Classic - destination or transition?

[PeerBr]

Originally Posted by Classic by MotionApps

how many of your favs support full screen? Less than you remember.
do you think that developers of your fav apps would invest time and effort in redesigning their Palm OS apps? No way.
how much would you pay for upgrading 15$

Hi there,

As a PalmOS veteran, my 2 cents. 320x480 has been a large pain, and I think it's for good reason that newer Palm devices came out using 320x320 only. Tungsten, Sony Clie/UX & Lifedrive had the big resolution, as far as I know, and were superseded by newer devices.

The issue was backwards compatibility, because new, larger displays had to support 320x320 since existing apps were written for smaller screens and would be so in the future. 320x480 was not magically provided by the OS, but apps had to be modified to use that space - after all, how would the OS know what each piece of software wanted to use the extra space for.

Some programs were never modified to run on the bigger resolution (showing a gray area or a keyboard), some came modified with the device (calendar, menu etc.) and some were adopted by their makers (like Agendus) to take up the whole space. Which was a huge mess - it was buggy and depended on hardware-makers modifications. My Sony Clie had a hideable soft-keyboard, so what happened when I chose to toggle it's state while running an app? It varied. Agendus expanded/shrank, other programs simply showed the gray area or had the keyboard overlap the application. Other programs didn't allow to toggle the keyboard. Oh, and as with many things on PalmOS: most just crashed.

My advice to classic devs: Focus on stability, moving to 320x480 will get you back to the marshes of PalmOS, to instable and abandoned apps crashing your system and shining a bad light on your software. Rather change the dpad, which was crafted for nostalgic, not functional purposes.

[treogangsta]

motionapps, are you guys working on getting kinoma and slingplayer working? Please, Please, Please respond.

[jp99]

With the current news it certainly shows this was a shorter transition than expected by many!

Those of you who use and depend on Palm OS apps have my sympathies - transitions to new software is rarely fun when there's much data. I've been there and done that, as I hung on to CP/M well into the 90's before getting into Windows (for home). It was a painful transition.

[JKM]

Originally Posted by jp99

With the current news it certainly shows this was a shorter transition than expected by many!

Yes, it seems to be a dead end

Are there any other platforms that provide a PalmOS emulator?
(I heard there was one for iPhone, but only via Cydia?)

[Dr.Grace]

Maybe it's time to accept that the PalmOS way of doing things is on the way out and that we have to find ways to migrate to another platform. Personally, next year I'm switching to iPhone, either on AT$T or Veri$on.

[RJKinsman]

That is a kick in the gut. I'm so frustrated. Doesn't Palm get that there are PalmOS apps that just don't exist on webOS?

[jjeffcoat]

As a Sprint customer I guess I should be used to getting slapped around by now...