Brian’s Annoyances

So I upgraded to Palm Desktop 6.2 from v4 something.  I did this so I could try out Pimlical. The desktop app is fine, but the new hotsync application is crap.  It’s slower, it broke my bluetooth hotsync setup, and it has stupid fading effects for it’s windows.  And I now get an error message about not being able to backup PmTraceDatabase from the Palm.  As I did this upgrade yesterday and it appeared that all the parts of the sync that I cared about were working, I ignored the message.

This afternoon, my friend John both pointed out a knowledge base article from Palm describing this problem.  Palm;s solution, is to just ignore the error message.  While this an acceptable short term workaround, it is not acceptable as a long term fix.  John had the bright idea to use Filez to remove the backup bit from that file on the Palm.  Problem solved. Thanks John.

I got an email from Palmgear (I purchased Palm software through them back when they were new and actually the definitive source for Palm apps) announcing the Palm App Store.  Excited that Palm might be catching up with the rest of the smartphone market, I load that page in the sucktacular web browser on my Treo 680.

Instead of being presented with a webpage, I am offered to download a file called “mobile.php”.  I can’t download it to the card (other things download fine), nor can I download it to the device as the Palm has no idea what to do with such a file.  I note that this works properly on my wife’s Centro (even though they both claim to have version 4.5.8 of the web browser).  I know Palm hates me for not upgrading to the Centro, but considering that my Treo is not even a year old and an unlocked GSM Centro wasn’t out when I bought my Treo, it’s a little sad that they don’t deem my Treo worth their time to support properly.

Following the download link on my laptop, I click the “Send to my phone” option.  After providing my phone number I get a text with a url link.  Specifically, this link; http://software.palm.com/us/mobile/dl/n/nd/ns/nk/prod7132952/sku15724442/88527282/AppStore.prc.  Come now Palm, your web team couldn’t have made a nice short weblink like “http://palm.com/appstore/”?  Thankfully, this link works now as I type this post, it provided a php file to be downloaded when I tried this last night.

The download installed an application called “App Store”.  Huh, it loaded Blazer (the Palm web browser). Oh.  I see.  It’s nothing more than an icon for a web address (something that can be done with the third party SharkLinks).  Boy, the app store sure looks like the Apple app store.  You can follow along with your own browser at http://software.palm.com/us/mobile/.

The menu bar at the top of the screen are done as fixed there and consumes precious screen real estate throughout all parts of the app store.  With a measly 320×320 screen, no wasting space needlessly. There are many occurrences of either overlapping text and images or text and images shoved together without the needed whitespace between them, it gives me a bad feeling about the quality of this endeavor.  Scrolling through the lists is painfully slow on my Treo 680.  Very oddly (since they have the same version of the base OS, 5.4.9, and they have the same processor, a 312 MHz Intel XScale PXA270) this is not as much of a problem on the Centro.

While comparing the speed of the app store on the two devices I notice that I am offered different applications between the two.  There are 40 free apps offered on my Treo and 750 offered on the Centro.  While I could believe that they are offering only apps that are supported on one device or the other, there are very few apps that will run on one of these devices and not run on the other (what with them being basically identical other than the form factor).  Ah ha, which apps are displayed is based on what device the site thinks you are browsing with (see More, Change Device to change this).  The Treo 680 is identified as such, but the Centro is identified as “null” (with a lovely broken image link).  Setting the Treo to “All Devices” makes all the apps available to me (and now calls my device type “null”).

While browsing about the app store, I find the game Taipan that I wish to download.  Clicking the “Free Download” presents me with the option to “Download To Card” of the file “Taipan.prc” and the message “Your device does not support this filetype (the same thing happens on the Centro).  I say sure and I am told the File is saved to “/Palm/Blazer/Download/download_free.jsp”  If I then use the third party FileZ (or the Centro included Files app) I can rename the file to Taipan.prc and copy it to the device and run it.  Wow, how very simple.  I’m sure my wife would be able to figure out those extra steps on her own.

This isn’t the first on device app store for the Palm.  PalmGear at one point attempted to convince developers to package their products so that users of PalmGear’s mobile site could download the single program file needed to install an app.  I believe that feature died when Palmgear went away for awhile after it was purchased by Motricity (who has since spun the site off again).  There is also the the app, “My Treo”, the on board manual and support system, which includes the ability to try and buy software through the AddIt service from Palm.  It has a limited selection of software, no searching ability, and a generally mediocre interface, but it does let you try and buy Palm software from the device itself.  The “My Centro” app no longer includes the Shopping tab that is in “My Treo”, but it appears to use the same system for the Bonus tab which has a handful of extra apps for the phone that were not (but should have been) loaded on the phone by default.

I sure hope this isn’t any indication of the quality of their big annoucement at CES 2009.

In January of 2008, Palm released a firmware update for the Treo 680.  One of the improvements listed was “Enhanced ringtone support”.  Specifically it said “MP3 and other sound files purchased from the web or sent from friends can now be set as ringtones and alerts (formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, MIDI, WAV, and AMR).”  Too bad I can find no instructions from Palm on how to use this new feature. 

Palm’s own knowledge base has an article on ringtones that says “Your Treo smartphone doesn’t include built-in software to allow MP3 files to be used as ringtones.”  This negative sounding phrase is repeated in the onboard help.  Thankfully, a palm fansite has the instructions on adding an mp3 as a ringtone.  It involves opening the mp3 in Blazer (the onboard web browser).  So very obvious. 

Before this update, the way to use an mp3 as a ringtone was to use a third party program (such as the free MiniTones).  The Palm knowledge base article referenced above about ringtones warns; ”Beware: Some ringtone managers can cause odd behavior, such as crash or reset when an incoming call arrives.” 

With the crappy mechanism that Palm themselves provide, and the warning about third party programs from their own technical support group, I found it funny when a representative of Palm’s PR firm makes a post to the official Palm blog about mp3 ringtones.  In it, they suggest  using third party ringtone manager.  Pathetic.