Garnet vs Cobalt
29 March 2004
When PalmSource announced the latest version of Palm OS, they also changed the name to Cobalt, and announced that the current version would continue development as Palm OS Garnet. The change from version numbers to names was so people wouldn't automatically assume that Garnet was inferior to Cobalt. While PalmSource says Garnet is targeted primarily at low-end devices and smartphones, Palm "power users" may also want to stick with Garnet, at least in the short term. Here's why.
When I was reading the recent discussions about Cobalt's multitasking, I saw an interesting analogy between Garnet & Cobalt and Windows 98 & Windows NT, which were also developed in parallel. The poster pointed out that even though Windows NT had better security and more robust multitasking, most users were better served with Windows 98. The reason? Because Windows 98 had better software support and better device support.
I see the same sort of thing shaping up in Palm OS, at least for the next year or so. Cobalt does a much better job of multitasking, it's more secure, and it should be remarkably stable. It should offer a wonderful out of the box experience. But for those of us for whom any "out of the box" Palm needs a lot of enhancement, Cobalt will fall short.
For example, let's look at third party alternatives to the ROM applications. I use Agendus for calendar, contacts and tasks and pedit for memos. It took months for these applications to be updated to support the relatively minor changes on the Tungstens T3 and E; how long will it take for them to support the completely new schema-based PIM databases in Cobalt?
In theory, applications that work in the background on Garnet should work just as well on Cobalt. While I've talked a lot about Cobalt's multitasking, I'm amazed how many people don't realize the while Cobalt is an improvement in that regard, it's not the first version of Palm OS to support multitasking. Garnet multitasks just fine.
Like MacOS 9 and Windows 3.1, Garnet is a cooperatively multitasking operating system. Applications have to be written to support multitasking and they have to handle their own background execution. Well-written applications like Verichat, Pocket Tunes and Audible can handle things like instant messaging and audio playback in the background just fine on existing Garnet-based devices like my $200 Tungsten E. Garnet also supports applications that sit in the background and wait patiently to be called, like BugMe's screen capture, SpellCheck, RoadLingua (a dictionary that can look up highlighted words in any application) or Fonts4OS5 (which lets me pick my fonts on a per-application basis).
Cooperative multitasking comes with a price. While researching for this column, I ended up resetting my Palm several times as I pushed it too hard and crashed something. In Garnet, all programs, including the operating system itself, run in the same memory space. If one application crashes, it takes the whole system with it. Mathematecally, it stands to reason that the more you have running cooperatively in the background (I have four or five icons in my Command Bar that neither PalmSource nor PalmOne put there), the more likely it will be that something will step on something else, and there's the big round Palm logo again. The more I "trick out" my Palm, the more inherently unstable it becomes under Garnet.
In Cobalt, applications and the operating system run in separate, protected memory spaces. If an application crashes in Cobalt, the operating system cleans up any memory the errant application was using and returns the user to the Home screen. No fuss, no muss, and no interruption of anything that may have been going on in the background. This system is much more stable than Garnet's more freewheeling "one app crashes another" mentality.
It's therefore not surprising that early indications are that the notification system used by these "terminate and stay resident" applications on Garnet will not work in Cobalt. While Cobalt supports most of the new features introduced in Garnet (the Palm Application Compatability Environment for running older Dragonball-based applications, with or without ARMlets, for example), it won't support Garnet's cooperative multitasking. This means a lot of the applications I rely on daily won't work well or at all until new Cobalt-friendly versions of them are released.
Of course, it's possible that by the time Cobalt-based devices actually hit the shelves, developers will have Cobalt-enhanced versions of their applications ready to go. In fact, I expect a slew of application announcements just before Cobalt devices come to market. But Cobalt is a much bigger architectural leap from Garnet than Garnet was from Palm OS 4. Going from Palm OS 4 to Garnet, we saw a lot of application incompatability (though far less than there could have been) and some applications still carry warnings that they don't work on Garnet, nearly two years after Garnet hit the market.
PalmSource is doing a remarkable job of keeping developers in the loop and making the transition to Cobalt easy. But it's such a big job that I don't expect the transition to be flawless or quick. The big stuff ("marquee" applications like Documents To Go) will be ready from day one, but the smaller, quirkier applications that so enhance the overall Palm experience may take a while (and more than one try at revision) to work properly on Cobalt.
And until they do, I may have to stick with Garnet, warts and all.
Jeff Kirvin
Jeff@writingonyourpalm.net
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