Anyone Else Notice TREMENDOUS Development Slowdown?

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niraj007pant

New member
I used to (and still do) have a proggie called "WebMon" to check a dozen or more sites for changes and alert me. I needed that, plus "site by site checks" to see about updates to Palm programs -- there were at one time more than you could keep track of.

Everything has "gone to sleep!" Red-Mercury released a slight Acid Image upgrade (3.023 to 3.024, which is only a Registration information change in nature) -- but there just doesn't seem to be ANY new products and freewarepalm is slower as well. Even Tealpoint has slowed down, partially because of a conference in Florida and some new "directions" they want to go in over the last 30 days . . . but come on!!

Is this the end of the exciting and rampant "new thingie available today" cycle? It slowed considerably after the T5 release, and now with LD has just withered to less than a trickle.

Sad. Has anyone noticed the sound of "wind in the canyon" among software developers? They all seem quiet - no upgrades - no new stuff - is this the end of "10,000 programmers worldwide writing Palm software" that I warned of a year ago? Hope not . . . .
 
Paul,

There has been a definite slowdown but I suspect there are a number of reasons. OS 5 is a reasonably mature operating system and the few new things added to OS 5 have already been exploited by developers. The glacial pace of releasing OS 6 has everyone sitting on their hands waiting to find out what they will have to do in terms of software updates. There are major questions, for example, about how OS 4.x programs will have to be altered to work with OS 6 and some may have to be rewritten from the ground up. Since OS 6 will offer a ton of improvements, including multitasking, most developers are waiting for the Palm to finally start rolling out OS 6 hardware.

The other issue is, given the constraints of the current Palm operating system, how many more programs can be written and sold profitably that haven't been done five times over? Things developers would like to do can't be done with the current operating system and just about anything that can be done with the current operating systems has already been done. How many more tip calculators do we really need? :)
 
Well put, Jim - especially with reference to "tip calcs!"

TCPMP Video player is a prime example of something "new" as well as GOOD and freeware to boot -- just too bad there aren't more.

I had almost "written off" OS6 as coming any time soon, and without being too pessimistic, feel that I'll probably lose more functionality with apps I like than I gain with new stuff, but hopefully I'm wrong. I think a lot of developers will NOT make their stuff OS6 compatible, and "dropped off the list" after OS5 - but we'll have to wait and see.

I agree with you - it's just that if I'm "taking a stand and drawing the line at" the T3 (which is probably foolish), it would be nice to make it "all I can," and if tip calcs are typical of the majority of rehashed apps, I guess we're done for a while and perhaps for good. I wonder if developers will take two forked roads - one for older "good 'ol stuff," and the other "division" or forked road will be OS6. Seems two different paths will be necessary, and not many developers will write two apps for the same purpose. Those that make them work on BOTH platforms will be forced to write a much LARGER application (I can see Agendus, already at 1.5 MB, being 2.5 MB or larger to accommodate everything, for example).

Multi tasking would be great, but we already had a primitive form of that with DeskTop Accessories and hacks under older OS's - and they've been nixed to a large extent. Given that the LD takes its time switching from address to calendar - how slow would it be running both? Time will tell, but I think there's still room for an Excel spreadsheet that's better than TinySheet and not as cumbersome and buggy as Docs2Go - there must not be the incentive any more (as you point out) because developers are waiting for the benefits of OS6 to come out with a "whopper."
 
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