OESF Portables Forum
General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: harvell on January 05, 2007, 02:22:08 pm
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I remember they used to come out with software periodically for the 5500. However with the clamshell models especially the CXXXX series I haven't heard much from them. Any one know anything? I felt like they stimulated the market here and there.
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I remember they used to come out with software periodically for the 5500. However with the clamshell models especially the CXXXX series I haven't heard much from them. Any one know anything? I felt like they stimulated the market here and there.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150181\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
I guess Shawn (of TKC) was very disillusioned with the way things were going for the Zaurus - lack of Sharp's support and hence no increasing market from which to make a profit off. Also some of TKC's dealings weren't so proper - but thats a debate, not a fact of life.
He moved on to developing the same apps (rather porting) to the newer Linux platforms like Archos and then ultimately I think into his passion - music and now develops some music platform based on open source or something like that - not too really sure - read an interview quite some time back.
Its sad actually that the ecosystem around the Zaurus could not support any propriatary developers, and does support very less open source developers these days.
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I'm using tkcExplorer (http://www.thekompany.com/embedded/tkcexplorer/) for Cxxx/6000 on my C1000 and it works very well.
I particularly like the Trash Bin feature (which is like the Recycle Bin on windoze).
I wasn't too happy about paying for it a second time, but the SL-5500 version wouldn't work on the C1000.
I like Tree Explorer better for everything else.
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Thanks, for the quick review. I bought a copy of Tree!Explorer+ and was thinking of picking up tkcExplorer as well but it doesn't seem that compelling anymore.
It is too bad about tkc. They have some really compelling titles but, some were never converting to the C-series and others are half converted (like tkcAddressBook, tkcCalandar and tkcToDo) since their promised sync features were never realized.
I would have loved to have seen tkcZip expanded to cover, tar, gz, and rar, too.
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Also their support forum is a total flop (and not even available anymore).
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IMHO tkc did a fantastic job for the Zaurus community. This particular forum has been very self indulgent in slagging them off, mostly unfairly too.
I started off with a SL5500 and now have a C-1000 and have re-purchased where available all my apps. Particular favourites being Expense, Card, Player, ToDo, Address, Explorer, Shopper and BackUp.
It saddens me that Video and Mail are not supported on the clamshell, but then it is hard to blame Shawn for this, the Zaurus is dead and he just saw it coming sooner than the rest of us.
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I started off with a SL5500 and now have a C-1000
...
the Zaurus is dead[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150198\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
Huh ????
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If Sharp is still actively selling the Zaurus then it is most certainly not dead.
***SOAP BOX MODE ON***
Even the day that Sharp completely pulls the plug on the Zaurus line it will not die unless this community and others like it will let it die.
The Zaurus is one of those rare products that has dedicated communities behind it that strive to push it past the pigeon-holed niche that Sharp has decided to stuff it into. I consider myself honoured to be a part such a great and helpful community like this one. Thank you.
***SOAP BOX MODE OFF***
Although, I am too new to know the complete history of what happened between the Zaurus user community and tkc; I will say that the tkc software that I purchased so far are some of my favorite titles on my Z.
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I would have to agree with HoloVector, what I use my Z for today would still apply ten years from now and so unless I or my needs change, my Z will not die any time soon. I hope this community will continue to keep this great little machine alive. I will do as much as I can to help.
cycle_55
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My transition was "don't get me talking about my old school computers" -> Tandy Model 10X -> Palm -> Sharp Zaurus
I spend a couple years in the Tandy portable computers community. It's a piece of hardware that's long "dead", but you would never know it by the community.
My 2 cents. *shrug*
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Its sad actually that the ecosystem around the Zaurus could not support any propriatary developers, and does support very less open source developers these days.
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=150189\")
[a href=\"http://www.softmaker.com/english/]http://www.softmaker.com/english/[/url]
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Its sad actually that the ecosystem around the Zaurus could not support any propriatary developers, and does support very less open source developers these days.
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=150189\")
[a href=\"http://www.softmaker.com/english/]http://www.softmaker.com/english/[/url]
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150245\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
One swallow does not a summer make ..
I understand your point that there are developers (both categories) but my point is not about the presence of developers (proprietary and open source) but rather about approaching the critical point where the ecosystem can be fuelled further by the presence of sufficient existing developers. Right now, I feel that we are way below that critical point.
And about TKC, they were lambasted and even called unscroupulous too, because thet were charging for the same apps for different machines (5500 series and the SL series). Sometimes even I felt that was not fair - particularly for such simple apps like AddressBook and Calendar, but again they were in the business of making some money off the development effort and a new hardware (with reals estate screen changes and processor changes) did warrant a new app which we had to pay for. Objectively looking, it wasn't that unfair really.
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Its sad actually that the ecosystem around the Zaurus could not support any propriatary developers, and does support very less open source developers these days.
