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Comments: 290 +- Apple: Snow Leopard Drops Palm OS Sync on Thursday August 27, @05:47PM
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adeelarshad82 writes "It's been just a little over a month since Apple blocked iTunes sync with Palm Pre, and now Apple takes that strategy one step further by blocking Snow Leopard sync with Palm-OS powered smartphones. Even though Palm has officially retired Palm OS and is now focusing hard on its next-generation WebOS in the Palm Pre, the company is still selling Palm OS-powered smartphones; two current models are the Treo Pro on Sprint and the Centro."
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Trollbait (Score:5, Informative)
s/blocking/dropping support for/
Nothing, IIRC, is stopping Palm from doing the heavy lifting required to support their devices in OS X except Palm.
Re:Trollbait (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, the article even points out that Apple dropped support for syncing with PowerPC Macs, so it's not like Apple is only dropping support for competitors; they're just weeding out anything non-recent. The argument seems to be that somehow dropping PPC support is acceptable, because they've been discontinued, but PalmOS is still an OS on phones currently sold, so couldn't be explained by the same "it's just being dropped because it's old and dead" logic. But Palm itself basically declared Palm OS dead [cnet.com] before Apple dropped support.
You could argue it's a bit premature, but it doesn't take an anticompetitive explanation for that: Apple has a long history of dropping support for stuff that was becoming obsolete in a way that many commentators considered a bit premature, starting with their decision to drop floppy support.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They are still selling them though right?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Trollbait (Score:5, Interesting)
It cost money to continue shipping floppy disks, it does not cost any more money to keep syncing with Palm devices.
Of course it costs money to keep syncing with deprecated hardware. Apple will have to support this software bridge for the lifetime of Snow Leopard (2 years? 4? more?). Cutting out essentially deprecated software will make the OS easier (and cheaper) for Apple to support in the long run.
That being said, I have no doubt that the upper management at Apple was all smiles when the announcement was made that PalmOS Sync was being dropped.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it costs money to keep syncing with deprecated hardware. Apple will have to support this software bridge for the lifetime of Snow Leopard (2 years? 4? more?). Cutting out essentially deprecated software will make the OS easier (and cheaper) for Apple to support in the long run.
Cutting out code may cause bugs. At the very least it will need to be tested to determine whether cutting it out causes bugs. That will require developer time. And the cutting itself requires developer time. Additionally, an
Apple is a moving target (Score:3, Informative)
Apple is run by a guy who saw employees staring to legendary macs and decided to "throw them away" to computer museum saying they should look to future instead of past.
Like or not, that is the attitude and in fact, if you ask me, it always pays off.
Just an entry from my system.log
" Warning once: This application, or a library it uses, is using NSQuickDrawView, which has been deprecated. Apps should cease use of QuickDraw and move to Quartz"
In Apple land, if you ignore it enough time, one day your applicatio
Palm dropped support (Score:5, Informative)
Palm dropped support for this YEARS ago. You can hardly blaim apple for not taking over support of a product that the manufacturer declared dead.
Re:Palm dropped support (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent up.
Palm hasn't updated Hotsync for the Mac in at least a decade. If it in fact worked under Leopard it was a miracle, as I doubt anyone from Palm even gave it a glance.
Mac Palm users almost all typically ended up getting Mark/Space Missing Sync for Palm OS. I was a late adopter for that, and I did it in 2005. At the time I was helping people with support on Palm OS devices, and the answer to any Mac sync problems was to dump hotsync and get Missing Sync.
To claim that Apple dropped support is pretty ridiculous, and just inflammatory. What next, an article on how Apple refuses to support running 10.6 on a Mac II from the late 80's?
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
I was in the same situation, except I dumped my Treo 600 altogether and went with the iPhone. A decision that I don't regret one bit. And if you look at the syncing fiasco with the new Pre, not much has changed in that area.
Re:Palm dropped support (Score:5, Insightful)
iTunes never supported the Palm Pre. Check your facts.
Parent
Re:Palm dropped support (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple didn't "drop" sync support for it through iTunes. Palm tried to sneak support in by spoofing an iPod vendor ID, which Apple undid. Nothing about iTunes gives competitors the right to use it as a selling point for their phones.
