I was just reading over on engadget an article wondering about where Palm is in the whole gPhone deal, and someone posted an article in the comments, about Palm saying they're not going there. Which, in my mind, says that Palm is going to wither and die. They're hopelessly trying to create their own linux based palm-os, and keep delaying and flailing. They are passing up a huge opportunity by missing the Android opportunity.


So, here's my big suggestion for Nokia:

Buy Palm.

Port their development framework to Maemo, so that the apps easily port over. Nokia immediately gets values like palm's apps, sync infrastructure, etc. by just integrating palm software into Maemo.

No, please... no.

Aaaarghhh!!!!

The humanity...

You don't think having the palm application ecosystem running on top of maemo & hildon would add value to the IT platform?

Nokia is already the largest shareholder in Symbian OS, which they could have used on the tablet hardware if they had aspired to position it as an electronic organizer.

I didn't say one word about porting the OS. I said porting the application framework.

You mean the current old one or the new unfinished one? Neither imho sounds very good.

Perhaps this thread should be called "Bad Suggestion for Nokia"

Nothing personal, please don't take this the wrong way, its just not on my list of wishes and wants. I know we don't see eye to eye on interface, so its not surprising I disagree with this statement.

I never owned a palm, and never wanted to. I played with one a few times, but just nothing there I needed. Perhaps I should have prefaced that with, I have not picked up a palm in a long time.

Now all that being said, to be a consumer device and break of the tech-no geek category, they need to add something in the way of PIM and office applications, printing. I got korganizer, kmail, going, now koffice would be nice.

I am not saying KDE is the answer, but a full suite of software is needed, and that seems to be left to the community to provide.

I personally am grateful for the hardware and to be able to have linux in my pocket, and carry a real linux interface with me wherever I go. This isn't an internet tablet, it's a linux box!

And having the palm apps run on maemo gets them that. Plus a huge userbase. Plus a larger developer and application ecosystem.


In case anyone is confused, I'm NOT saying adopt the palm OS, nor the palm GUI. I'm saying the API and ABI, but with the maemo/hildon look and feel.

There'd need to be some work so that apps compiled for the palm look and feel run under the hildon look and feel ... but I think most of that would be about screen dimensions, since they both have a single app menu, input that happens separate from the widget areas, etc. And Palm already has devices that work in both portrait and landscape, so it might not be that hard to adapt them to the landscape only mode of hildon (though, it'd be nice if hildon could do both).

I think it would also benefit the Palm community, in that they'd be able to continue to leverage their investments and application expertise. And if they wanted to transition to the hildon API, for more advanced and integrated features, they could so slowly.

I have owned a Palm, and therefore allow me to repeat: Aaaarghhh!!!!