The written musings of a long-time Apple //e and Macintosh tech nerd. Opinions are my own.
In honor of “Throw Back Thursdays”, here’s a Palm OS device family photo I took recently.
In that top row, we have the original Palm Pre, an H/Palm TouchPad, and the elusive Palm Foleo. The second row includes an early USRobotics Pilot and a 3Com Palm Pilot (both running Palm OS 2.0). You’ll also notice that a Fossil smartwatch on the far left of the fourth row. Lastly, you’ll notice that I do have a Palm Treo 750 (Windows Mobile 6.0).
Happy Throw Back Thursday!
According to a recent post over on WebOSNation website, HP has sold the Palm brand to the Chinese firm Alcatel Onetouch.
“We’ve been wondering for a while what is up with Palm.com domain, and it’s looking more and more certain that HP sold the brand and trademarks to Alcatel Onetouch. The first hints of this came from the teaser when the website started redirecting to mynewpalm.com, with a looping video of the Palm logo with the text “coming soon” and “smart move” beneath. “Smart move,” as it would be, is the slogan of Chinese smartphone manufacturer Alcatel Onetouch (a brand of Chinese electronics firm TCL). That’s not exactly a lot to go off of though, but it was enough to raise suspicions.”
The “coming soon” and “smart move” text and logo is actually a looping video file called “palm_animated5.mp4”. Oddly, the video didn’t play on my iPhone 6 when I used it to surf to the mynewpalm.com website. (It did work on my Mac with Safari 8.)
As a long, long time Palm fan boy I’m hoping that something good will come of the Palm brand.
UPDATE:
Upon further consideration, there are a few things that are still up in the air for Palm webOS fans.
1. I almost forgot that LG has purchased WebOS to power their line of Smart+ television sets.
2. I wonder what impact the sale of the Palm brand on LG, the Open WebOS project, and Gram (which is still online at gram.com) might be, if any.
3. What is to become of the HP/Palm webOS App Catalog store? According to the WebOS Wikipedia page, the App Catalog site will go offline in 15 days on Jan. 15, 2015.
[Via WebOSNation.com…]
It’s no joke, webOS fans, HP has release the smallest of mandatory updates for Palm’s smartphones and tablet computer.
I received an email today from HP’s webOS Team letting me know that there is a minor update available for webOS to correct an expiring root certificate that allows our webOS devices to connect to HP’s backend servers for things like Backup/Restore and the App Catalog. The certificate is set to expire on July 23, 2013.
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| HP TouchPad w/ webOS 3 after the update |
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| Palm Pre w/ webOS 2.1 after the update |
HP TouchPads running webOS 3 will be upgraded to App Catalog version 5.0.3500. HP and Palm branded smartphones running webOS 2 will be updated to 2.1.10000.
The email contained directions for devices running webOS 2.1 and later as well as for devices running a version of webOS that was released prior to webOS 2.1.
Full details on how to update your webOS smartphone or tablet can be found on the HP website.
Anyone who plans to keep using their Palm webOS devices after July 23 of this year are encouraged to charge up your device and either install the automatic software update using the Software Update application or by manually going to the App Store and installing the App Catalog Update utility.
The email is copied below:
Yesterday, Ryan St. Andrie, of webOSNation.com, posted an article on installing the webOS Tasks application from a Pre or Pixi smartphone on your TouchPad tablet. Tasks, unbelievably, is an application that never made it into webOS 3.0. You can read the full story over on webOSNation.com.
The steps outlined in the article work well enough. I did run into some *minor* problems while packing up the Tasks app for installation on my TouchPad. The first issue was how to deal with the .jar webOS Doctor file that contains the Tasks application that I wanted to install. The second issue was where do a copy the Task application to once I got it on my TouchPad.
Issue 1: Working with the .jar webOS Doctor file
webOS Doctor files, shipped as Java .jar files, are essentially hard reset files that allow you to reset and reload a clean copy of webOS on your device. The article calls for opening the .jar file with a PC compression utility like WinRAR. I’ve used WinRAR before…on my PC. As I said, I’m using a Mac now.
Without thinking, I loaded up Parallels, launched my Windows 7 virtual machine, and was off to the races as they say. But what if you don’t have Paralles, VMware Fusion, or a copy of Windows hanging around? The solution turns out to be very simple; rename the .jar file to .zip! (I didn’t come up with that myself. I found the solution here. Thanks, cazlar!) I did go back and test the rename-the-file trick and it does work. Sweet!!
Also, once you get the .jar-now-a-.zip file open, here is the path you have to navigate to find the Tasks folder. I am going to assume that you are using the unlocked Pre2 webOS 2.2.4 Doctor file.
webosdoctorp224pre2wr.jar > resources > webOS.tar > .\nova-cust-image-roadrunner.rootfs.tar.gz > .\usr > palm > applications > com.palm.app.tasks
Issue 2: Moving the Tasks app
Once you have installed the repackaged Tasks .IPK file on your TouchPad, you have to move it to the Linux partition for Palm’s built-in webOS applications because Tasks is a system application and not a third-party application.