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=150189\")
[a href=\"http://www.softmaker.com/english/]http://www.softmaker.com/english/[/url]
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150245\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
One swallow does not a summer make ..
I understand your point that there are developers (both categories) but my point is not about the presence of developers (proprietary and open source) but rather about approaching the critical point where the ecosystem can be fuelled further by the presence of sufficient existing developers. Right now, I feel that we are way below that critical point.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150437\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
I think 'zaurus' is the keyword here. Development would be a lot more sustainable if people would stop hardcoding things for a specific machine(qvga zaurus) or obsolete framework (qt/e 2.x). I bet x11 or qtopia4 would lure more people into development, since people could use the same app on their desktop/laptop/whatever with small modifications.
Just look at what serge is doing with maemo-mplayer: pushing patches upstream and seeking help from other developers (the OE people in #oe) to test them. That is *much* better than things like mplayer-atty, which is a bunch of japanese guys locked in a room being incommunicado.
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Its sad actually that the ecosystem around the Zaurus could not support any propriatary developers, and does support very less open source developers these days.
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=150189\")
[a href=\"http://www.softmaker.com/english/]http://www.softmaker.com/english/[/url]
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150245\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
One swallow does not a summer make ..
I understand your point that there are developers (both categories) but my point is not about the presence of developers (proprietary and open source) but rather about approaching the critical point where the ecosystem can be fuelled further by the presence of sufficient existing developers. Right now, I feel that we are way below that critical point.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150437\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
I think 'zaurus' is the keyword here. Development would be a lot more sustainable if people would stop hardcoding things for a specific machine(qvga zaurus) or obsolete framework (qt/e 2.x). I bet x11 or qtopia4 would lure more people into development, since people could use the same app on their desktop/laptop/whatever with small modifications.
Just look at what serge is doing with maemo-mplayer: pushing patches upstream and seeking help from other developers (the OE people in #oe) to test them. That is *much* better than things like mplayer-atty, which is a bunch of japanese guys locked in a room being incommunicado.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150441\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
Actually, the Japanese people do talk, but just don't talk English. If you send them emails in Japanese, they do respond...
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I think 'zaurus' is the keyword here. Development would be a lot more sustainable if people would stop hardcoding things for a specific machine(qvga zaurus) or obsolete framework (qt/e 2.x). I bet x11 or qtopia4 would lure more people into development, since people could use the same app on their desktop/laptop/whatever with small modifications.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150441\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
I think it was Guylhem who commented that there was too much fragmentation of effort, there are too few devs porting/writing apps for handheld linux, and too many variants in distro.
I would like to see Z rom with qtopia4 on kernel 2.6... perhaps OZ will offer this as an alternative to Opie? Anyway, this is getting off topic.
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and too many variants in distro.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150704\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
And behold the beauty of open source: the distro people can build $app for their distro.
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I owned 1 tkc app. a video player . it was ok. the free competitors ended up being better. isn't that kinda the whole poi nt in doing linux (oss)? If i was simply dying to have commercial software developers associated with my device, I'd have bought an AXim.
I honestly think tkc was outdone by cacko, oz and pdaxrom, and commercial or non-commercial aside, they became something of a dinosaur on no basis other than the power of their applications versus the extant alternatives.
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If i was simply dying to have commercial software developers associated with my device, I'd have bought an AXim.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150711\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
I do have reservations about such blanket statement regarding OSS ?
Do you mean to say that the Zaurus, in that case, should be exclusive of commercial development and only have non-commercial dev activity (I didn't say open source) associated with it because it has Linux on it ? I would think it would be that it should have open sourced (in spirit) development going for it - be it commercial or non-commercial.
I mean, if we grudge the Axim, and other such closed devices for the reason that it only has paid-for commercial apps available and no (or very few) free apps (or even Open apps), then why do you think developers (commercial) would not have a grudge against the Zaurus as a platform if we only advocate free non-commercial apps (and hence also open) to be developed on it and no commercial dev activity at all to be associated in any way with it. Openness should not exclude commercial dev I believe, otherwise we never get a ecosystem to develop around it.
No wonder this mind-set pushes away the incentive for commercial developers to develop for such open devices. And as much as we fill in the vaccum with open source developers, it neverthless is a loss to the development ecosystem.
adf, now when you say "they became something of a dinosaur on no basis other than the power of their applications versus the extant alternatives" that maybe so and is righly said. If a commercial developer cannot live up to the standards set by the open source community, then so be it ...
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...but that is generally the theme in commercial software development: build it so it works kinda ok, milk it and charge for bugfixes and use a very restrictive license to try to charge for use as many times as possibe. the motive in commercial development is commerce, you see.....so the software has only to be good enough to sell. in oss it seems that the motive is either experi.entation or a real interest in function.
this is not to say that there isn't good commercial software, or bad oss software--just that one model seems to me t have a discernable evolutionary advantage.
