IP: Palm, pot, kettle, black

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie () TransSys COM>
Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2002 17:59:23 -0400
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Palm, pot, kettle, black


Here's a story about Palm's complaints against Microsoft for making
it hard to interoperate with Windows platforms and Microsoft software:

    http://washtech.com/news/regulation/15903-1.html

Saw a pointer to this on a mailing list for the free software "coldsync"
which is a UNIX-based utility for synchronizing your Palm platform with
your UNIX box.  <URL:http://www.ooblick.com/software/coldsync/>

I've got a Handspring Visor, and my desktop computer is
FreeBSD and not Windows.  I use coldsync to back up my data and some
some other simple tasks.  It was important enough for me to get working
that I wrote and contributed the code to the coldsync project to
enable USB-based for syncing with the Handspring Visor.

Of course, you can't actually get any documentation from either Palm
or Handspring (or Sony, or...) about the protocol used.  I had to
use a USB protocol analyzer to discover it's a fairly simple varient
of the serial protocol version.  Others are still trying to figure out how
to get the Sony Clie device to work with coldsync.

Palm is changing the hotsync protocol in their newer releases of the
Palm OS, and they're not going to document it, either.  It's their
own version of owning the (Palm PDA app) Desktop.

Why the big secret?  Do they think if this gets out, folks will
be buying *fewer* PalmOS devices?  Frankly, I think that my next
PDA is gonna be one of those Sharp Linux devices.  This whole
experience has really soured me on Palm.

It's very surprising, indeed, to hear the kettle calling the pot
black in this instance.

Louis Mamakos



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