Palm webOS system upgrades mandatory; hacking scene forbidden from tethering
By Nilay Patel 
posted June 15th 2009 11:48AM
posted June 15th 2009 11:48AM
We have been politely cautioned by Palm that any discussion of tethering during the Sprint exclusivity period (and perhaps beyond-we don't know yet) will probably cause Sprint to complain to Palm, and if that happened then Palm would be forced to react against the people running the IRC channel and this wiki.Yeah, that's pretty aggro for a company that needs to court all the developer support it can. We're not sure what'll happen after Sprint's exclusivity runs out, but we can't imagine any other carriers are going to be thrilled about hacked tethering options either, so we'd say Palm's going to keep the pressure on until unlocked GSM webOS devices hit the scene -- and we can almost guarantee that tethering hacks are going to make it into the wild regardless of Palm's actions.
Even worse for hackers, Palm's taking an unusually aggressive approach to webOS system updates -- they're mandatory. According to the support docs, webOS updates are automatically downloaded in the background within two days of being available, and they're required to be installed within a week of the download -- after seven days and four install prompts, the phone will give you a ten-minute countdown and then automatically begin installing the update. Sure, we can understand why Palm would want all of its devices to be updated, and we know that a lot of webOS system foundations are in flux while the Mojo SDK is being finalized, but forced updates seem extremely heavy-handed to us -- it's one thing to try and maintain control over a platform, it's another to keep it with an iron fist. Of course, it's probable that we'll see a hack to bypass all of this extremely soon, so maybe it'll all work itself out, but we'd really like to see Palm develop an official policy friendly towards hacking and homebrew and stick to it -- the Pre and webOS have attracted a lot of talent in the past two weeks, and it'd be a shame to lose it.
[Via PreThinking; thanks, Justin]
Read - Pre Dev Wiki tethering policy
Read - Palm webOS updates support doc
LAWL @ iPhone article in the background.
Apple sold more upgrades (3GS) in the last week than Palm (Pre) has sold since launch.
LMAO!
whatever
And GM sells more cobalts than corvettes, so is the cobalt better than the corvette?
@krische
You should enroll in Analogy 101. Does Cobalts cost as much as Covettes? The Pre and iPhone are basically the same price. If anything, iPhones are perceived to be the more expensive option.
@SY
You should enroll in English 101. "Does Cobalts cost as much as Covettes?"
3 posts about this article? Must be a slow day working at your apple store.....
@JC
Next, besides pointing out grammatical errors, bring some ACTUAL substance with your post.
They SOLD more units... However they can take their time SENDING the units out!
The PRE sales are IN HAND. Apple/AT&T can take weeks to distribute the 3GS's that they have "Sold".
Get back to me when in the first week of the 3GS more units end up in the HANDS of users than the first week of the Palm Pre.
listen iphone is a joke!! they are only going to release iphone 3gs to match the speed of the pre. the pre has the same ram as 3gs. gs is apples attempt to catch up to the pre. the pre is way cooler. works way faster. multitasks. has some great apps available. even syncs wirelessly through cloud based technology. and fro every apple fanboy info: i speed tested a iphone 3g vs palm pre using the site: big12sports.com and it took the iphone 3g 15 seconds longer than my aplm pre did! and i was running pandora in the background as well as google maps!!!pre rules
@TavisJohn:
Palm was able to keep up with the demand (on launch day) for the Pre because everyone already found their favorite phone. Why reinvent the wheel? The iPhone is the strongest smartphone available.
And don't give me that "the iPhone is far from a smartphone ... it took 2 years to come out with MMS" bullshit. No one uses MMS except for your 13 year old daughter putting grainy pics of her bare ass on MySpace. The age group that uses the iPhone doesn't give a flying fuck about MMS. MMS died back in the late 90's with TDMA and Nokia.
How much of the market does Sprint have these days, anyway? I don't even *KNOW* anyone that has Sprint. But just to be fair, maybe it's the area I live in.
re- ""And GM sells more cobalts than corvettes, so is the cobalt better than the corvette?""
no but GM is making a ton more money from their cobalts then from their corvette . where are you going with this analogy?
""the pre is way cooler. works way faster. multitasks. has some great apps available""
hahahahahahah ... i especially like the line "has some great apps available" hahahahah
what a douche bag
@shaggy2m0
While I have had both, and still feel, hardware wise, that the iPhone is better, the WebOS is what really makes the Pre shine. It may not be 100% final, but it's definitely a start in creating one of the most versatile Smartphone OS's ever.
And don't give me that crap about MMS is only for 13 year old girls. I work for a retail company, where 40 year old + managers take pictures of things in the store, and send them to employees.
