The Pre gets a Garnet emulator!
This is good news for medical PDA users who are thinking of getting a Palm Pre. At the recent Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Palm announced that MotionApps will come out with an emulator for legacy Palm apps.
This means that medical users can potentially run tons of applications like Medcalc, Statcoder apps, and many great medical freeware for PalmOS.
It remains to be seen how compatible the emulator will be but it would be fantastic if I could run large applications like UpToDate natively as well.
It seems one installs the applications by “drag and drop” via the device’s USB connection with the PC, since Hotsync is no longer available.
Further links:
Palminfocenter: MotionApps Classic to Provide Palm OS Compatibility on WebOS
PreCentral: PalmOS Emulation on webOS CONFIRMED: will be done by Motion Apps
|
About the author, Alan: Alan Teh is a Malaysian Physician who specialises in Hematology-Oncology & Stem cell Transplantation. He has been using Palm PDAs since 1997 and is absolutely reliant on them. His current PDA is a Palm Pre and is a strong advocate of the webOS platform, Palm's latest operating system. Caught the blogging bug in 2004 and has been addicted ever since… |
This is a great feature for the new Pre and legacy Palm OS users. Simple one-file .prc apps like the free ones on the StatCoder.com should work just fine. More complicated programs which use desktop conduits to install and update like Epocrates Rx will probably not work but, hopefully, there will be a native Epocrates Rx on launch. I don’t know if anyone has committed to that yet, though. Anything that needs to be synchronized to exchange data with a PC will have to be tested.
Once the Pre launches, someone should start a Palm OS Classic compatibility list (probably here) so that users can see what will actually run on the Pre because it will probably be a one-time hit-or-miss thing. Classic will probably not be updated to improve compatibility nor will the Palm OS apps be modified to do so.
Palm has also started taking applications for the SDK. I get the impression that the SDK is not quite ready for prime-time yet. The O’Reilly development book written by Palm isn’t due to be published until August. Most developers will probably take a wait-and-see approach to see how many Pre units are sold over the first several months before investing time and resources into development for the WebOS platform. Practically none of the existing Palm OS code is transferrable to WebOS.
Therefore, 3rd party software avaiability will be an issue for early adopters of the Pre. Make sure it does just about everything you want out-of-the-box because you really can’t assume that your favorite software is coming anytime in the two-year duration of your smartphone contract. The iPhone practically exploded onto the market when it was introduced while the public SDK for developers came out a year later. Nine months after that, the collection of medical apps is just now being rounded out to include the standards i.e. 5MCC, coding tools, MedCalc, drug guides, dictionaries. In other words, the development of a full catalog of clinical tools probably is a one to two-year proposition.
It looks like Epocrates Rx is definitely going to work with the Classic emulator – as long as you don’t have fat fingers because, of course, you can’t use a stylus on a capacitative screen. From the video below, it looks to me like the screen is about the size of a Treo.
Nice video. I agree if one has fat fingers it can be a problem but it’s a nice touch to have that virtual DPad since many apps support navigation with the DPad so it should reduce some of the pain.
If Motion apps can introduce a virtual stylus (pointer) then it might be better,
If Epocrates works in the emulator that would give them time to come out with a native WebOS version so the pressure to be available at the time of the Pre launch is not that great.
Hi gents,
I am thrilled. I could not consider Pre without medical software. Now I can because I’ll bring all my current medical software with me to Pre. I’m doing fine with my Treo 680 so I can be patient. But when Pre comes out, I will give it a very good look and probably buy.
– Josh
Ah Palm.. juz as i have written you off…. this emulator changes things all together… however still no release date yet… Btw according to Sanford guide website there was supposed to be an iPhone version with the 2009 PDA release but seems to be missing now. Respond from Sanford guide team is they are still developing iPhone version, not sure how much of all this underdevelopment thing (missing sync iPhone 2.0 with 2 way sync, Docs to go iPhone version, Sanford guide, updodate inc.) is related to the iPhone 3.0 software update. Maybe they have a developer SDK and some non disclosure agreement thing.
med80009
For looking up things or reading blocks of text, I would suggest using the Classic as a last resort. However, as a transition to native WebOS applications, it’s great. It’s interesting that Epocrates is practically the first thing that was demo’d on the emulator. Epocrates is also one of the development “partners” that Palm has mentioned, however, there was never a promise (or even any word from Epocrates) that there would be a WebOS version at the time of launch. I still wonder whether users will be able to get updates via the emulator because that happens through sync or wirelessly which has been a problem with emulators in the past.
does that mean that I could transfer all my Palm TX memos, contacts, to do´s and calendar just as well?
My nearly 2000 memos are quite precious and if transfering them on a Pre was possible, that would be a major reason acquiring a Pre now that using older Palm medical programs seems to be possible.
I am sure Palm will provide a way to transfer your PIM data to the Pre. However traditional Desktop sync will be a thing of the past. Palm expects one to sync with the “cloud” – EAS, Google etc.
Some third party options will allow Outlook to sync with Google and you can sync the Pre with Google. I wish there were a way to sync the Pre directly with Outlook without needing an Internet connection – eventually someone will come out with a sync conduit, I hope
I just listened to the 1src Podcast and it seems the first version of the emulator will be equivalent to Garnet 5.28 which is an older Palm OS5 (that running on T3s). It may have issues for apps designed for Garnet 5.4x i.e. those running on the Treos and Centro.