gusanitoverde

Brief Background: I have been a palm user for about 4 years, had an m100, m505, m515, and Tungsten T, (All of these units, I had to exchange several times, I would say too many times! because of defects from factory. In my opinion, Palm was getting more production but bad in their quality control. Looking for innovation and something better, I switched to Sony Clie handhelds, and there at that time, also tired of the problems I had with my crashing brand new Windows PC, I moved to the Macintosh OSX Platform. (I love Mac ever since) With Sony, I bought consecutively the NX70V, NX73V, NX80V and finally an NZ90 unit. Recently another turn happened: Sony drops the US market, it was time to sell my NZ90. I did it recently, so I am just on time to buy a Tungsten T5, which is suspected to have OS6 (Cobalt).

Just about to be excited to buy a good PDA, I read the Brigthhand review of Cobalt (Palm OS6) and found the following:

1. palmOne (formery Palm Inc.) developed their software more efficient (expected of course)
2. It will allow devices like the Tungsten T5 to be used as a removable drive to drag and drop files to and from the palm
3. Such changes in the OS will interact differently with the palm Desktop and Hotsync Technology, therefore a new Palm Desktop is coming out...
but, only for PC's...
4. the bad news is that palmOne made this changes only commited to the Windows platform, leaving Mac users behind. Then, palmOne offically states that they will not support the Mac platform.

So how could I buy a Palm that will not sync with Mac OSX and there will be absolutely no new palm Desktop for Mac?

I kept on reading the article in Brighthand on this review and talking about the Mac platform I found the following commentS:

"Desktop Synchronization

I've already mentioned that PalmSource has revamped personal information management (PIM) apps. This includes revamping the way Cobalt stores the user data and adding much better support for Outlook. One nifty feature I read about but didn't see demonstrated was the new HotSync Exchange. This means you can drop a PC file onto the Install Tool and it will be automatically transferred to an application that can make use of it on the handheld during the next synchronization. The documentation says this can be done with images, which doesn't surprise me, but it also mentions Word and Excel files. I'm not sure how this is going to work, as the standard version of Cobalt doesn't include a word processor or a spreadsheet application.
Mac Synchronization: No surprise, PalmSource's decision to no longer develop a Macintosh version of its desktop client is proving controversial. I found it somewhat surprising, as I know David Nagel, the company's CEO, is a Mac user.
Still, this might not be as big a deal as some think. I spoke with a palmOne VP who gave me the impression that palmOne will be at least talking to Mark/Space about bundling The Missing Sync for Mac OS X synchronization with its Cobalt powered handhelds. And Sony Clie users have already had to use The Missing Sync for years."

After reading this article, I wrote to MarkSpace, creator of Missing Sync (I am glad that they are around) and asked if they are planning to support OS6 devices. And they were very nice at answering soon the following:

"We do plan to support OS 6 devices. Since none are currently shipping,
it is hard to provide more specifics at this time. Just check back with
our web site again after the first devices ship. Note that at this
time, palmOne has not made any announcement about the T5, so it may run OS
5, or it may run OS 6. Nobody will know for sure until palmOne says (or
it ships!)"

Thank God for this guys, however, I hope that palmOne gets their act together and provide the Mac users with an exit to this sad problem.

What do you think?

Brighthand's full review on OS6 could be found here:
http://brighthand.com/article/First...obalt?site=Palm

Thanks!

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knghtbrd

Actually, PalmSource declared no more Mac support, not PalmOne. The last I heard, PalmOne was trying to negotiate a deal with MarkSpace (http://www.markspace.com/) for their Missing Sync for Palm product.

Missing Sync supports PalmOS 4 and above, and should work fine with Cobalt. Of course, Missing Sync isn't Palm Desktop--it integrates with the MacOS X PIM software. It's also got a number of bugs they're working out, but they're trying to be 100% compatible with old Palm Desktop conduits so that things like the Documents2Go conduit still work. As a developer myself, I'd say this was asking for a headache (which they've now got!), but I can understand why they felt it was important to do anyway.

