Snow Leopard Drops Palm OS Sync 290
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."
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.
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They are still selling them though right?
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Yeah, every palm phone EXCEPT the brand new Pre. Sprint still sells at least 2 other palm smart phones IIRC.
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A great deal of Snow Leopard was rewritten (including I believe the last legacy core of finder finally). APIs get depreciated and the cruft gets thrown away. More than likely PalmOS synching used some of the cruft and or APIs that were no longer needed otherwise. PLus there have been 3rd party apps to synch for quite some time, they will just be more used now.
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.
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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
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I've never tried the "magic update" process, but with a FireWire or Ethernet cable and a few clicks to turn on file sharing he could pretty easily copy his entire home folder with one drag-and-drop (or my personal recommendation, by creating a disk image). If the old machine can be powered down a target-disk-mode boot would likely be even faster and similarly easy.
I mean, it would be nice if "magic update" worked as described, but it's not like Apple makes it hard to copy files, or hides your personal data
iSync (Score:2)
It is not heavy lifting either. Requirements for developing Sync support on OS X is as follows:
1) Mac Mini (as in cheapest Apple and good developer machine)
2) OS X Install DVD (has developer tools)
3) Double Click Developer tools and install them
There are examples included, debugging tools specifically designed for iSync and even some packager. Of course, if Palm decides that PalmOS devices should act like iPhone and sync with iTunes, it is their decision and insanity :)
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?
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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.
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Re:Palm dropped support (Score:5, Insightful)
iTunes never supported the Palm Pre. Check your facts.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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If only 3 people are still using Palm OS devices, then they must all be in my work group. Several of us still use Treo smartphones. Just because new devices use a different OS is no reason to ditch a perfectly good device if it fits your needs well. I like my Treo 755p very much.
My Treo was an easy way to keep my address book and calendar on my Mac synced with my Exchange data at work. This definitely would impact me if I upgraded to Snow Leopard.
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This definitely would impact me if I upgraded to Snow Leopard.
Except you don't seem to be the type that's in any rush to upgrade to current technology.
The problem sort of solves itself.
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Except you don't seem to be the type that's in any rush to upgrade to current technology.
It's not wise to extrapolate from a single data point. Just because I like one device the way it is doesn't mean I don't like to update other tech gadgets. It depends on the risks and benefits.
I was considering upgrading to Snow Leopard this weekend, but decided to wait until I return from a trip I'm taking next week. I don't want to spend my last night at home frantically trying to restore a Leopard backup to my MacBook Pro if something went wrong with the upgrade. Now I'll probably wait even longer, t
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Given that syncing a Mac with a Palm (using their software) has been functionally broken for years, I'd say just go get Missing Sync like everyone else with a Palm and a Mac has done.
I wasn't even aware that it was still considered 'supported'.
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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.
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My Treo was an easy way to keep my address book and calendar on my Mac synced with my Exchange data at work. This definitely would impact me if I upgraded to Snow Leopard.
Well then your problem is solved! Your Mac can now directly sync your Exchange data without that 70-year old Treo in the way.
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Due to the reported increased speed and efficiency, I was going to upgrade one machine in the next
Missing Sync for Palm, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Free Software FTW (Score:2, Insightful)
Just install Free Software and GNU/Linux and forget about all these stupid games! Take control of your computing with an platform created by the people, for the people. Use something which is designed to enable you, rather than restrict you - locking you in and exploiting you for cash.
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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
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.
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People just like to bitch. They flame Microsoft for going too far with backward compatibility and then flame Apple for doing what people suggest Microsoft do. It's ridiculous.
What I don't get is... if you need old shit to run, your current stuff that supports it still works. You don't NEED the newest OS nor are you entitled to it.
It's not a bug (Score:2)
It's a feature.
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.
*yawn* (Score:2)
Apple drops support for legacy stuff from time to time. This might be a retaliatory move, but it's more likely they just don't want to waste the time and money on something a tiny fraction of their userbase needs, especially when it's something a third party (or Palm, you know, the makers of the OS in question) could write a sync app for.
Whats the drop rate on that? (Score:2)
I've killed like about 1500 Snow Leopards now and I'll I've got is an arse load of Tiger Meat, a metric fuck-ton of Sharp Claws and some useless blue cloak pattern that gives Frost Resistance. Lucky bastard.