If you are reading the webOSNations article carefully, you will know that you will need to move the Tasks app folder from the path:
/media/cryptofs/apps/usr/palm/applications/com.palm.tasks
to:
/usr/palm/applications/com.palm.tasks
The thing that tripped me up was the screen shot that was provided was of the first path, not the second. Just be aware of that when you go to move the com.palm.tasks folder.
After rebooting my TouchPad, Tasks was up and running in the webOS smartphone emulator on my tablet!
The entire process took about an hour for me to complete. Times will vary depending on how much software needs to be downloaded, updated, or installed on your Mac, PC, and TouchPad.
[Via webOSNation.com…]
It’s Labor Day weekend here in the United States and that means there there are some good sales going on for some great mobile games – to help you NOT labor.
Gameloft and Electronic Arts have many games in Apple’s App Store on sale for $0.99.
Atari and APPODAY are running a promotion on the Atari’s Greatest Hits game for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. You can download the complete 99-game pack for FREE between August 31 – September 1! Better get cracking, as this offer expires TODAY! Once you download the games to your iOS device, you can have unlimited play until you delete the Atari’s Greatest Hits games off your device. Once you do, you have to pay $9.99 for all the games, or $0.99 for a game pack.
Astraware HP TouchPad Word Games on Sale
Astraware, a long time creator of mobile games is running a promotion for their HP TouchPad webOS word games. For more details, checkout the HP App Catalog or the Astraware HP TouchPad word games website.
Thanks to RobT for the tip!
Who expected that in August 2012 I’d be writing about webOS again? Not me. But once again the small but dedicated Palm webOS community has surprised me.
I was playing with my HP/alm TouchPad and came across the ‘Homebrew Pivot’ patch from the webOS onTap Community Magazine project while browsing Preware.
Once the small patch is applied to your webOS device, the HP App Catalog Pivot feed is modified to point at the onTap magazine feed. You can download and install the Tweaks patch, also available in Preware, to enable or disable the onTap patch and toggle the HP Pivot feed with the onTap homebrew feed.
Right now the onTap writing team is putting the finishing touches on their first issue and should be out in the next week or two. I’ll be sure to post an update article when the feed goes live and the first issue is published. The sample pages (see below) that have been developed by the onTap writing staff look just as polished and professional as did the content developed by HP.
As a long time fan of Palm (and Palm support forums moderator and blogger and podcaster) and their products, I’m really interested to see what the editorial staff at onTap has, well, on tap, for us. (Sorry, about the obligatory pun.)
For more information, there are a number of places you can check out online:
Website: http://www.webosontap.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/webOSonTap/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/webOSonTap
Google+: https://plus.google.com/103118434017670797778/
HP’s Pivot Spring issue
onTap’s Place Holder on the TouchPad
onTap Preview Screen Shots
HP/Palm’s TouchPad ships with webOS 3.0. You can find the update log for webOS 3.0 on the Palm website. The latest (and possibly the last?) update for webOS is 3.0.5 build 86.
My refurbished HP Palm TouchPad 32GB unit arrived yesterday afternoon. About all I was able to do with it was unbox it and charge it up. I’ve started playing with it today and I’ll be blogging more about it over the next few days, but for now, here are my unboxing photos. They may not be sexy, but at least I have a TouchPad now.
If you had forgotten that you purchased a refurbished unit, HP will remind you.
Refurbished packing material is so unsexy. The TouchPad is held in place by two foam blocks and the accessories are stuffed in to the slot on the left.
At least the TouchPad is shipped in the same protective film that new units are shipped in. If you’ve unpacked an iPad, it’s the same kind of plastic film.
Here we have the TouchPad, the power adapter and sync cable (similar to the ones shipped with the Pre series smartphones) and a cardboard box that contains the getting started guides, and obligatory legalese documents. The box reads, “Now comes the fun part.”
Ugh!! I’m still waiting for my HP/Palm TouchPad to arrive. Maybe for the weekend.
You all know that I’m a Palm junkie. I have at least two dozen Palm devices in my collection of mobile gear. My latest acquisition is the ‘super natural’ HP/Palm TouchPad. I wrote about Walmart.com having a stock of refurbished units for sale in their online store. Well, fittingly enough, my TouchPad is spending the 4th of July holiday in Independence, KY waiting to complete it’s cross country trek from the left coast to the right coast.
Android on Your TouchPad
In other news, the CyanogenMod team, the folks who have been hard at working porting Google’s Android OS to the HP TouchPad, have posted a new nightly build of their Android port that has enabled TouchPad microphone support.
Once I get my TouchPad and start playing with it, I’ll blog about my experience installing the dual-boot software and Android. I’ve only done a little reading on the subject, as in I know its possible and talked to WyreNut about his experience installing Android.
Stay tuned.