TealOS killed by Palm

Posted on April 21, 2009 in Palm. - No comments

As we all know, Palm have abandoned the PDA market that they pretty much created. On their UK site you can still find the final ageing devices still available (Z22, T|X and Tungsten E2) although it’s not so easy to find any mention of them on the US site.

Unfortunately Palm has stated that it’s the end of the line for Palm OS devices. If you’re a die-hard Palm user then you’re effectively being left with the Palm Pre. If you’ve recently taken a look to see how easy it is to get yourself a Palm PDA these days then you’ll be under no illusion that these devices are becoming an endangered species.

Not everyone needs or wants a smartphone, but it seems as if Palm aren’t listening. It seems that no matter how much feedback from the user community there is, there just isn’t any way that Palm are going to try and satisfy their legacy users. Still I guess if you’re running a company that was looking as shaky as Palm were then you’d want to target the largest market.

So what are these die-hard TX’ers going to do? I know that there are a number of dedicated Palm TX users who have started to stockpile Palm TX devices in order that they can keep their favourite apps running for the next few years.

Let’s face it, the feeling that you were using a cutting edge system when using a Palm device faded a long time ago. The main weakness is the lack of development of the operating system. You just need to compare Garnet with the iPhone and it’s blatantly obvious which one has the prettiest web 2.0 style interface. Regardless of how you think the Palm OS performs it’s looking decidedly stale.

So how did we end up here?

Well it all goes back to the mishandling of their operating system strategy. It says a lot that there haven’t been any significant changes to Palm OS since 2004.

Palm obviously wanted to make money from their OS by licensing it to other portable device vendors, so they set up Palm Source at the end of 2003 to do just that. Unfortunately things didn’t work out as they hoped. It seems that only the over confident Palm thought that this was a good idea. Although the new PalmSource shipped Cobalt 6 to licensees in January 2004, none of them adopted it for release devices. Despite making changes to please licensees with the release of 6.1 in September 2004, they still couldn’t be persuaded to install it on production devices!

PalmSource then decided they needed a new strategy as they weren’t getting anywhere with Cobalt, so they started to develop a brand new OS based on the latest flavour of the month, Linux.

PalmSource acquired by ACCESS in September 2005 and Palm essentially lost control of the one thing that made their devices great.

So where are we now?

Palm however seem to have woken up to the fact if they want to be seen as an innovative company, they need to have their own operating system. They’ve shunned the offerings from ACCESS and instead developed their own Linux based system called WebOS. The Pre is the first device run this system.

And what about all of us TX users?

Well I guess we’ve just got to come to terms with the fact that we’re using what is essentially a “dead platform” – but that’s OK, there are still Commodore 64 users out there! Besides, there was a glimmer of hope. Things could be nice and shiny again Teal OS certainly looked as if it could deliver a dose of freshness to the ageing platform.

According to the TealPoint website, Teal OS was going to be more than just a make-over and instead offer a “multi-functional application launcher that gives you time-honoured handheld the exciting look and feel of the newest devices.” It certainly looked as if it would deliver too, simulating the card-based interfaces of the WebOS on the Palm Pre.

However, this was not to be – the following notice appeared on the TealOS webpage:

“IMPORTANT! – A Palm’s request, we have stopped selling TealOS on Monday March 30 at 5:00 PDT. Copies purchased prior to this, however, will continue to function.”

It seems that the TealOS looked just a little bit too similar to Palm’s offering to make the lawyers comfortable. It reminded me of the early days of the iPhone and Apple’s legal people contacting all those enthusiasts developing imitating the style of the iPhone’s interface.

Teal Wheel

So that’s it then isn’t it? Well not necessarily. It seems that some of the code behind the TealOS is resurfacing in another product – a pop-up application launcher called Teal Wheel. It’s not exactly what we were hoping for, but I guess the fact that someone is still developing for the PalmOS platform can only seen as a good thing and should surely be supported.

Remember to look after your TX…

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