Not such a big deal anymore (Score:2)
Just about all the PalmOS users still out there use Missing Sync anyways. It's the only Intel-native sync to begin with, since Palm themselves never bothered releasing an Intel version of their Desktop for Mac.
If Palm doesn't care enough to support it, why should Apple? There's not exactly a lot of PalmOS left out in the market nowadays - the Pre is the only Palm-branded phone that sells at all and even it's a virtual pimple on the body of iPhones and Blackberries.
(Blackberries that, by the way, are about
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.
Standard Palm OS was never supported by OS X (Score:2)
I have a Palm OS device, a Sony Clie, and there was no support for it in iSync on any version of OS X I used (10.2 through 10.5). When Palm declined to update Palm Hotsync for Intel I switched to Mark/Space.
So what is this mysterious component? What did it sync? Was it something for the phones only?
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.
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Apple doesn't have a 90%+ share of the operating systems market and, therefore, cannot drive competitors out of business through sheer price/compatibility pressure alone. The DoJ went after Microsoft because its monopoly over the operating systems market allowed it to distort the market in web browsers to its own advantage. That was illegal. Now, unless you can show that Apple's market power is sufficient to distort the market in PDAs/smartphones, then Apple hasn't done anything illegal.
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
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Apple isn't using its clout in the MP3 player market to drive other MP3 player manufacturers out of business. Creative, iRiver, SanDisk, and host of other manufacturers (even Microsoft) share the market along with Apple. Same thing with iTunes. Its hardly the only music management software out there. You're free to use Windows Media Player, WinAmp, or whatever you want to manage your music library.
Now, if Apple started giving away MP3 players to try and push the other market players out of business, that'd
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other than to protect their de-facto monopoly in the portal MP3 players market.
What monopoly is that, exactly? What's to stop you from listening to the same music on similar sized devices for similar (or less) prices?
Popular != monopoly.
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.
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From what I understand the Palm sync stuff was largely PPC. When they dropped the PPC support from OSX, they had to drop anything that relied on it as well, including the Palm sync capability. It's not interoperability between mobile and desktop platforms that drove apple to drop Palm sync, it's interoperability between desktop CPU platforms.
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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.
Discontinued support != blocking (Score:2)
I've read the article. It's definitely a different case to Google Talk.
I think one of the reasons they did this WAS because the Palm is now discontinued, they deliberately crippled functionality to maintain the purity of iTunes/iPod. They do not want other companies exploiting their software out of their control.
Palm used essentially an undocumented hack to trick iTunes into thinking it was an iPhone. This should go on the dirty code frontpage [slashdot.org] article. It saved Palm from having to write their own software a
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Even worse is probably that knowing how to pretend to be an iPhone proves that they may have been digging into the internals of the iPhone filesystem which they probably want to keep secret.
No it doesn't. Pretending to be an iPhone would be as simple as:
a) changing your USB device class and vendor ID to match Apple's
b) monitoring what data is sent "over the wire" and working out how it matches to what so you can emulate it.
You don't need to look at the file system at all. Besides, you already know what the iPhone file system looks like. Open Finder on your Mac, bang. There's essentially a more fully featured version of the iPhone's OS - it's called MAC OS X.
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What does Apple have a monopoly over? Certainly they are not the only company to make computers or Operating systems.
Apple users can skip the new OS and buy an equivalent piece of hardware that runs MS Windows instead, or even install Windows on their Mac; these facts means Apple doesn't have a monopoly.
Monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple has a monopoly on the voice chat features of its phone. It banned Google Talk to maintain the monopoly. It means you have no choice but to use the iPhone's own build in voice chat. They're purposefully locking you in, without competition. Monopoly means:
1. A company or group having exclusive control over a commercial activity.
2. A commodity or service so controlled.
Apple lets other Applications on its platform but as soon as something competes with their mon
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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.
Re:Stay classy (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
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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.
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....Its about that child running Apple, and his petty tantrums.....
Why should Apple not be allowed to have its walled garden? Only those who pay Apple are allowed to enter. They are not like Microsoft, where for the longest time there was no alternative to Windows. If you do not like Apple products, nobody forces you to buy them. Vote with your wallet and stop complaining.
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.
Re:Stay classy (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice logic there smart boy.
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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]
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Who decides what technology has become "legacy"? Apparently, Apple believes that all technologies that they don't sell you themselves is "legacy technology".
