I’ve encountered a glitch with Front Row: it’s not playing nice with iPhoto. I’m not sure what the problem is — probably something is gumming up the works as a result of how I brought the old data over — but I’m assuming it’s solvable. More when I find out how to fix it.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotten the Palm syncing with the new iMac — works fine under Rosetta — and I’ve even got Documents to Go working again. My Tungsten T2 came with version 5, while Jennifer’s TX has version 7 — so when I synced up her Palm with my old iMac over Christmas, it overwrote version 7 over version 5 and promptly hosed it on my Palm. Now that we’re on separate machines (she’s using the old iMac), that conflict is no longer a problem. Unfortunately, no sooner had I got that working than I realized that audio was totally hosed on my Palm: I get a faint, high-pitched whine whenever it’s on (not enough to be annoying), but no other sound. (You can tell I don’t use my PDA much any more; it’s been like this for a while but I didn’t really pay much attention to it.)

The car’s headlights are only working intermittently at the moment: they outright failed over the weekend — no daytime running lights, no headlights, no brights — but appear to be working now. Garage suspects the daytime running lights module, maintenance on which requires a Mazda dealership. Sigh — the car is determined to have money spent on it. You can ignore compressors, but you just can’t ignore headlights.

After pulling out of the North American PDA market last year to focus on Japan, Sony has announced that it’s ending production of its Clie line of Palm OS handhelds. Between this and the handhelds coming out of PalmOne, which are increasingly cheap-looking (and cheap-feeling — have you ever held a Tungsten T5 or Zire 72?), it’s safe to say that the high end of Palm OS based PDAs is about to disappear. Looks like I’ll be hanging on to my T2 until it falls apart.

PalmOne announced the Tungsten T5 this morning (coverage: Brighthand, Gizmodo, Palm Infocenter). In some ways this is more an E2 than a T5, in that it uses the Tungsten E’s form factor, abandoning the slider from the T/T2/T3. It’s still running OS 5, not Cobalt, and it still has built-in Bluetooth (it’s compatible with PalmOne’s new SDIO WiFi card) and the 320×480 screen. A part of its 256 MB of memory is flash memory that can store any files (not just Palm documents and applications) and that can be mounted as a USB storage device, which is kind of neat. On the other hand, it eliminates the voice recorder and uses a new connector format, which is kind of irritating. My snap judgment: I still like my T2, and would probably buy a Zire 72 if I was shopping for a gadget today. This one’s kind of meh.

Got an unusual e-mail the other day from a Cooper Marcus at PalmOne — the hardware successor to Palm — notifying me (redundantly) of recent corporate changes (Palm to PalmOne, which has also acquired Handspring) and would I mind updating my links to the Palm, Palm Store and Handspring sites to the new URLs? He cited a link from this site, dated May 2002.

You know, this is something that could be done a lot more efficiently at their end by simply forwarding to the new URLs: a lot less labour intensive than e-mailing everyone who ever linked to them. There’s also this feeling I have that links in old blog entries should be allowed to expire, or at least be accurate for the time: after three years and something like 1,600 entries, I don’t think I like the precedent of having to maintain and update links for all time. So phooey.

Clearly an exercise in supporting the new corporate branding — he also asked that the new name (“PalmOne”) be used, to which I say “fine”. But by asking everyone to update their links instead of forwarding them themselves, they might also be trying a bit of search engine optimization, by boosting the new pages’ ranking past the old pages. Years of the old Palm and Handspring names, with thousands of instances of relevant keywords linking to the old URLs, may well represent a very significant obstacle to overcome.

If they’re trying to kill “Palm” as an identifier, they’ll have their work cut out for them. Most of the people I talk to don’t understand “PDA” or “handheld”; they understand “Palm” or even — quelle horreur — “Palm Pilot.” And didn’t I see a trailer for Little Black Book, which features a Tungsten C, in which the characters refer to the gadget as a “Palm”?

HBlogger, currently in beta, is a Palm OS application that allows you to post to your blog (Blogger, LiveJournal and Movable Type) from an Internet-connected Palm OS handheld (via Palm Infocenter). This plus Bluetooth connection sharing — or an affordable and strong GPRS signal — and I’m set.

