My Thoughts On “FrankenGarnet”

Posted on December 29th, 2005

As a long time Palm user I’ve come to know the Palm OS intimately. It has been my workhorse platform since the Palm III, and I still gladly remain a Palm user in preference to its elegant design and usability. And yet, like most enthusiasts, I have bore witness to a general slide in the once legendary and now mythical stability and reliability the Palm experience was known for. To be fair, crashes are not uncommon to any mobile platform. Even my old Symbian-powered Nokia cell phone would lock up on the odd occasion for no apparent reason other than to frustrate me. PDAs and Smartphones are complex devices running complex code, compared to dumb devices like feature phones. But Palm OS, for all its shortcomings, has had until recent years, a near untarnished reputation for being bulletproof and insanely reliable. That is no longer the case.

Since PalmSource introduced Palm OS version 5 (codenamed Garnet), the landscape changed dramatically. And each iteration of Garnet from 5.0 to 5.4 seems to have gotten increasingly buggier and decreasingly stable. Such is the case with devices from Palm Inc at least. I have churned through many various devices running Garnet since its arrival, which range from such hits as the Tungsten T, and duds like Tapwave’s Zodiac. They all looked and performed differently, but they all shared the same heart as soul; Garnet. And all of them crashed. Some devices crash more so than others, like my Treo 650 for example, which not only crashes…it does so spontaneously without any intervention by me. I’ve noted that Garnet’s earlier forms, especially version 5.2 seem much more stable than the most recent builds of the OS. That is based in no small part to the fact that these later builds feature modifications made to the OS by not only PalmSource, but also Palm Inc. The question is…whom is to blame for Garnet’s instability?

The real answer is PalmSource. Regardless what impact Palm’s modifications to the OS have had on platform stability, they were made in the interest of end users, and were ultimately unavoidable choices. PalmSource has wasted nearly two years on a failed next generation platform project that consumed most of its resources, leaving Garnet neglected and entirely in the hands of licensees. This made it imperative to Palm to incorporate its own modifications and feature innovations into Garnet in order to keep its own products, as well as Palm OS, competitive and viable in the market. For the most part they succeeded well, though Garnet is now comically referred to as “FrankenGarnet” because its nuts and bolts are showing through the surface. Devices based on Garnet (from Palm) still perform a yeoman job against hardware based on competing software from Microsoft and Symbian. The Treo 650 still remains one of the best, and most popular, Smartphone offerings on the market. But competition from Windows Mobile continues to erode Palm OS share of the mobile market. And time is of the essence for Garnet’s successor.

This leaves Palm in the unenviable position of limping along with an antiquated OS for the foreseeable future. A position that forces Palm to move further away from its reliance on Palm OS as a single solution. This coming year will see the introduction of even more devices powered by Windows Mobile from Palm, beyond the Treo 700w. The question is, what will 2006 have in store for the Palm OS side of the market? Cobalt? Not likely. There are fundamental reasons why Palm and other licensees chose to avoid this platform, and desperation alone may not be enough to compel the company to reevaluate its choice. I see yet another modified version of Garnet in the works, perhaps running on low-cost hardware, while Windows Mobile becomes Palm’s OS of choice for high-end hardware.

I remain hopeful in the future of the platform, but the current situation couldn’t look any worse. Most of PalmSource’s licensees are gone now. And even if PalmSource should surprise all of us next Spring with an early release of Palm Linux, it will still be another 12-18 months before we actually see hardware running it. That puts “The Great Salvation” well into 2007.

Let’s hope the immediate future is brighter in 2006. Cheers!