It is so sad to see an Operating System die, particularly one which has been around for so long, and which I’ve grown with and even written programs for.  I’m not referring to Windows XP, but to the Palm OS for handheld computers and smartphones. Some would say that it has been dead or dying for some time. When a Operating System dies, it seems that the software development tools start dying first. A week or so back I logged onto a website of a Palm OS development tool I’ve used to be dismayed at the news that the website and the forums were closing down soon.

The Palm Operating System’s replacement is the Palm webOS as featured in the Palm Pre. At present there is only one smartphone being sold by Palm which still runs the Palm OS – the Palm Centro. With Palm (the company) it is hard to tell how long the Centro will be around. On the Palm website, the Centro is referred to as “Access Powered“, but that merely means “Running Palm Operating System licensed from Access, previously known as PalmSource”.

If the Palm Centro was to be killed off tomorrow, and the Palm OS was officially dead,  people would continue to use Palm OS devices, from old Sony Clies to Tapwave Zodiacs.

Even though the iPhone is getting more useful with each firmware release, I’m still using a Tungsten C which runs Palm OS, while moving to a Treo 680, which also runs Palm OS. Of course, if the Palm Pre or another webOS based smartphone comes to Verizon, I would take a good hard look at it.

It appears that when you buy a book in electronic format, you are not actually buying it. Some users of Amazon’s Kindle found this out when some books they had purchased were remotely removed from their devices by Amazon.

Apparently the copyright holder notified the Amazon that the books were being been sold without its permission, so Amazon removed the two books from the accounts of users, and refunded their money.

The irony is that the books were “1984″ and “Animal Farm” by George Orwell.

This has generated many humorous headlines (as well as countless tweets). Among the best were “Amazon Kindles Outrage With Ironic Removal of Orwell Titles” on the BeliefNet Blog and “Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others” from Pogue’s Posts on The New York Times Blogs.

On a more serious note, this incident highlights some of the scarier aspects of DRM (Digital Rights Management) of E-books. Apart from the fact that you cannot resell them, or lend them to someone else like a real book, now you don’t even really own them. Dennis D. McDonald has a point in “Amazon Kindle Orwell Deletion May Be Legal — But It’s Still Doubleplusungood“:
“it demonstrates how this technology can be applied and managed remotely without the owner’s involvement. Next time it will be a title embroiled in some kind of legal dispute, or a government agency will beg that a title be deleted for national security reasons.“

The special pre-release upgrade pricing for Windows 7 Home premium and Windows 7 Professional ended yesterday. I only realized that today. Rats!

With Windows 7, Microsoft has tried to address all of the many complaints of Vista users. Instead of a new Operating System, Windows 7 shares the same core as Windows Vista. It could almost be a Revision of Windows Vista if it were not for all the improvements.

Paul Thurrott, on his Supersite for Windows, says of Windows 7:
“it looks like a prettier version of Windows Vista. But it’s small and fast, usable and secure. It is the first version of Windows, perhaps ever, that I can recommend wholeheartedly, and without reservation, to virtually anyone.”

This is a recommendation from one of the industries leading Windows experts, although one who regarded Windows Vista, as far better than Windows XP. There are also numerous people who are already running Windows 7 (previously the latest beta, now the Release Candidate) as their main Operating System.

As some have said, Windows 7 is a Vista that works.

The iPhone 3G S could be turning out to be a hot item in more ways than one.

It was first reported on Nowhereelse ( a French website) via Engadget, by a user of a 16GB white iPhone 3GS who noticed that their iPhone got very hot while using the GPS and 3G of the phone. The only damage appeared to be that the back of the iPhone had a pink discoloration.

Then two PC World journalists had similar problems. Melissa J. Perenson from PC World reported in “Apple iPhone 3GS Overheating Reports” that her 16GB iPhone 3GS become very hot during use while being plugged in. David Coursey wrote of his problem in “Fahrenheit 113: Hot iPhone’s Tragic Number“.

So far Apple has not responded except for blaming hot weather or user negligence in their support article “Keeping iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS within acceptable operating temperatures“. Notably, this article covers both the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. It advises users not to leave the iPhone “in a car on a hot day” or “in direct sunlight for extended amounts of time“, and not to use “certain applications in hot conditions or direct sunlight for long periods of time, such as GPS tracking in a car on a sunny day or listening to music while in direct sunlight“.

So, is this just a general problem with the iPhone getting warm under high usage, or is there some hidden fault somewhere? What do you think?