The Missing Sync 4, available next month, is a full replacement for the increasingly creaky HotSync Manager for Mac OS X. Previous iterations of the Missing Sync have enabled Mac compatibility with a whole whack of handhelds, Palm OS or otherwise. This version integrates all the previous hacks for Palm OS handhelds (Sony Clié, Tapwave Zodiac, Garmin iQue) and adds features not available in HotSync. Me, I’m looking at the iPhoto plugins and the Internet sharing via Bluetooth.

This software is what will enable Palm Cobalt compatibility with the Mac; PalmSource had earlier indicated that they would not ship a Mac version of HotSync for Cobalt, but that third-party solutions would be available (see previous entry). Here’s that third-party solution, even though no Cobalt devices have shipped yet.

In the meantime, this’ll be compatible with Palm OS 4 and OS 5 devices. This means that Jen’s m500 and my Tungsten T2 will work with this, though OS 3.x devices won’t — too bad for imminent switchers Florence (Palm m105) and David (Palm Vx), who will have to use HotSync (which is at least free).

Also this morning, there are two new Zire-branded handhelds from PalmOne:

• The Zire 31, a low-end handheld with 16 MB of RAM and a low-resolution (160×160) colour screen. US$149/C$229. Brighthand review.
• The Zire 72, which replaces last year’s Zire 71. It bumps up the camera resolution to 1.3 megapixels and adds video support (not Mac supported). It also bumps up the memory to 32 MB and adds Bluetooth (yay!) and a voice recorder. It ditches the 71’s sliding mechanism that revealed the camera. But it also ditches the Universal Connector: a bummer for anyone who already has accessories. So that rules it out for us; otherwise, this would have been a perfect handheld. (Not that I’m seriously considering replacing my Tungsten T2, but had this handheld existed when I was shopping, I would have given it serious consideration, and the lack of a Universal Connector would have been a serious drawback.) US$299/C$449. Brighthand review, PalmInfocenter review.

Somewhat off-topic. The Palm OS version number on these handhelds is 5.2.8. Upgrades are the purview of the hardware manufacturers, not PalmSource (the OS company), and I’m not sure what PalmOne wants its installed base to do. They haven’t released any OS upgrades since 4.1 — you’re stuck on 5.0 if you have an original Tungsten T, for example — so they may implicitly want you to buy a new handheld to get the latest OS features. (The upgrades to the calendar and address book apps are ideal for their OS X equivalents, Address Book and iCal, what with the multiple calendar categories, address book photos, and birthdays, so of course I want to lay hands on them.)

But so many of the new handhelds lack the Universal Connector: all the Zires (except the just-discontinued Zire 71) and the Tungsten E. Anyone with a Universal Connector equipped handheld — say, the m500 series — who wants, say, a Zire 72 will have to ditch any accessories (the landline modem, the original keyboard) bought for the original gadget. Generally speaking the handhelds lacking the connector are entry-level devices: no one is going to “upgrade” from an m515 to a Zire 21. But it’s possible that someone might replace a broken m515 with a Tungsten E, and the camera-equipped Zires have definite upgrade appeal, if I’m any indication (see above). So I’m surprised that they left it out.

This may not apply to enough people for PalmOne to worry about it, but I do wonder about the upgrade path for existing users, whether it’s software or hardware. Palm originally offered regular OS upgrades at the very least. “Buy everything new again” is not something that would please a customer; it might even cost sales.

It’s a new manufacturer so it’s wise to be skeptical — I’ve never heard of these guys before — but a Palm-compatible SDIO WiFi card is reportedly in development. Which of course gets everyone’s hopes up, since SanDisk has repeatedly pushed back the release of its own wireless card, at least for the Palm (see previous entries: SD WiFi card delays, Delayed again).

The Treo 600, which has inspired unhealthy levels of technolust south of the border, is now available in Canada from Rogers — but, at $600 and up depending on the plan, not cheaply.

PalmSource’s decision to drop Mac compatibility from Cobalt (formerly known as Palm OS 6) is, on the surface, maddening. But this cloud may have a cobalt-thorium G silver lining.

Cobalt will have a different PIM architecture that renders it incompatible with the current Palm Desktop. The current Palm Desktop for Mac, however, sucks — and sucks hard, and the HotSync Manager is only barely on speaking terms with iSync. Mark/Space has already announced that it will release a version of Missing Sync for Palm Cobalt devices — they’ve made or announced similar software to get Sony Cliés, Pocket PCs and Danger Hiptops to sync up with a Mac. They might, in other words, come up with a solution better than anything PalmSource could come up with.

