Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Palm, pot, kettle, black
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2002 18:17:50 -0400
------ 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 ------ End of Forwarded Message For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- IP: Palm, pot, kettle, black Dave Farber (Apr 08)