Vertical markets :)
There are still some poor souls wondering around a warehouse with a ruggedized (and still working) palm pilot out there :)
Love the iPhone, but still in love with Palm OS? You can have it all as StyleTap is standing ready to wrap up your Palm OS apps with an Apple-friendly iOS coating. The StyleTap wrapper is like a one-application emulator, bundling an instance of Palm OS with every application to work around Apple's draconian restrictions, but …
However, when I discussed this with the Sony people at the shareholders' meeting I suggested a data conversion utility for cases where there is a suitable native app.
However, I still feel like Sony owes me for orphaning my CLIE and I haven't bought a non-trivial Sony device in the years since then. Perhaps a pair of earphones or something...
iPhone? No thanks.
In case of world destruction, and I lose both my Palms (primary and spare), and the only phone left on earth is the iPhone, then I'd probably have more important things to worry about.
Sorta knocks my argument around a bit, but then again, I wouldn't have to stoop so low to use an iPhone - so I'm still happy.
I am, and many here, are so grateful you could take time out of your busy day to write such utter, fricking anti-Apple drivel it would shame even most hardened Android fanboi!
The discussion was about offering those who needed options a choice if they needed it, not for you to bang on about how much you detest Apple products. I would advise you consider moving into the 21st Century to Android or WinMobile if you despise Apple so much as I suspect you'll find you and you dead-on-its-feet platform stuffed within a couple of years!
You mean with all of the apps that are available on mobile marketplaces these days that are actually designed for the platform, people are still pining for Palm OS applications to run in ugly virtualised environments and don't at all act like the host platform? Really?
Palm OS was a terrible platform, and it is for that reason that I don't pull a phone out of my pocket that runs Palm OS. Let the damn thing die.
I mean, fancy turning on your device only to see a boring grid of icons.......
Oh, wait.
While I admit that Palm lost its way, the early Palm devices were cracking pieces of kit. I Had a Palm V, followed by a m515 and a T3. The V and m515 did exactly what they were supposed to, and did it well with Kindle style battery life. The T3 was a disappointment. Powerful for its time, but the build quality was awful. The slider fell apart in a couple of months (screws kept falling out) and the screen became impossible to calibrate within 18.
Also had a Fossil Wrist PDA. Pretty crap as a watch or PDA, but an interesting geek toy. Klingon watch face, anyone?
About the only time I've given more than a second's thought to getting an IPhone. Space Trader is an amazing game but rubbish on Android (Dark Nova). The Palm OS was Ace! Yesterday I showed my student my old M515 with fold out keyboard and was about the only thing that made them say 'wow' (a good wow, not a sarcastic wow) in a long time. A shame modern phone manufacturers aren't learning much from the PDAs of old. A pity it's got to this stage in a way. In Palm had any vision they could have been where Apple is today
I use a Graffiti app on my android phone (it's in the market), and I find it a bit strange.
The problem is that I am (still) completely used to popping the stylus out when writing. Using my finger (especially as I play classical guitar and keep my nails long) is just unnatural.
I find that using one of the capacitive styluses that you can buy is no good either, because they generally have some form of rubber or latex tip that drags on the screen, making accurate swiping difficult.
Every now and then I will get my Treo 650 (with Graffiti Anywhere installed) out and marvel how natural it feels to use compared to my Galaxy. Of course it has a small screen, unwanted keyboard, and does not do WiFi or 3G, but it did most of what my android does now for the previous five years. And the battery (still) lasts 3-4 days! I just wish that they had produced a TX with a phone built in.