Release of Clie APIs

[sixseven]

So before I begin, I know that this discussion has come up before in different forms, and the standard answer is always no.

I am assuming that someone in this community has internal relationships within Sony. What would it take to make a request to Sony to release it APIs so that programmers could finally support all of the multimedia functions of the all of the Clies? A petition? More?

Ok, so I get Sony's strategy of keeping their APIs secret. What would our incentive be to upgrade if we can tweak our Clies with the latest uber-cool 3rd party apps? Answer: don't release APIs and nudge people to upgrade to the newer models.

The game has changed, however. Now that Sony will not be providing newer models, I would think that it would be an amazing gesture on Sony's part to allow us remaining, stranded user to maximize the potential of our machines. What do they have to lose? They have everything to gain in terms of customer loyalty. (My DVD player is broken, ya know... I hear Sony makes a good one.) :)

Any thoughts or suggestions? Again, the main question in the post is how to get this suggestion in front of the right people at Sony. PR perhaps?


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[SamuraiCatJB]

If sony has any intention of ever considering returning to the PDA market in the USA they will not release them, petition or not. Since they have so far continued local markets in Asia, that's two strikes....

Lastly, there is nothing to gain for them doing so? PR? where? in the USA for a market they are dropping? not very likely.

Your only hope would be coming up with a benefitial reason. Find some reason that they can profit from the release and then get that to the right people. Businesses are run by profit, the only way to "make" them to do something is to address that bottom line.

[sixseven]

SamuraiCatJB,

This is a hard calculation, but how do you quantify customer loyalty? This is what they have to gain. It does mean something. And it would mean something to me, as a consumer, if Sony would make this gesture. I would probably have more Sony products around my house... That said, I will never by an RCA product again, because of the lack of support for my Lyra II 2211. The box said it was "software upgradeable" but RCA never provided any upgrades. A promise broken.

Now I realize this is not a completely parallel argument for the purchase of my NX80, however, I think the average consumer understands that they will need to upgrade their techy devices from time to time. I made an investment with Sony, and I think we are all disappointed that this avenue of upgrades is now closed. So really, I don't see what Sony has to lose by doing this.

How soon could they return to the PDA market in the non-asia markets? It would take many, many months to mobilize all of the business units involved. By the time that they could actually return to market, we will have probably moved on to another device from another manufacturer anyway. But what if we didn't? The longer I hold a Sony Clie in my hand, the less likely I'm going to switch, right? They have everything to gain.

I agree that the Asia markets will be the biggest barrier.

How does the saying go? Of the things you want, 100% of the things you don't ask for, you don't get. Again, I think someone in this community has the ability to present this business case to Sony. Who is this person? :) The APIs are already established. How much effort would they have to exert to publish them? I guess the worst case scenario would be a translation to English. I think we should try to mobilize what's left of our Clie community to rally and support this request.

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[SamuraiCatJB]

how do you quantify customer loyalty? believe it or not, they do.... Every company lives by the polls, the reviews, the feedback. They hire people to get it for them, they buy poll results from companies who do nothing but take polls of customer products. why? because they HAVE to put a number behind it.

I lived in the retail world in the gasoline market for about 4.5 years, and even we lived by the polls and we had 22 gas stations in one state. pretty small change, but companies have to quantify anything and EVERYTHING. So the only chance you have is convince them their poll results were wrong (which means finding out what they were, and chances are that will be expensive, since 98% of consumer polls are part of a market of selling those results), or convince them you have better numbers.

Quantify everything. Give histories. A name means nothing, but a list of 1000 people who bought other Sony products because they liked one, means something more than just a name.

I don't know how to do it.... I've been R&D for 12 years now, and no longer in the gasoline business at all. My market has even more to do with quantifying everything. We even have to quantify innovation, future changes in the industry (talk about tarot card stuff!!), and especially quantify risk. Some of my projects need super high risk of failure, some need extremely low risk of failure. But all in all, everything, and I mean everything has to be quantified. And sometimes, I have to convince the people it was their idea, especially when the risks are low. Higher ups love to take the credit for low-risk ideas and love to pass the credit (even when it succeeds) to lower end folks.

