Palm OS Programming, 2nd Edition

Effortlessly Connects to a Desktop Computer

Another one of the key features of a handheld is that it does not function independently. People want to use it in conjunction with their desktop computers. They also want it to work perfectly and easily.

Indeed, one of the necessary features that makes the handheld so useful—its small size—means that it simply can’t do some tasks or have some hardware features. As a result it is absolutely dependent on a desktop computer to provide what it lacks.

What Palm OS Devices Don’t Have and Why

Almost more important than what Palm OS devices have is what they lack. Palm OS devices do not have keyboards, full text recognition, or powerful processors.

Now, reflect for a moment on why this is so. Adding any of these features requires changing the magic combination of speed, size, and price that has made the Palm devices so popular.

Tip

Palm has announced that the next version of the OS (we’ll call it 5.0, even though it may not actually ship as that number) will work on ARM processors, rather than the current 68K processors. This will provide more processing power. ARM processors, although somewhat more expensive than the current 68K processors, are very battery-efficient.

A Keyboard

Designing a device with a keyboard is a double problem: it radically affects the size and it changes the types of things a user will attempt to do. If there is a keyboard, a user will expect to be able to enter text easily. But in order to handle extensive data input, ...