Another blow to Macdom. This time from Palmsource which announced at its conference today that the new Palm OS dubbed Cobolt won’t synch to a Mac without third-party software.
A third-party vendor, Mark/Space Inc., has already stepped up, but plan on adding another $40 to the cost of the device for OSX synching.
It’s bad news but not devastating. I own a PocketPC. For work. Don’t laugh.
I was already reeling from the news that Pixar (for those who don’t know, Pixar’s run by Steve Jobs who runs Apple) and Disney are divorcing. Disney rebounded pretty quickly and climbed into bed with Microsoft with a deal to bring Disney titles to the world via download through something roughly approximating iTunes for movies. At least this deal can’t produce iMovie.
Now Disney is being eyed for digestion by Comcast. (Anyone see or “Six Degrees of Separation?”)
But back to Palm.
In a press release, the company had this little line in it’s forward-looking statement:
The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, the ability of Palm OS Cobalt to enable the creation of new categories of devices tailored to meet the needs of advanced enterprise and entertainment markets, to maintain software compatibility and improve compatibility with Microsoft Windows and provide a stable, scalable platform with a wide range of adequately functioning security options…
I like that last line. Security and Windows are mutually exclusive. Oh, and I wish them luck with the software compatibility feature. The one time I tried to marry Windows (lite) Home with Palm, I nearly shot the computer. It’s still not working and now my neighbor, who I was trying to help, thinks I’m a loser.
Thanks Microsoft. Thanks Palm.