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Santa Clara, California — The recent announcement that the 3Com Palm VII—the first pocket-sized organizer with wireless Internet access—will enter US field trials in 1999 electrified attendees at the Palm Computing Platform Developer Conference in Santa Clara. But the real news for Palm-using Mac people was the December 4 release of the long-awaited beta version of the software that turns your Palm OS-based organizer into a natural extension of your Mac.
Time was when PDA was a fancy term for an expensive paperweight.
Times have changed. The Palm changed them. How a pint-sized handheld device with four basic functions crossed the chasm between fashion accessory and basic necessity—and acquired millions of devoted fans in the process—must remain the subject of another story. But a good number of those millions of customers were Mac people who weren’t getting the full benefit of the Palm’s promised connectability. And that rankled.
Well, not anymore. The Palm MacPac v2 lets you seamlessly synchronize your personal information between your Macintosh and your Palm III. And, according to author David Pogue (PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide), the new Palm MacPac v2 software works so well that it will make the Macintosh “what it should have been all along: the premier platform for the Palm.” Better still, the beta version is free.
Palm Desktop for Macintosh
“I’m using, and loving, the beta of the new Palm Desktop for Macintosh,” Pogue reports. “It’s very, very polished, fast, and elegant. You have a choice of visual themes, auto-completion of cities and states, auto-formatting of phone numbers, integration of appointments and contacts, and tons of niceties that Palm Desktop for Windows doesn’t even have. It imports Now Up-to-Date files like a breeze. Drag-and-drop everything, copious online help, and seamless HotSync integration with the Palm III. There’s a menu-bar icon that provides instant access to today’s appointments and lets you search your phone book without having to actually launch the application. And, of course, all of this is free to any Mac owner who’s already bought a PalmPilot or Palm III.” (See David Pogue’s August 1998 Macworld column for complete details.)
It gets even better: “As nice as this new front-end software is, there’s something even more important,” Pogue notes. “The new software comes with a universal sprocket, a conduit that permits other Macintosh programs to talk to the Palm. Already you can download the wonderful Chronos Consultant, an unbelievably full-featured Rolodex/calendar, from chronosnet.com—and it talks to the Palm III now. In other words, you’re not obligated to use the new Palm Desktop program as your Mac front end: FileMaker, Quicken, Emailer, Outlook Express and many other programs will also be HotSync-able to the Palm with conduit modules that have been announced.” Hallelujah, bro.
Mac Man
Mac users owe a debt of gratitude to Douglas Wirnowski, Palm product manager for Macintosh Solutions, for helping make all of this happen. A relentlessly positive, perpetual-motion executive, the 28-year-old Wirnoswki was the point man on Palm’s efforts to clean up its act vis-a-vis the Macintosh—and he good-naturedly took the heat from Mac users impatient to get their hands on the new software.
Wirnowski’s sunny disposition came in handy in the months leading up to the release of MacPac v2. Mac people are accustomed to a superior user experience, and they aren’t shy about expressing their dissatisfaction when things don’t work the way they should. Fortunately, Palm parent 3Com, in a strategic masterstroke, bought the Claris Organizer technology from Apple Computer, and set to work to adopt its core functionality for the Palm Computing platform.
Name Game
Claris Organizer, re-christened Palm Desktop 2.0v2, became the centerpiece component of MacPac v2. Then came the task of making the transplanted technology flourish in a much smaller screen area. Palm engineers were determined to do it right, and that took time.
Now, to everyone’s relief, the wait is over. Palm’s engineering team put in a heroic effort, Wirnowski notes admiringly. After working into the wee hours week after week, the team has delivered a beta release that combines the robust functionality of Claris Organizer with the ease of use you’d expect of its Apple pedigree.
No Bloatware for the Palm
Wirnowski himself is a walking advertisement for Palm Computing: He has amassed nearly 1800 cross-referenced contacts on his Palm III Address Book, and has synchronized the data on his PowerBook G3. Wirnowski points with pride to the Palm’s efficient use of memory, noting that 81% of his Palm III’s memory is free.
“We have over 8,000 developers, and they’re writing everything from a metronome for your piano and a scuba dive log, to a remote-control program that will let you control all the devices in your home from your Palm.”
Douglas Wirnowski, Palm product manager for Macintosh Solutions, championed the Mac-friendly software release.
And therein lies a tale: Elegant coding is part of the Palm’s appeal. “As computers are getting bigger and faster, people are just turning in a bunch of garbage. They’re not coding efficiently,” Wirnowski says. “We’re asking our developers to be the talented programmers they really are. We’re saying, ‘Here’s a challenge for you—you have to write an application that’s going to run in a very small memory footprint and not take up a lot of processor cycles.’ So they’re writing tight code, and delivering apps that are very small and very efficient.” And very Mac-like.
Mac Development Tools
The fact that the original Palm development tools were Mac-based—coupled with the fact that the Palm runs on a Motorola processor—may account for what many people see as the Palm’s natural affinity for the Mac, Wirnowski observes, adding, “Everyone who’s ever programmed for Macintosh can sit down and set up a Palm program in no time.”
Looks like a lot of them are doing just that: “We have over 8,000 developers, and they’re writing everything from a metronome for your piano and a scuba dive log, to a remote-control program that will let you control all the devices in your home from your Palm,” Wirnowski says.
HotSync Heats Up
“With the new Palm MacPac v2, we’ve rewritten all of the HotSync software,” Wirnowski says. “This means that people will be able to use conduits to bring third-party applications to the Palm Computing platform.” (Conduits are templates for the Palm HotSync software; they translate between Palm data formats and the formats used by other data-handling applications.)
News about those Mac applications is already creating a buzz around the Palm Computing platform, notes Calin Pacurariu, a partnership manager in Apple’s Developer Relations group. Pacurariu, who works closely with Palm and with third-party developers, says that Apple is 100% behind the push to encourage third-party Palm products for Mac users.
Pacurariu, who has a bad habit of showing up for work at 5 a.m., is pumped about the new Palm software in the works. “Actual Software has created a conduit that will enable Mac users to connect MultiMail on their Palms to Claris Emailer and Microsoft Outlook Express on their Macs,” he says. “DataViz has announced Documents to Go, an application that will allow Mac users to view word processing and spreadsheet files like Word and Excel on their Palm organizers. And Shana Corporation will provide Mac users with a direct link between the Palm organizer expense application and its own award-winning Informed software.”
For Mac Users Only
There’s a slew of Mac-only goodies in the works as well. For example, JFile (a database program for the Palm) can synchronize with FileMaker Pro on your desktop, using a conduit. That’s something that only Mac users will have access to because Robert Tsuk wrote that conduit using Apple Events.
Third-Party Developers Join the Party
Meanwhile, Clent Richardson, Apple Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations, is spearheading the drive to support Palm developer efforts through the Apple Developer Connection. Richardson has a simple message for Palm developers: “Welcome to the best development platform for Palm.”
—David Graham
The Palm Desktop for Macintosh lets you organize your contact list any way you want. The toolbar makes it a snap to perform tasks such as printing.
The Palm Desktop gives you quick access to all your contact information. (Mac users will able to HotSync more information than Windows users.) |