Does this mean that I entirely disapproveof people getting paid for software work? of course not (I even do donations on occasion)--but maybe the current commercial model for development and sale of software packages--the logical underpinnings of which are not and cannot be the sole property of the vendor--is headed the way of the guildhall and the roman legion: quaint, but obsolete.
in our current view of software in commerce--the ms view--we' have to pay a fee to the mason's guild for each stone byuilding we entered we entered. But this is, of course, absurd. Why should this be an absurd view of a cathedral and a reasonale view of software?
edit: and I bought the z because it ran linux (didn' know about the sharp software weirdness when I first got involved). that meant gnu tools gpl and oss ( as well as free) as far as I knew at the time. If I had wanted commercial software I really would have bought something that ran windows. doesn' that seem simple? next I will buy a neo instaed of an iphone-- for exactly the same reason. I'll be happy the neo devs were compensated and after i get oe to build my first neo package I'll send OE a dnation.
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...but that is generally the theme in commercial software development: build it so it works kinda ok, milk it and charge for bugfixes and use a very restrictive license to try to charge for use as many times as possibe. the motive in commercial development is commerce, you see.....so the software has only to be good enough to sell. in oss it seems that the motive is either experi.entation or a real interest in function.
this is not to say that there isn't good commercial software, or bad oss software--just that one model seems to me t have a discernable evolutionary advantage.
Does this mean that I entirely disapproveof people getting paid for software work? of course not (I even do donations on occasion)--but maybe the current commercial model for development and sale of software packages--the logical underpinnings of which are not and cannot be the sole property of the vendor--is headed the way of the guildhall and the roman legion: quaint, but obsolete.
in our current view of software in commerce--the ms view--we' have to pay a fee to the mason's guild for each stone byuilding we entered we entered. But this is, of course, absurd. Why should this be an absurd view of a cathedral and a reasonale view of software?
edit: and I bought the z because it ran linux (didn' know about the sharp software weirdness when I first got involved). that meant gnu tools gpl and oss ( as well as free) as far as I knew at the time. If I had wanted commercial software I really would have bought something that ran windows. doesn' that seem simple? next I will buy a neo instaed of an iphone-- for exactly the same reason. I'll be happy the neo devs were compensated and after i get oe to build my first neo package I'll send OE a dnation.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150760\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
There are of course other models such as the ones used by Sun. One such model is, you get the use the software for free as long as you don't make profit out of it, but if you do, then you ought to pay a small percentage for the software depending on what you make/the size of your user base. Alternatively, all software is free and opensource, but if you want support, then pay for support, otherwise, fix bugs yourself
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..and both of the models meanie decribed above are more able (particularly the 2nd) to encourage rational, effectfive development. (and keep programmers fed clothed housed, etc)
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When I first bought my 5500 a couple of years back I looked at software options and how many companies were making software for it. I was impressed by TKC's marketing however after buying 5 apps eg: Calendar, Kapitol, ToDo, Memo, and some other one that I don't use now. Actually I don't use any now. At the time these were better than the default sharp rom until KO/PI came out. Now I like that better than Outlook.
Commercial apps are great because you get a group of programmers that want to get paid and produce an app that is stable. Usually they will work out bugs and patch bugs to make their product sell more. A commercial app would also have to keep improving things in order to gain the interest of the public (something TKC never followed up with).
Open source is great and visionary however the group of programmers always want to work on the latest coolest things and never want to solidify things. Unless it's a huge project with a lot of resources most of the bugs get inherited to later versions. Open source guys usually start off a project for two things: To have an app than supports their needs and for recognition. Once in a while the vision would be so great that a lot of people tie into it and it explodes. One thing that sucks with open source is that sometimes really great projects die because their is no financial interest tied with it (hopefully that's not what happened to the PI projects).
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At the time these were better than the default sharp rom until KO/PI came out.[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150843\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
- This is why I stopped using tkc ... it was better than Sharp, but significantly inferior to KDEPIM. (shrug) I sold my rights to the tkc products I own (calender, address, paint) with Cricket, not even knowing if they would run on Hiro, because I'd already stopped using them, anyway.
- Shawn was also very unresponsive to my queries about performance. I had 700 entries in my address book and it took tckAddress nearly a full minute to load. It had no way to apply categories to groups of entries ... each entry had to be edited individually, and each edit took nearly a full minute to save. It was quite frankly so hideous that I'd already gone back to Sharp because it would at least load and run more responsively.
- KDEPIM solved all that. It loads and responds just fine, and Hiro has enough RAM to fastload KOPI & KAPI and still be able to run two or three other apps. I think tkc had a great idea, but its implementation was a bit far off the mark.
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Hear... hear.... and I still use KO/PI