Head of OS Development Leaves PalmSource

Ed Hardy · 02-20-2003, 11:38 AM

Reportedly, Steve Sakoman is no longer working for PalmSource. He headed up the team developing Palm OS 6.

Read more at http://www.brighthand.com/article/St...ing_PalmSource

pocketfactory · 02-20-2003, 12:13 PM

Hmm, fire the guy who is heading up the next critical phase of your company's future platform? Yeah, that sounds logical.

Why not fire all the engineers while they're at it. If PS wanted to eliminate unnecessary personnel, why not get rid of all the cushy VP positions? VP of marketing...VP of sales....VP of research...VP of VPs...VP of redundancy. I mean, does a tiny startup really need so many managerial positions?

I take it this means OS 6 will not be delivered this year.

Ed Hardy · 02-20-2003, 12:16 PM

Why are you assuming he was fired?

And whether he was fired or left voluntarily, is this necessarily a bad thing for PalmSource? Let's take a look at Mr. Sakoman's record: He was the CTO for Be, a failed software company, and he headed up the the group that developed the Newton, a failed handheld platform.

Don't get me wrong, both of these had some cool technologies but they had zero commercial success. I don't think anyone wants OS 6 to be in the same boat.

pocketfactory · 02-20-2003, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ed
Why are you assuming he was fired?

He left right in the middle of a wave of job cuts. That's hardly a coincidence. I'm certain we was given the option of honorable resignation...just as Carl Yankowski did.

Quote:

He was the CTO for Be, a failed software company, and he headed up the the group that developed the Newton, a failed handheld platform.

Don't get me wrong, both of these had some cool technologies but they had zero commercial success. I don't think anyone wants OS 6 to be in the same boat.

Well that's hardly a criticism when you consider than many of Palm/PalmSources key officers are former Apple executives...which also has a poor record for commercial success. Does that mean Nagel and Mace should get the boot as well?

Ed Hardy · 02-20-2003, 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Foo Fighter
Well that's hardly a criticism when you consider than many of Palm/PalmSources key officers are former Apple executives...which also has a poor record for commercial success. Does that mean Nagel and Mace should get the boot as well?

When did Apple start having poor commercial success? I did some research and I couldn't find a reference its last unprofitable quarter, which means it was more than a year ago, and analysts predict it will be profitable for every quarter for the next year. This is a track record any handheld company would be proud to have.

Admittedly, Macs are a niche product but then so are handhelds.

pocketfactory · 02-20-2003, 12:55 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ed
When did Apple start having poor commercial success?

Declining PC market share, loss of the education market, erosion in the creative market, OSX adoption is going nowhere in the pro market, xServe is a flop, so is the "Switcher" campaign...just to name a few. The only really successful product they have had in the last 4-5 years is the iPod.

Quote:

I did some research and I couldn't find a reference its last unprofitable quarter,

That's odd. They just returned to profitability in their last quarter. Before that they were losing money along with the rest of the PC industry (except for DELL).

Quote:

...and analysts predict it will be profitable for every quarter for the next year.

Analysts are also predicting that while the rest of the PC industry (WinTel) will see growth this year, Apple will not.

Quote:

This is a track record any handheld company would be proud to have.

How can you say that? Palm alone outsells Apple by a wide margin.

Quote:

Admittedly, Macs are a niche product but then so are handhelds.

No, handhelds FAR outsell Macs. Last quarter Apple sold somewhere around 700k + combined Macintosh systems (iMac, iBook, PowerMac, PowerBook, xServe). During that quarter, Palm sold roughly 1.4 million handhelds. That's not including other PDA vendors, both PalmOS and PPC. Macs are not just a niche, they are an EXTREME niche.

EdH · 02-20-2003, 01:14 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Foo Fighter
He left right in the middle of a wave of job cuts. That's hardly a coincidence. I'm certain we was given the option of honorable resignation...just as Carl Yankowski did.

This could have been one of those deals where he asked to leave and during the last wave, it was easy to cut a nice severence check (yes, you still can get those even if you aren't fired) during the rest of the layoffs.

Why would he want to leave? I wonder if the full blown multitasking ARM 32bit blah blah blah OS6 wasn't going as well as hoped and he was taking heat on it internally. I'd leave too before being set up for the fall. Very hard to make a rich 32bit multitasking OS from an old non-multithreading OS. Just ask MS. They never did accomplish it. Win95-WinME all had DOS in them and were all as stable as and a funny farm patient off his lithium dose for a few days.

They finally did it by making Win98/SE/ME have very similar APIs and calls as NT/2K, forcing developers to not use 16bit VdX files and other real mode drivers. They could then kill the beast by releasing XP, which shares pretty much one thing with Windows ME - the name Windows.

To think that Palm could pull this off in jsut a few years is a bit laughable, though I could still be proven wrong when OS6 ships. OS5 certianly didn't cut it. Even apps like Avantgo didn't work right in the PACE.

So, who is in charge of OS6 now - the orignial OS5 guys or the Be team?

TawnerX · 02-20-2003, 01:21 PM

There are only about 40 BeOS engineers, and this guy is practically their leader. What happen to a small band of developer when their beloved leader is gone? At the least "demoralized", come to mind, worst thing is paralyzed.

What is the state of OS6.0 anyway? and I wonder if there is an internal rift between 5.2 and 6.0 trunks.

PS. Apple is a failed company in the late 80's early 90's. It almost dies. As a result now it only control 3% of the desktop market, less than Linux even. The world won't miss a beat, but a hick up, if they vanish from the face of the earth. Apple is irrelevent.

EdH · 02-20-2003, 01:56 PM

This is a few months old but interesting - http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/27318.html

Quote:

On the subject of the all-new, singing and dancing Palm OS6 - which should be shipped to developers next summer - Steve Sakoman was completely silent. Steve is really CTO of PalmSource, and quite a bit more, and although he doesn't have "CTO" in his job title, he's the best-loved CTO in the Valley.

Now I guess he is more silent than ever.

Ed Hardy · 02-20-2003, 01:57 PM

Sorry, I don't mean to lead this thread off topic so I'll make my final comment about Apple. Here's a page listing the company's earnings for the past year and estimated ones for the next:
http://biz.yahoo.com/z/a/a/aapl.html