I'm not saying don't ask. What I am saying is asking is not enough. Find a way to ask, while addressing other concerns, ask without asking, ask by appealing to the bottom line will have the best chance of success. By all means ask, but if you find a way to address the company concerns, you go farther in winning....

Something to think on though.... is why so many big companies have jumped on the Open source market. IBM, SUN, SGI, HP, etc. Because some areas, especially software, costs major money... and the risk is higher than hardware. So turning it over to open source actually saved them money. SGI terminated near 50 employees when they dumped the Irix OS future, and more will go when they've fully switched to Linux. Not great that they lost the jobs (though all the ones I knew were snatched up immeadiately, they were very bright folks). The point is there are advantages, find them, address them.

[CliePet]

> So before I begin, I know that this discussion has come up before in different forms, and the standard answer is always no.

My standard answer is "be specific, what APIs to you want?"
There is far more info available than is often given credit, which is why this topic continues to pop up.
BTW: I've reverse engineered a lot of Sony APIs and in general developers don't care!

---
> Ok, so I get Sony's strategy of keeping their APIs secret.
IMHO this is mostly a myth.
PalmSource and other Palm licencees have similar "secrets".
[For example: how a program calls an ARM-only library entry point ?? - that's a PalmSource 'secret' that Sony can't disclose]
Sony gets dinged on it because they have many more models and are inconsistent (ie. there is no single camera capture APIs for all models of CLIEs). Part of the downside of the "new model every 3 months" strategy...
----
> What would it take to make a request to Sony to release it APIs so that programmers could finally support all of the multimedia functions of the all of the Clies?
BTW: most low-end models of CLIEs do not have the full multimedia subsystem of the higher-end models (ie. cheaper TJ v TH/UX/NX)
Depending on the problem, a single solution may not be possible (ie. there is no single solution for playing audio, that's why some models of CLIE have AudioPlayer, and others come bundled with AeroPlayer)
=====================================
PLEASE be specific, what APIs to you want? (or kind of apps you want to write that you can't today)

I have CPX helper APIs for movie recording, playing, voice recording (lame ADPCM, and better MCA2), cameras and other stuff. These work on most of the higher-end CLIEs (with the full multimedia subsystem)

Did I mention, most developers don't care !->

[zwergnase]

sixseven but how do you quantify customer loyalty?
Sorry to pop your bubble here, but Sony's managers couldn't care less.
And why should they? Have you sworn a holy oath to buy from Sony and only from Sony from now on? And even if you did, how would Sony supposed to be enforcing that oath? Just like IBM when they left their PS/2 and OS/2 customers sitting in the dark, or Texas Instruments with their TI99/4a, you got a good (superior) technology, that got screwed up by some management decisions and thus started to cost the company $, dropped for the sake of the bottom line.
Just like your "loyalty" ain't gonna survive the next wave of super cool tech gadgets from Sony's competition, so is Sony's management primarly focused on the next revenue reports. Not the "loyalty" of customers who already spend their $$$, made their purchase.
The NZ90 and other CLIE models still sell red hot in Asia and thus Sony still has intellectual property to protect here.
But even if not. Do you have any idea how many "non-disclosure" and "corporate secret" arrangements with 2nd and 3rd party suppliers Sony would have to untangle in order to just open up the vault on their inner coding?
Do you know how much corporate copyright lawyers charge per hour?
Do you know the meaning of "legal presedence"?
To be sure, I don't like it either to be treated like that much garbage.
But I've been there, suffered that so often by now that I came to accept it as part of the capitalistic reality of today's fast paced world.
"Loyalty" sounds good for sunday speeches and advertising.
But reality is that nowadays, employers are no longer loyal to their employees or vica versa and the same goes for corporations and their customers.
Its all just about the bottom line, and that goes for both sides.