It also raises the question: assuming that the PIM architecture is readily accessible to third parties (as HotSyncing is not), why might not Apple itself engineer Cobalt compatibility directly into iSync? At least one commenter in the Palm Infocenter story’s comments raised that possibility, drawing an analogy with Microsoft ending IE development as Apple released Safari.

The problem this time is that the alternatives aren’t in place in time to reassure nervous consumers. There are almost certainly a lot of pissed off Mac/Palm users out there today.

Obligatory mention of the two new Cliés announced today by Sony Japan: the TH55 has a full 320×480 screen and built-in Wi-Fi; the TJ37 has a 320×320 screen and the usual god-awful Sony buttons; both have a built-in digital camera. Read more at the usual sources: Brighthand, Palm Infocenter.

Oh well, it doesn’t all look bad on the Palm front — rumour has it that there may be an OS 6 upgrade for OS 5 devices. This is the closest we’ve ever gotten to confirming that OS 5 handhelds are upgradeable; mum was the word when they were first announced. This was vexing to some users who knew perfectly well that OS 5 was an interim port to the ARM platform while they worked on OS 6.

Well, surprise, surprise — the SanDisk WiFi card’s Palm OS drivers have been delayed yet again. See previous entry. Now SanDisk is warning that not every OS 5 handheld will have enough power to run the card. Why on earth did they announce the silly thing in the first place, then? I’m sure that it will turn out that the only Palm capable of running the card will be the Tungsten C — the one with WiFi built-in.

I’m not pleased with the state of peripherals on the Palm OS 5 platform. Despite the fact that the two dominant manufacturers use different memory card formats (palmOne: Secure Digital; Sony: Memory Stick) and different internals, is it not possible to have some equivalent of Pocket PC’s SDIO Now! for the Palm?

When I read that the palmOne SDIO digital camera was going to be delayed and rebranded, on the heels of hearing that SanDisk’s WiFi card has been delayed, I began to wonder whether there was something inherent to the Palm OS that made it difficult to produce accessories. You’d think that, with more Palm OS units than Pocket PC units out there with Secure Digital slots, there would be more SDIO accessories for Palm than for Pocket PC, but that’s not the case. Instead, we see the Palm Bluetooth Card still incompatible with OS 5 handhelds a year after they come out, and a WiFi card come out for Pocket PC months before the Palm. Here’s an article that sheds some light on the difficulties, particularly in the context of the SanDisk WiFi card (via Gizmodo).

Update: Brighthand coverage.

Mobitopia has a couple of interesting recent articles. One is a rather gushing review of Sony’s top-end Clié, the UX-50, which includes a built-in camera (640×480), Bluetooth and WiFi, but not a cradle or a portrait-mode option for the screen. And it’s pricey. The other article is a complaint about the Nokia 3650’s built-in camera. Apparently its advantage is ubiquity, not speed: you may have the camera with you, but you might not be able to take the damn picture fast enough.

Next spring? Oh, for crying out loud — how can SanDisk be almost a year behind schedule on their 802.11b SD card for Palm OS 5? This is something I’d buy just about instantly — in theory, the Bluetooth on my Tungsten T2 is more useful on the road, especially since there aren’t many WiFi hotspots in rural western Quebec, but it’d be nice to surf the web on my Palm at home. (Otherwise, I’d have to figure out how to enable Internet connection sharing via Bluetooth on Panther — the original hack under Jaguar appears to have been disabled as of OS X 10.2.6.) Serious grumblage.

Brighthand has a review of the Palm Power to Go, an external battery pack for Universal Connector-equipped Palm handhelds. At US$100/C$150, this clearly isn’t for everyone — not when car chargers and AC adapters are so much cheaper. Palm-branded accessories are usually pricey in any event.

But it sounds like a good idea in certain, limited circumstances. I can think of two: where you are using it heavily for prolonged periods, and it’s inconvenient to recharge it by other means (i.e., you’re using it with the battery pack clipped on), or you’re in a location where charging by other means is simply impossible — say, out in the field somewhere. Ed’s review has some other scenarios.