I think it's pretty shitty of Apple to refuse to play nice, but it's not like Palm didn't have it coming when they tried to pass off a pasted-on hack as some kind of official feature.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What this article is talking about though, is PalmOS.
This has nothing at all to do with the Palm Pre, which Apple didn't "drop support for" - they never supported it in the first place.
This is about the ability to sync PalmOS based phones, which Apple provided a conduit for since about 10.3 or something, that they are finally dropping support for. 10 years after Palm itself dropped support for it on the Mac incidentally.
I am certain that spoofing Apple's USB vendor ID with the Palm Pre certainly meant that
Palm has retired the OS (Score:5, Insightful)
So why would Apple spend time developing a feature for it? Especially since all 3 of the people still using Palm OS devices can purchase an app that does the same thing. Looks to me like the press is making a mountain from a molehill.
Re:Palm has retired the OS (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who is still holding onto his Zire (five years now?) and is about to upgrade to Snow Leopard: this isn't going to impact me because it only changes syncing the Apple calendars and contacts. Sure it would be nice if Apple supported the conduit but I figure it simply: Microsoft never supported ActiveSync for PalmOS, why are people getting concerned when Apple is dropping support for PalmOS since they were the ones writing it themselves not the product vendor? Given Palm's recent bout of laziness in abusing iTunes to support their device, I can't fault Apple for not wanting to support Palm's unsupported proprietary device.
It would be nice if it was all integrated but I'm still going to be able to sync my device using the ancient Palm Desktop tool. There is the Missing Sync which provides support for the Palm under Mac. All that is happening is that Apple isn't shipping some code they wrote probably because it was going to be a pain to port it to 64-bit.
To be quite honest, so far they've gone above and beyond.
Parent
Missing Sync for Palm, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
First the floppy, then serial, now the palm? (Score:5, Funny)
Jesus, Jobs, have you no heart? First you killed off the floppy disk drive. Then you wiped out serial ports in favor of USB. Now you're blowing out syncing technology that barely anyone uses any more in order to streamline your OS... shame, shame on you.
Sorry, I'm having a real hard time getting worked up over this, or even seeing a nefarious scheme behind it.
Sensationalist headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sensationalist headline (Score:5, Insightful)
...Which they all have anyway, because you've actually wanted to sync a Palm to a Mac for the bast 5 years or so that was the only way that really worked.
Really, this is a non-issue. Apple stopped trying to make something that no one actually used work.
Parent
This is flat-out false. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Palm connector, maintained by PALM, has languished for years. It suffers from TERRIBLE limitiations on Mac OS X, and it always had (you can only sync ONE address per contact, etc.). It was broken and really not updatedy by Palm as long ago as Mac OS X 10.4.
If you want to sync a Palm device, buy "The Missing Sync" and you're good to go. Works fine. Sure, it's extra $, but that's what you pay for that boat anchor.
Logic (Score:3, Funny)
1.) Apple updates OS, modernizing and streamlining the codebase.
2.) Some legacy app that hasn't been maintained in 4-5 years breaks.
3.) Apple must have deliberately broken the software in an anti-competitive move.
I'm an ace at logic.
MissingSync (Score:3, Informative)
I actually thought the Apple Palm Sync stuff was horrid and I use MissingSync on my 10.4 MBP. It was far, far better. Also I never liked Palm Desktop, it was a pain and always broke easily for me.
Re:Stay classy (Score:4, Insightful)
Support for legacy technologies gets dropped all the time. It sucks, but it opens up new opportunities for enterprising developers. Besides, Palm themselves stopped making Palm Desktop for the Mac ages ago.
Obviously there is lingering demand. So, in due course there will be an open source solution to sync from the Mac OS to the Palm OS. After all, it's not rocket science.
So there you go. Competitiveness is restored.
Parent
Re:Stay classy (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Stay classy (Score:4, Insightful)
"No, as Palm themselves dropped support years ago, these cries scream unfounded BS."
