Saguaro (Palm OS)
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Saguaro is a program for Palm OS, designed to give Palm-OS-based PDAs multitasking features comparable to desktop computers. This is one of the first applications to allow true multitasking in the Palm OS environment. It is also the first application for Palm OS that has the chance of competing with the iPhone in terms of graphic performance.
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[edit] History
Saguaro, produced by PDA performance, has an extremely long development cycle, having been under development for three years. Currently, the full version is not available for download, but two beta versions have been released: Saguaro Beta (a private beta) and Saguaro Sneak Peek (a public beta). Information about the Saguaro private beta is severely lacking, however it is believed to be more full-featured than the public beta. An application called LineUp, also produced by PDA Performance, was released on November 30th and is based heavily on Saguaro code.
It is expected that the complete version will never be released due to the closure of PDA Performance on 2/29/2008
[edit] Specifications
Little data is available on the technical specifications of Saguaro, as PDA Performance has not released an SDK. However, Saguaro is believed to implement cooperative multitasking for Saguaro-compatible applications, referred to as "widgets". The term has caused speculation in the Palm community as to whether Saguaro is meant to replace Palm OS for running applications or is simply designed as a widget engine. Saguaro is also believed to be capable of running "legacy" palm applications by acting as a launcher.
Saguaro also has its own graphics engine, called "MojaveGL", which also functions as a window manager. MojaveGL allows for alpha blending, thus allowing Saguaro to create translucent windows.
[edit] LineUp
LineUp is a widget engine developed by PDA Performance that is heavily based on Saguaro's code. Saguaro was originally planned as a multitasking launcher and PDA Performance felt that the project was becoming too big, and released LineUp. LineUp has relatively few widgets released and most of these are news based (CNN, CNET, Washington Post, etc). No SDK has been released yet to allow third party developers to create widgets, causing many users to lose interest in the "fancy RSS reader." LineUp itself is quick and fluid, providing users a preview of Saguaro and the MojaveGL framework it uses.
