What’s an alloy of palladum and cobalt?

[avram]

I’ve been a Palm user for several years, starting out with a IIIx, then getting a Handspring Prism, and now using a Sony Clié TJ-37. The first transition involved a few minor hassles — the Prism was bulkier than the IIIx, and so didn’t fit the holder I liked, and there were a couple of bits of software that wouldn’t run on the color screen.

The seconds transition was more difficult. The Clié runs PalmOS 5, which is more stable than earlier versions, but removes the capability for system patches, or “hacks”, some of which I’d gotten quite used to. I’m still not quite adjusted to not having FitalyStamp and LookDA for text entry.

Anyway, later this year PalmSource will be releasing PalmOS 6, or “Cobalt”, ’cause god forbid we should use version numbers anymore. OS 5 will be renamed “Garnet”. I just got the latest newsletter from TealPoint Software, which talks about this.

Turns out that Cobalt will be like the OS 5 transition all over again, but worse. Under OS 5, it was possible to get some hacks working again. (TealPoint makes a utility that does just that.) Under OS 6, this will not be possible.

OS 6 is positioned as an OS for high-end mobile phones, which means that PalmSources new customers aren’t the end users, but the phone companies. Cobalt will be designed to keep unauthorized programs from running on their devices, to head off possible theft of service issues.

It’s the old “trusted computing” hydra rearing yet another head.

Fortunately PalmSource says it’ll keep supporting Garnet alongside Cobalt (which may be why they’re going the non-numeric route for the names). It’ll be a royal pain in the ass for Palm developers, since Garnet apps have to be rewritten to take advantage of the nice new graphics features Cobalt offers. Me, I’m wondering how things are going in the open-source PDA world.

Comments

A bit alarmist, perhaps?

[mneme]

From everything I've heard, Cobalt isn't based on "trusted computing" -- it's based on that old, despicable model, "protected memory". You know, the thing that stops sloppy developers from crashing your Mac (unlike the good old days).

Basically, the reason hacks don't work with 5 is because most hacks work by exploiting the way the Dragonball (ie, a 680x0, just like the old macs) leaves the entire system addressable -- they hack themselves into the operating system, potentially destablizing the entire structure (but with the benefit of getting cool features that weren't envisioned when the palm was designed). 5 (and 6) have full memory protection, just like a real operating system, but also have hooks built in that allow many featured to be "hacked" in a less hackish way, and despite running on a significantly differenet (and better/faster) processor than the 680x0 branch (an risc ARM chip), it emulates the 680x0, so many older hacks can be made to work by writing an application that presents itself as the old hackable OS, and then reroutes the function in question to the new hooks.

OTOH, if the new "code signing" features end up gaining wide popularity, that could be a little annoying, so I guess we'll see; I do wonder if there will be a Palm Linux release, now that the hardware is more or less up to it.

[mneme]

Oh, and re open source PDAs, the better portal for that is handhelds.org. It does look like the newest Sharp Zaurus is quite nice, if on the high side, at least.