So how much would you be willing to pay for the hassle it would take Sony to untangle all that legal mess in order to just open up the books on their API innerts?
And w/o propper payment, why should Sony bother to even recognize your existence?

And CliePet, is there a document for those MultiMedia APIs for the NZ90?

[cliener]

Okay, this petition thing is nothing new. CS has had this in other threads back in 2003. Sony isn't going to release their APIs without the signing of an NDA. Palm and Sony have long since signed agreements so regardless of how many customer loyalty pleas they receive it just isn't going to happen.
With the diverse apps in just the clie lines, there are a lot of APIs there to mess with. It is about money. They release anything and they have basically burned bridges on whatever profit they may potentially make in the future, or decide not to pursue. It is up to them and they aren't about to share that with anyone else.
As far as reverse engineering goes, it isn't that Sony doesn't care, it is more that you aren't making a sufficient scratch on the Sony dragon. Any business that saw anyone as a financial threat would be on you in a heartbeat. :)

[CliePet]

[QUOTE=zwergnase]sixseven
> ...Do you have any idea how many "non-disclosure" and "corporate secret" arrangements with 2nd and 3rd party suppliers Sony would have to untangle in order to just open up the vault on their inner coding?
As I keep pointing out many times, the core operating system is PalmSource proprietary information. Sony is not at liberty to disclose that information to anyone.
[FWIW: in my case I do have NDAs with Sony, and they won't give me any of the *good* stuff that relates to the core OS -- because they don't own it]

Of course I'm only doing this for free and to help out the CLIE. The *good* stuff is only given to PalmSource OS licencees (eg: PalmOne, Tapwave, Sony). It is up to them if they want to expose a different API (like TapWave's unique API) but they can't just release PalmSource's intellectual property.

Otherwise, the only way to get to this *good* stuff is through reverse engineering. See Igor's YAHM project for one solution for Palm OS 5 general native ARM coding (unofficial versions of native ARM APIs that PalmSource has not released, and probably never will)

> And CliePet, is there a document for those MultiMedia APIs for the NZ90?
Not officially documented.
Check out my CPX helpers, they *unofficially* document much of this, as well as giving the samples mentioned above [just finished a demo full screen movie player for 320x240 movies on the UX as discussed in another thread]
http://www.aibohack.com/clie/cpx.htm

If you have a particular application in mind or other problem, post a question in Developers forum or send me an email. I can probably give you other pointers. BTW: that's why I like practical problems (like "I want to write a program that does X, Y and Z") instead of guessing at motives of multi-national corporations...

[sixseven]

Cliepet,
While my background is technical in nature, I am not a programmer, so I only understand things at a conceptual level. I wish I could be more specific. Thank you for your response, however. It was very informative. I assumed (falsely) that Sony would be more standardized in their methodology, and not have the inconsistencies that you detail. I don't really know how to be more specific.

I do think you are the bomb-diggity for your contributions to this community. MCA is freakin awesome. Thank you. If you are looking for a new project, I have a suggestion... :)

Again, I am not an expert here, so forgive me if I don't use the correct language. I believe I have read that palmos 5.2 allows capable devices to change resolution between 320x480 and 480x320. Would it be possible to emulate this functionality on earlier devices. For example, if an application was written to support landscape mode, could you provide middleware that would trick the app to think it was running on PalmOS 5.2 and using reversed engineered APIs (similar to MCA) display these apps in landscape mode? I could be smokin' crack on all of this. :) Again, you have my gratitude!

zwergnase,

For about 10 seconds I thought about how I was going to respond to your post. Then it hit me... You're a condescending *******, I don't need to carry this discussion with you. It must be sad to be so negative, and think that no one cares.

Here's some food for thought for you. Are you familiar with the game Return to Castle Wolfenstein? If are, chances are that I pwned you at one time or another. Anyway... The developers were working on the sequel, but were having major problems with the scripting for the single player game. They kept pushing the release date out... Eventually the whole project (the sequel) was scrapped. The developers, however, listened to the disappointment of the RTCW community and released what was completed in the form of a freeware multiplayer FPS known as RTCW: Enemy Territory. If the "managers" of this project were as you described, ET would have never seen the day of light.

