Hardware good. Firmware bad.

See, I always thought that the hardest part of making a modern gadget would be the hardware. Get that right, and you’re plain sailing – especially given these gadgets’ increased reliance on firmware and software for their functionality.

With updatable/upgradable firmwares, you can add features, push bugfixes and generally keep the user base happy.

So why, in a number of cases, do manufacturers get the hardware right but the firmware/software so very wrong? It’s almost like they finish the hardware, then throw together a lump of firmware which is barely good enough to allow the product to ship, and then… they stop.

Two examples:

  1. Topfield 5800 PVR. Hardware: spot on. Firmware: clunky at best
  2. Palm TX. Hardware: again, spot on. Operating system: dated, even when the TX was first released in 2005, and unreliable

Let’s examine the Palm TX. It’s hardware ticks all the boxes for a PDA, even in 2008: Bluetooth, IRDA, WiFi, touchscreen, SD card support. But we’re still stuck with Palm OS (with VersaMail and Blazer), even though there are active hacking communities (such as Hack&Dev) doing very fine work. Hardware manufacturers really should recognise that third parties have both the time and the enthusiasm to try to improve devices like these. I’d dearly love to run Linux/Opie on my TX if only WiFi was supported.

Of course, people would argue that it’s not in the interest of manufacturers to help people hack their hardware. Hacking gives extended life to older machines, which has the potential to harm future sales.

But there are two straightforward counterarguments:

  1. if a hardware manufacturer embraces the hacking community, then the community would generally be more likely to give future support to that manufacturer (see SlimDevices/Logitech for a great example)
  2. in Palm’s case… their recent machines are just as crippled with crappy software – so there would be very little reason for a TX user to upgrade at all!

So I remain optimistic that someday WiFi on the Palm TX will burst into life under Linux. And when it does I’ll be able to say goodbye to PalmOS and start using the TX again.

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Filed under tech : Comments (0) : May 6th, 2008

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