Umm, they blocked the pre. They now don't support any Palm prior to this year, which I believe the Pre is really the only new release.
iow, this year alone, they've phracked with every Palm device ever made. This seems pretty established, so I think you mean something else when you chose the word unfounded. It's directly anticompetitive by definition, as it eliminates or hinders another products viability on their platform for the time being.
Apple has no obligation to support or help Palm, is the way I look at it. What they did is legal anti-competitive behavior, but unhardly contradictory to the anti-competitve claim--that is the fundamental nature of business.
Someone smarter than me can maybe elucidate this breakdown further, but I had to respond given your comment was mod'd a +3 insightful for some odd reason.
Parent
Re:Stay classy (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I don't know, Palm could write their own Mac stuff instead of relying on Apple to do it for them ? I don't see how this is anti-competitive, Palm OS is not a Apple product, they don't have to support it, write software for it or update legacy code to work with their new OS.
Palm can do the work themselves if they think it's worth it. Apple isn't stopping them from downloading Xcode and writing a Cocoa based app to sync with their own hardware.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Legacy?
This sync method was the foundation for a lot of devices beyond palm. The fact that Palm is moving on is not germane.
Its just code, code that has already been extensively debugged, widely deployed and is still in use by many people for many devices.
This isn't about legacy.
Its about that child running Apple, and his petty tantrums.
Re:Stay classy (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should Apple not be allowed to have its walled garden?
Because they'll lose customers.
And customers are always, ALWAYS allowed to complain.
Parent
Re:Stay classy (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice logic there smart boy.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stay classy (Score:4, Informative)
There is support for Vista here: http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/32859_en.html [palm.com]
Parent
Re:Stay classy (Score:4, Interesting)
There's already a solution, in Missing Sync for Palm OS [markspace.com], which already handles synching to more recent Palm devices (Centro and Treo) much better than Apple's legacy support. I don't know anyone who has a Mac and a Treo and /doesn't/ already use Missing Sync anyway over Apple's grotty and outdated legacy Palm code. I would guess that Apple yanking Palm OS support from iSync and letting Missing Sync fill that particular slot in the Sync Services food chain is an acknowledgment of that fact.
Parent
Legacy technology (Score:3, Interesting)
Who decides what technology has become "legacy"?
Fairly often it is Apple - for better or worse. They're not always the first but when Apple decides something is no longer worth including in their computers, other PC makers often follow suit. They really were the big influence that finally got everyone to drop 1.44MB floppies even though everyone knew for years that they were a technology well past it's prime. They also were ahead of the curve on eliminating 1.2MB floppy drives, DB9 and DB25 serial ports, and a number of other ports. There are other e
Re:Stay classy (Score:5, Informative)
If Palm want a way to sync on OS X they should write the software themselves. Oh wait, they did and discontinued it.
Parent
Re:Stay classy (Score:5, Informative)
(Actually: They bought a piece of software Apple discontinued in the late 90's*, updated it a bit, then discontinued it themselves about 5 years later. Which is around 5 years ago at this point.)
*Claris Organizer, if you are interested.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The only one that didn't want Palm products to succeed was Palm. Horrible products. Support EOL for all their products were the day they shipped. Rarely got any sort of bug fixes, never any additional features. Palm Desktop for Mac is still a PowerPC only application (runs on intel via rosetta). Why bother trying to support something the vendor has no interest in supporting? I'll never make the mistake of buying another Palm product (I've had 2, Palm Pro and Palm T5). I've never heard
Re:Stay classy (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing like anticompetitiveness to turn me off.
You seem misinformed, which is understandable given the misleading blurb linked to in this story. Here's what happened. Apple made iSync and told phone makers to use it to synch with OS X. Palm ignored them and continued to use a really, really old Palm Desktop program as their officially suggested method, but refused to support it. Apple, not wanting PalmOS phone users to be dissuaded from using Macs and thinking Palm's unsupported solution was crap, took it upon themselves to write iSync plug-ins for PalmOS. Now Apple has dropped those plug-ins. That's not even close to anti-competitive.
It's sad, too. I was considering getting a Pre...
The Pre doesn't use PalmOS and so is not affected.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, it streamlines most of my home computing tasks quite nicely over XP or Vista. Its faster, more responsive and has a couple nice features that both vista and XP lack.