You have to really have Apple's dick in your mouth to defend this type of behavior from a corporation that has benefited so much from customer loyalty. At some point, one has to realize that Apple does not have one's best interest in mind, no matter how cool it makes one feel to display their
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
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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.
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.
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.
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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
Palm defeated themselves over the past decade (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 anyone say a good thing about their Treo so I never went there. I don't expect anything will change with the Pre. I also don't understand the Pre hype, it's not bringing anything new to the table.
Well, I've enjoyed my Treo 650 - though perhaps more because of the hardware than the software. The combination of a good screen and a dedicated keyboard area was just the right design for me - and the Treo was one of the first products to do that well in a smartphone format.
After the way Palm has handled PalmOS over the last several years I'm more than a little hesitant to buy any new Palm devices myself. I mean, there was the never-ending reign of PACE, followed by the adoption of NVFS (which was great,
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When you expect the brand of computer you use to convey status upon you, this is the price you have to be willing to pay.
And Windows 7 works great on my Macbook Pro.
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.
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I'll just put Windows 7 onto my MacBook instead of Snow Leopard.
There is a special place in Hell for people that put that abomination on good computers.
Thats why he's putting it on a MacBook and not a good computer....
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Win7 RTM is out for MSDN and TechNet subscribers (which, of course, means that ISO images have long since been leaked to TPB and elsewhere).
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Some people need something to feel superior about. Vegans and people who really care whether a program is open source are just two sides of the same coin.
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The point is, if it's "an abomination" why run it at all, over say XP, or Vista... if it is clearly better than the other windows versions, and you need windows, then calling it "an abomination" is rather short sighted.
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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.
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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.
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And one for high UID morons.
Oh, look... Anonymous Coward just slammed you for your high numeric UID! XD
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).
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That's fair enough, I guess I was just pining for the good old days with my 12" Powerbook dualbooting OS 9 and X and my Visor Edge... from the article I got the impression that Apple had just nuked iSync support, but it's possible it was a casualty of the 32/64-bit transition (or maybe the Palm-specific code had been running in Rosetta all this time anyway).
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.
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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.
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
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Microsoft never supported PalmOS. Apple did. Apple are now dropping their support for the product of a third party vendor who barely supported their operating system to begin with and has started to abuse their platform. They used to have to write their own drivers for MP3 players to hook into iTunes as well because nobody wanted to support their operating system. Palm have for all of these years been able to write their own conduit for iSync and Palm Desktop but didn't. They barely updated Palm Desktop in
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Actually, I'm a Treo and Mac user. I have a 755p that is actually a great phone for me. It worked fine in Tiger, but a recent upgrade to Leopard broke the universe. I haven't played with the Mark/Space software yet, but I can say that Mac's support for Treos was weak at best, and nonexistent in recent years.
I'm not planning on upgrading to Snow Leopard any time in the very near future, but when I do, I suppose I'll get the Missing Sync software.
I would totally buy an iPhone as an alternative, but I will
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
10.6 probably DOES work with your 1998 Winprinter if you have a parallel to USB adapter. Thank you, Gutenprint.
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: (Score:2)
Before anyone gets down on me, let me say I am a big-time Apple junkie. I have an iPhone, an iMac, a Macbook, hell, even an Apple TV. I code in Perl and Objective-C.
And I thought, "I know I'm going to get downmodded for this, but..." was a silly way to start a post.
That said, this is totally unconscionable. Apple has an obligation to its users not to break things that used to work for no good reason, and suddenly killing Palm sync support with no good reason other than a big Nelson Muntz "ha-ha" is kind of a red flag.
They aren't breaking anything. Palm syncing still works in Leopard just as it always has. And, you know what else doesn't work with Snow Leopard? All non-Intel Macs.
Even Palm is ending support for Palm OS. But you expect Apple to keep supporting it?
Anyone who had a serious Palm jones already used The Missing Sync anyhow, but this is seriously irresponsible.
Oh, ffs. This "irresponsible, unconscionable" act isn't even going to affect anyone? What terms do you have left for things that do matter?
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. I have a Centro and have never gotten it to sync with my Mac, at least not natively. It does sync with the Palm Desktop application, or at least it would if I knew what I did with my sync cable.
But the point is, no Apple-native app would sync. I had to use Yahoo or something to import my address book from iCal to the Palm app, and then sync it. It didn't totally work either. Very clumsy.
Taking it out entirely is not a huge issue. Hopefully the Palm desktop will still work, in which case it wo