Do me a favor, stay out of my thread.


cliener,
I know this has been done before, but I do believe the cards are different now that sony has left the PDA market. I posted this in the hopes that others might feel the same way and support the idea. Clearly, people feel defeated, or don't care. If that's the case, I can let this go... I hope PalmOne has some good hardware on the way... :)

:)
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[zwergnase]

sixseven
Do me a favor, stay out of my thread.
Do us all a favor. Next time you open up one of your threads, note at the very beginning how unwelcomed poeple are who just tell you the facts of life about certain things you so obviously know little or nothing about.

My post:
...Do you have any idea how many "non-disclosure" and "corporate secret" arrangements with 2nd and 3rd party suppliers Sony would have to untangle in order to just open up the vault on their inner coding?
CliePet's reply:
As I keep pointing out many times, the core operating system is PalmSource proprietary information. Sony is not at liberty to disclose that information to anyone.
[FWIW: in my case I do have NDAs with Sony, and they won't give me any of the *good* stuff that relates to the core OS -- because they don't own it]
I think we can all agree that you should just take CliePet's reply for the confirmation of the obvious that it is. And if anyone here is negative than it most certainly is you, who thinks that simply buying a product from a company entitles you to have a say about their marketing decisions at the highest strategic level. And thus in turn "entitles" you to corporate bashing if they don't agree.
Sony sold you a working product, that will keep working for many years to come.
I enjoyed my Handsrping Visor years after Handspring had already stopped making PDAs. Their stupid decision to isolate themselves in the cell phone market didn't chip away 1% of the usefullness of my Visor Prism.
So what's all of a sudden wrong with your CLIE, just because Sony decided not to sink any more $ into the none-Asian marketplace???

[SamuraiCatJB]

I was not intending my reply to be defeatist. However, I think you are discounting the arguments of monitary incentive base of companies. Companies ARE driven by the bottom line. If Sony dropped the PDA market, it was because they were either A) not making money or B) not making "enough" money. Bottom line moves companies to change. A release of API's requires lawyer perusal of patented and copyrighted material, I have yet to meet a "free" lawyer, especially at a corporate level. When SGI released their APIs and code to the Linux communities, they paid lawyers to review all the copyrights and patents for various operations and begin "freeing" that code from the corporate structures. That was effort. Nothing is every "free." If you want something for "free" you have to convince a company that it will benefit them another way. You can petition from now until forever, but it takes only one question from any manager who reviews the petitions....

Are there copyrights or patents on this API that will need lawyer review? yes.
End of discussion.

So I tried to help you, turn it back around, find an incentive to make that effort. If you don't want to address the monitary considerations of a company, that is fine, do what you want. I was only trying to help, as was zwergnase even if you refuse to see it.

Good luck, in however you decide to try this.

[CliePet]

> I believe I have read that palmos 5.2 allows capable devices to change resolution between 320x480 and 480x320. ...

Palms are capable of doing a lot of things if someone writes the code for it ;->
This is not a core Palm OS feature. If it were it would be in a lot more devices and in a consistent manner.

This is what I call the "Rotate" feature. It has been discussed to death on other threads (ie. "can I add switch my UX50 to portrait mode?", or "can I switch my TH55 to landscape mode?")

Please check out this thread for some of the technical issues (starting at page 10, especially posts by 'timnicholson' and me):
http://www.cliesource.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45791&perpage=15&pagenumber=10
Sort answer: yes it is technically possible to hook various traps and rotate the screen. However a heck of a lot of work, very little gain, and very unlikely to happen IMHO.