The current release version of pilot-link is missing a few minor, unnecessary things on a Mac like ... um, USB support. The development version has them, but it's not quite ready for release just yet. Even so, it's just a library and a bunch of command line tools on its own. You'd need to combine it with some X11 software from fink or elsewhere for GUI stuff. At least, that's how things stand right at the moment (working on it!)

Incidentally, Missing Sync for Palm uses the pilot-link pisock library. Lots of companies use it, but MarkSpace deserves some mention here because they're the fist company to do so without blatant disregard for its license terms (the GNU LGPL). They don't use our development version, but Missing Sync can only improve as we improve the thing they use to talk to the Palm.

TeeTimeTB

With the new version of OS X around the corner, you are going to see that the Mac OS will support the Palm (w/o having to rely on Palm for their support). Read some of the reviews from the developers. It will be a major step forward in integration with all phones, PDA's, iPods.....! I have been a Mac user since they came out an Apple II user before that. Buy the Palm...you won't be sorry.

I'm on the fence right now on what I'm going to buy: New T5 if/when it comes out or a reduced New T3 with a lot of extras.

Time will tell...10-14 days away is my guess.

knghtbrd

I've had a look at Tiger and so far it isn't going to all "just work without Palm", unfortunately. It would be really really nice, but at some level you are going to need a driver to handle connecting your PDA into iSync. THEN it will just work. For the first time, though, Apple is going to give people the tools they need to actually do this.

There is still a place for MarkSpace and for pilot-link. They will exist to provide that connection into iSync.

gusanitoverde

May be the solution for us? palm is decided to provide "conduit tools for MAC OS X"
http://www.palmsource.com/eurodevcon/hardware.html

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Joel

I'm happy with the TH55E and The Missing Sync 4.0.1. If the T5 is also OS5, it should sync fine too.

knghtbrd

That's not Palm. That's MarkSpace Missing Sync for PalmOS. I don't know about the 4.0.1 patch, but 4.0 is notoriously a bit buggy. Hopefully 4.0.1 fixes other bugs than advertised or another patch is forthcoming.

darmok

Howdy knghtbrd (chandler of #opendarwin here)

4.0.1 has indeed fixed a number of problems - their memo pad application is now usable, and desktop mounting works on my TH55. I am still noticing a few minor bugs (notably that I can only do one network hotsync per login session), but otherwise it's working quite well.

knghtbrd

Good to hear chandler, although my understanding is that the most anti-Mac aspects of the software still remain (must install as real root, etc) You and I as unix geeks can deal with it--the average Mac user will find it a major turnoff.

darmok

What do you mean by "real root"? The installer does require authentication, but I assumed it just needed the permissions to install the desktop mounting kernel modules and other things. Other than that I haven't needed to do a single unix-geek thing to configure Missing Sync. I did have to disable the photo conduit, which was causing hotsyncus interruptus, but once that was unchecked, everything has been working smoothly for the most part.

knghtbrd

Several people found they had to run the installer as root (ie, with sudo) or it would fail to install. I wonder if that's broken permissions though. I don't know, I wasn't asked to test it. Since I'm now helping to develop pilot-link, that's what I use.

Once pxd is actually written, tested, and released, I hope that MarkSpace and others will use it. There are a lot of advantages to the model I'm working on, but I'll spare everyone until it's a little more than vapourware.

darmok

I believe I did have some permissions problems revolving around how the iSync conduit installer left the /Library/Application Support/Hotsync/Conduits directory, but I was able to fix that via the Finder I believe. I think the people using sudo just went overboard and could have gotten away by fixing the permissions on this folder. (IIRC this issue is mentioned somewhere in the MarkSpace documentation too.

knghtbrd

Then perhaps I need to spend my money on the thing so that I can provide support for people who eg, just complain it won't work on irc and the like rather than reading the manual.

I've also got half a mind to try and upgrade the pilot-link it uses via a 0.11.8-markspace compatibility shim. Once 0.12 is released, I hope to have the free time to offer whatever support I can to them for upgrading from 0.11.8 to 0.12 since that might fix a few annoying buglets in and of itself.

Antoine

Chances are that the T5 will support the MacOS just fine. You may be missing the support of some conduits (blame the companies that make them for that one). But if the rumors are true that the T5 is mountable, then it just may be more compatable with the MacOS than previous palms right out the box.

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