Walkthrough of the Access ALP user interface. Somehow I feel let down.

With such long back-and-forth history of the Palm OS between Palm and Access, I really figured the new Access Linux Platform (ALP) would knock my socks off. Instead, as I look through the screenshots offered up by Brighthand, I'm scratching my head looking for the UI innovation. I know I'm basing an opinion on a few pics, but frankly, that's all we have to go on.

Perhaps my expectations are too high as well; time will tell. But what I'm seeing is almost a cleaner version of Windows Mobile that happens to be Linux. Ed Hardy does point out some good news; namely that ALP will run legacy Palm OS apps through something called Ghost. After that, however, the environment only looks good when compared to the current Palm OS. I know it's way to early to make a judgement, but somehow I expected to see more innovation. Thoughts?

Comments

[Mike Cane]

Well, it's OLD, for god's sake! It's Cobalt spiffed up a bit. But that's all.

[ignar]

Does this OS even matter? I doubt there is a market for ALP especially now that Android is announced.
When competition includes names like WM, Symbian, Blackberry, OS X, Garnet, and new Palm OS (assuming Palm can actually develop it this time) in addition to Android, I don't think ALP can attract much attention. Honestly, I am surprised Access still develops it.

[Ayrkain]

It'll get plenty of play in Asia when released, so there's little worry for how it does here at all.

[Mike Cane]

It will wind up being a cheap smartphone in Asia. But once brand consciousness hits, they'll upgrade from it to iPhones or whatever.

[Rui Castro aka Danceman]

For me ALP brings two new things, a new Java Virtual machine that most be more stable coming from Linux and a new SDK with multitasking.

With this we will have new stable java apps and a news framework for coders to make multitasking apps. And don't forget keep using your old Palm apps because ALP supports them.

Why is everyone looking at the GUI, with this new SDK developers can change and make a better GUI. What palm needs is the new engine, developers can make the chassis.

[Nikooo]

the iPhone was developed within at least 5 years... So I guess we'll see a mature Palm OS in 4-5 years, not before. This looks only like a nice looking copycat.

[Chris K]

What bugs me, really, is that PalmOS does a lot of things really well under the hood, but really REALLY poorly on the surface.

Graffiti? Wonderfully quick for stylus input.
PIM apps? Sufficiently flexible (and portable) for my needs, though it would be nice to have multiple categories for a single entry. I would love some tag support.
Responsiveness? Excellent. Apps pop up right away, and that means that I can actually use them.
Memory efficiency? It's hard to go wrong with Execute-in-place systems, which is one of the many things that Palm did right to begin with.

Now, for the things that are wrong:
Multitasking. Palm has needed this for years. Alerts and triggers and minor background processes aren't enough for everyone.
Fit and finish. This is partially a third-party issue, but many Palm apps SUCK. PocketTunes isn't good enough to replace my iPod (or really any decent standalone DAP,) since it's a pain in the ass to use. Blazer is complete garbage. VersaMail loses sync with Exchange, causing you to start from scratch.
Drivers. I don't give a good goddamn what Verizon or Sprint or whoever might have to say, if I have an SDIO Wifi card, especially a Palm-branded one, the damned thing had better work in any Palm device, not just a handful of them! This goes back to the Exchange problem. I would run a local HotSync maybe once or twice a year. Everything else was an OTA Network HotSync to my own server, or the basic Exchange sync. Glitches like this would have been much easier to get around with a nice, stable 802.11b connection in the same LAN, but nooooo, god forbid a smartphone user needs access to resources on his LAN!
Useless JVM. Even the IBM JVM, as well designed as it must have been, feels like a square peg in a round hole on the Palm platform. It's mostly an issue of button mapping and carrying certain Palm conventions into the JVM itself, but it was fairly irritating, and the fact that certain J2ME apps just didn't work at all made it difficult to expand the library of available Palm apps as much as I would have liked.

Everything else falls to hardware gripes, and that just makes me wish that Sony would make a Clie-phone, though that's just not going to happen. Then again, Sony apparently can't design a thumb keyboard to save their lives, so it's probably a good thing. :P