I was thinking that it would be cool to run palm's .pdb files on the Iphone.
or a viewer program that could open .pdb files.

Also, if there was a way to run Palm Software, wouldn't we open the doors to a ton of native software already on the market?

I was wondering if someone who has designed native 3rd party apps to comment on the difficulty of this.

Thank you!

I found out that books.app runs 2 forms of .pdb files but I haven't experiemented with them yet. Has anyone else?

bump bump bump

Originally Posted by med007

I was wondering if someone who has designed native 3rd party apps to comment on the difficulty of this.

I've done 3rd party iPhone apps, and I'm also a Palm developer in my day job. Overall it's pretty involved, but there's additional pros and cons.

Any emulator/simulator (you're doing both here, emulating the 68k processor, and simulating the Palm OS) is pretty involved. An open source machine emulator for the 68k could probably be dug up pretty easy. Simulating the OS is the catch. Now, for OS 4, PalmSource did partially release the source - so that makes it much easier. However, Palm OS 5 source hasn't been release, and it's actually ARM-based emulating a 68k environment on top via PACE (Palm Application Compatiblity Environment). PalmSource only officially supported Palm OS 5 apps through PACE - ARM apis weren't supported to the general public. I have a few NDAs with both Palm and PalmSource, and working down in that ARM-native land got scary. My guess is alot of Palm OS 5 apps have PNOs (PACE Native Objects) or other ARM components, and whether they use PACE (call back into 68k) or not depends on the app. It could be a real pain doing a Palm OS 5 simulator. It would take a team to develop and maintain it.

Personally though, f**k Palm. They had the lead for years, and were very innovative. But since 2002, they sat on their ass and rehashed the same old os with the same old hardware and expected us to buy it. The differences between the Treo 680 and 650 is negligable. Stability is shit (what do you expect from a device that throws a Fatal Error (Palm OS Blue screen) when you pass it wrong parameters in an API call?). the T3 still has more memory than any standalone PDA. And where's my damn WiFi? I can't believe people buy Treos at all. Oh, but thanks for wasting those Treo owner's money on debunk stupid projects like the hot potato Life Drive and the Foleo. Sheesh.

Originally Posted by med007

I found out that books.app runs 2 forms of .pdb files but I haven't experiemented with them yet. Has anyone else?

Works.

The size of the book and formatting potentially are an issue. Specifically instead of pulling in a chapter for say a html, a PDB is normally the complete book. The books app can get slow starting up for a large file, such as a complete book.

In addition some PDB's are formatted better than others. For example I found a book where each sentence was separated by a blank line.

Originally Posted by Phylar

Personally though, f**k Palm. They had the lead for years, and were very innovative. But since 2002, they sat on their ass and rehashed the same old os with the same old hardware and expected us to buy it. The differences between the Treo 680 and 650 is negligable. Stability is shit (what do you expect from a device that throws a Fatal Error (Palm OS Blue screen) when you pass it wrong parameters in an API call?). the T3 still has more memory than any standalone PDA. And where's my damn WiFi? I can't believe people buy Treos at all. Oh, but thanks for wasting those Treo owner's money on debunk stupid projects like the hot potato Life Drive and the Foleo. Sheesh.

vent vent..

thanks for the info.

In the medical field so many applications use Palm - I may have to buy a t / x until they make apps for the iphone (if apple things February means widgets only).

the palm app I want to use right now on my iphone requires Palm OS 3.0 or higher.

Originally Posted by med007

the palm app I want to use right now on my iphone requires Palm OS 3.0 or higher.

Focusing on a OS 4.0 emulator would be more feasible, I believe. One other plus I forgot to mention is the T|X and other Palms are the exact same screen size, which is very convenient - no scaling or monkeying with resolution.

Another approach would be to try to grab say a m505 ROM and trying to emulate it's hardware. Hmm...

You could also contact StyleTap later when the SDK gets closer to release to see if they're doing anything.

good imput. Let's keep this discussion going and try to recruit attention to this thread.