s the iMac, Apple’s one-piece, high-speed, low-cost, smash hit Macintosh model. The iMac is so popular that analysts expect Apple to sell 900,000 of them by the end of the year — and the iMac was only introduced in August. The iMac doesn’t have standard Macintosh serial ports (it uses something called Universal Serial Bus, or USB, instead) — so how will it connect to 3Com’s own one-piece, high-speed, low-cost smash hit?
Rumors abound. At the July Macworld Expo in New York, for example, Apple Chairman Steve Jobs showed a photograph of a new HotSync cradle with a USB connector at the end — perfect for the iMac. Trouble is, 3Com says that that announcement was premature — no such device exists. On the other hand, both the iMac and the PalmPilot have infrared ports. Surely it wouldn’t be a major effort for 3Com or some enterprising software programmer to write code that would permit wireless HotSyncing with the iMac — an arrangement that would not only be inexpensive and convenient, but pretty damn cool as well.
There are also a variety of companies offering USB to standard serial port conversion devices. You can find descriptions of many of these devices at Macintouch’s iMac site (http://www.imacintouch.com).
For Mac users, then, the message from Palm Computing is that there is finally renewed support for the Mac and that they’ll make it worth the wait. In just a few months, Mac fans can own two of the most exciting pieces of technology in existence — and plug them into each other!
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
Chronos Consultant is available at http://www.chronosnet.com.
JFile is available at http://www.land-j.com.
If you want to beta test Robert Tsuk’s FileMaker conduit for JFile, visit http://www.tsuk.com/fmc/alpha.html.
The iMac is available from Apple Computer at http://www.apple.com. [David Poque, the author of this article, is also working on an iMac for Dummies book. Stay tuned. — DG]
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO David Pogue, at http://www.davidpogue.com, is the author of the #1 bestselling PalmPilot book, "PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide" (O’Reilly, 1998).
.DISCUSS http://www.component-net.com/webx?13@@.ee6c3ff