AFAIK: only two OS 5 devices have a "Rotate" feature, the Tungsten T3 (normally portrait - everything can be rotated, but at a speed penalty) and the TapWave Zodiac (normally landscape - only some things can be rotated to portrait). AFAIK, I believe PalmSource has done things to make these scenarios easier, but it isn't a standard feature even in the latest version 5.4 [ie. not in the Palm OS 5.4 (Garnet) Simulator]. The Palm licencees have done system specific work to make it happen.

----
This is not related to Sony's APIs, but certainly related to PalmSource APIs and what they've kept 'secret', for future money making opportunities as well.
That makes the world more diverse and opportunities for Palm licencees to create unique features and make $$$ because of the uniqueness (ie. the PalmOne folks did a lot of work to make their Rotate feature work everywhere, and some people will buy the T3 just for that -- similarly CLIE owners have a lot of cool multimedia features built in that PalmOne owners don't get)

[sixseven]

I was not intending my reply to be defeatist.

SamuraiCatBJ,

I realize that part of my last post was a little aggressive. I apologize if you thought it was directed to you. Your responses have been nothing but rational and courteous. I actually liked the fact that you get it is possible to quantify the value of seemingly intangible things...

As I said in my last post to cliener, I wanted to see if there would be community interest in this. Apparently there is not. Actually, I was perfectly content letting the post die until that punk zwergnase threw in his two cents. He lacks the courtesy that you, CliePet and cliener showed. There's always gotta be some jerk in a forum that has to build his transparent ego by telling others how stupid they are...

So anyway, thanks for your comments, and I hope there are no hard feelings…

:)

[zwergnase]

sixseven:
that punk zwergnase threw in his two cents. He lacks the courtesy that you, CliePet and cliener showed. There's always gotta be some jerk in a forum
Talking about punks and jerks sixseven, what would you call someone whose main "arguments" consist of name calling?
I have to admit that I'm getting pretty tired of restraining myself here all the same while you just throw one insult after the other around.
I suggest that if you can not stick to the issues, then maybe its you who is misplaced in this thread and in this forum.

[cliener]

sixseven, I have said all I have to say in a public forum on this subject. I have sent a PM to you explaining my viewpoint. All I can offer on this is my perspective of this. :) I didn't mean to give the impression that anyone, myself included, is "defeatist" in attitude or just doesn't care. :)

[cliener]

In the news section is an article (thread) posted by Joel on a new device released by Sony. The following posts really can explain a lot about why Sony isn't going to release APIs and where their interests are at least as far as the MP3 are concerned. :)

[zwergnase]

cliener:
I didn't mean to give the impression that anyone, myself included, is "defeatist" in attitude or just doesn't care.
Why so apologetic? Seems to me that sixseven is just a rude dude who doesn't like to be bothered by facts.
First he attacks Sony (for what?) and then he attacks everyone who dares to disagree with him, w/o ever bothering about the facts.
If he gave you a hard time, then you should just shrug it off, instead of trying to justify yourself. No need for that at all.
Bottom line, we all made a limited investment with our PDAs, got what we paid for and no where in the docu does it read: "API included in the purchase price".

Heck, even when you buy Microsoft Windoze, its up to Billy Gates what part of the API you'll get access to and what part you just won't (as an outsider).

[cliener]

cliener:

Why so apologetic? Seems to me that sixseven is just a rude dude who doesn't like to be bothered by facts.
First he attacks Sony (for what?) and then he attacks everyone who dares to disagree with him, w/o ever bothering about the facts.
If he gave you a hard time, then you should just shrug it off, instead of trying to justify yourself. No need for that at all.
Bottom line, we all made a limited investment with our PDAs, got what we paid for and no where in the docu does it read: "API included in the purchase price".

Heck, even when you buy Microsoft Windoze, its up to Billy Gates what part of the API you'll get access to and what part you just won't (as an outsider).

I am not being apologetic. I am trying to give my answer to his question. My intent was not to be viewed as defeatist. I thought that was clear but I am not always able to do that with typing a quick reply. He hasn't given me a "hard time" and I sent him a PM to further my first post to the thread. :)