I don't see myself putting it on my netbook, work computer or server any time soon, but it seems to be a step in the right direction for personal use.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except the only universal praise ("all sensible accounts") is that it's better than Vista.
Compared to XP, it's not so clear a winner.
Re:Ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
So Apple should keep working on a niche market that is already well served by a third party? Why? Should Apple keep parallel and serial ports alive? Should I be upset that 10.6 doesn't work with my 1998 Winprinter? Where does it stop?
So, all 2000 users of Palm PDAs / Treos can either 1) stay at 10.5 - which isn't such a bad OS or 2) Go buy Missing Sync (which, I imagine, since Palm synching in OS 10.5 and earlier was pretty rudimentary 1990 of said users probably already have).
Parent
Re:Ugh (Score:4, Insightful)
Its not a niche market, its every single palm phone except the absolute most recent one. Every single palm sold before June 6th, 2009 is affected.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, where is Palm's software to fill in now that Apple are discontinuing support for the PalmOS that Palm has declared dead (but still sells phones with it on)?
Oh right, they discontinued the sync software years ago.
Re:Ugh (Score:5, Informative)
Which is a niche. Treo sales have been in steady decline ever since the 700p, and that was 2-3 years ago. Contrary to the summary, the Treo Pro does not run Palm OS - it's Windows Mobile.
Users can still use the far superior Missing Sync, and Palm could always update Hotsync. This is a non-issue.
Parent
Palm is their own worst enemy (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not a niche market, its every single palm phone except the absolute most recent one. Every single palm sold before June 6th, 2009 is affected.
Even Palm does a crappy job providing integration with computers for their own devices and has for years so I don't see why this is Apple's fault. I dropped my palm years ago because they fell WAY behind the curve on keeping their software modern and it was a pain to communicate with my PC. Unless I happened to use Outlook (I don't) or the near useless Palm Desktop I couldn't sync the address books which pretty much made their PDAs and phones useless to me since there are plenty of smartphones on the mark
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We are! Apple are now bringing their support for Palm in line with Microsoft: None.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does it have an obligation to ensure third party products function across OS releases? A third party product, by the way, that doesn't have native sync software because Palm discontinued it. Palm has also said that PalmOS is dead.
They have announced their intention. If Palm want to do something about it, they can release some software to make it all work again.
Re:Platform Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing stopping Palm releasing software to allow syncing on OS X. They just chose to discontinue it and instead rely on Apple to provide it.
Then went and pissed off Apple with the whole "I'm an iPod really" private USB vendor code spoofing thing.
Doesn't surprise me that Apple are hardly going to concern themselves with syncing with PalmOS - an OS that Palm itself is dead, out of goodwill for Palm.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed on the Google Talk thing, but this Palm OS Sync isn't an example of anti-competitiveness, it's just dropping support for something that is long past its use-by-date anyway.
And Apple doesn't get away with things -- there's been a lot more bitching about Apple than Microsoft lately. People are even defending MS against the FSF.
Apple isn't a monopoly in MP3 (Score:3, Insightful)
What about MP3 players?
What about them? Apple is the dominant player but they aren't by an stretch a monopoly like Microsoft has with Windows. Might get there someday but they sure aren't there now. Frankly the dedicated MP3 player market has probably peaked and will slowly but steadily decline. MP3 players are going to get increasingly integrated into cell phones. As popular as the iPhone is, Apple has no where near the pull in the cell phone market they do in the MP3 player or even PC markets.
The iPod and iTunes don't exactly play nice with other software or hardware.
And there are plenty of other
Direct your flame to Palm, not Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't guarantee anything but, as Leopard which you boo boo is a Unix 03 compliant operating system with entire toolchain to support open source software, Fink Project and Macports did considerable amount of work to make automated package management.
I know Fink and it has some Palm related software but I have never,ever saw a Palm in my life to begin with so I can't guarantee anything.
http://www.finkproject.org/ [finkproject.org] (official site)
http://pdb.finkproject.org/ [finkproject.org] (Package Database web interface)
So, no need to go Li