I bet your next argument is copy and paste isn't necessary.
Do yourself a favor, take a moment to rethink everything, and take pride in the fact that they're both great devices, that have some minor flaws.
palm customers -- slaves to heartless bastards! sadness
I can count on one hand how many times I've needed to copy/paste in the past two years.
But I agree, it's simple enough of a feature that it should have been included @ release.
@the.sphenster:
And the iPhone has never needed MMS (dead "technology" [?]) because you can simply e-mail a photo.
Why would you e-mail a picture (MMS) to another phone where you can view it on another useless 3" screen? How does this help your retail business with 40+ year olds? They should know better!
MMS is only good for sexting. Which I have no use for.
@shaggy
as you said with copy and paste, you might only use it a handful of times, but MMS is such a simple and common feature, that it should have existed from the start. i use MMS about 1-2 times a month. the other day i was at lowes and i was purchasing legs to make a bar table to go with some bar stools i have. i forgot what the design was on the legs of the stools. instead of driving home to look at them or having my girlfriend describe them to me, i just had her send me a pic on my phone. my point is everything has its use, and MMS is certainly more useful to more people than an app to monitor a patients heart beat.
Realley Nilay? REALLY? You're making Palm out to be this terrible aggressor. Notice how they said "Politely"... That's a bit different than how you make it sound like they're bringing in lawyers with M4's and riot gear...
@shaggy2m0
"And the iPhone has never needed MMS (dead "technology" [?]) because you can simply e-mail a photo.
Why would you e-mail a picture (MMS) to another phone where you can view it on another useless 3" screen? How does this help your retail business with 40+ year olds? They should know better!
MMS is only good for sexting. Which I have no use for."
MMS is a dead technology? Really? Wireless carriers around the world will beg to differ with you, with MMS usage increasing each year.
If you had taken a picture and wanted/needed to get it to a person right away whom you knew was in a position to have access to email, how would you get it to their device? If the need was urgent or critical enough for that person to see it right away, would you seriously force that person to try and find a computer just to see your picture? If you did decide to go ahead and stoop down from your level, are you seriously saying that you just send it to the internet address the carrier maintains for each customer? Each carrier has a different address, so you would need to remember (or have input in your contacts beforehand) the address (based on carrier) that each person on your contact list uses. Why go through all that hassle when MMS just uses the person's phone number and let the carrier (and their intercarrier routing partners) handle the routing for you.
Or are you really saying that you only send to people who have smartphones that get email with attachments wirelessly because you wouldn't sully yourself by dealing with "those people"? And some people wonder why iPhone users have a stereotype of being arrogant....
Hey! At least Palm tried to make it look like it's all Sprint's fault for the crackdown, huh?
I get that from this.
If tethering is the only thing they fight against, I'll be ok with that. They have to take that since tethering would be a violation of the end user and their Sprint contract. Palm can't be seen condoning that right now.
As for the rest of the development, I don't think Palm will squash it.
The only problem is that since the SDK is not finished, some homebrew and early applications may run into problems with update. And I don't think the problem is that Palm is trying to mess with them like another certain fruit company.
Ouch! Mandatory updates?!
I wouldn't worry too much. Palm is taking forever just to send out an update just to fix the bugs that were in the Pre at launch.
"Forever" as in almost NINE whole days?
Well if they roll the updates to the dev's who are writing apps, then the devs expect the phones to have said updates, and will write their apps accordingly.
So you dont want to have to update, but you'll complain when your apps start freezing because they expect those updates??
silly silly people
@Phenoum However I am sure if it were Apple everyone would be up in arms over forced updates. As for devs and there apps, it is simple. Require a certain firmware version.
so palm is ruling with an iron fist ..... tell me again how much better this pre is?
apple - ehh its all good .. people are at least buying our phones
palm - holly crap !! those punks !!.. lets force all our customer into doing something they dont want. MANDATORY UPDATES NOW
customer - man this sprint network sucks ... so much for unlimited data ... unlimited in the one block that it actually works
As a developer I understand the forced updates. This ensures that every one is running the same version of software. It stinks to have a bug that was solved keep appearing because a user refuses to update there software. I think this is the same reason that other companies do mandatory updates. Another that I can think of is sony's PS3. If a bug shows up the developer can basically rely on the fact that there user is complaining about the same version of software they are developing.
This may seem "heavy-handed" to some but I the long run it greatly improves the product and reduces the time spent by a developer working on something that may no longer be an issue.
In my opinion "mandatory updates" = "Better product" in the long run. If you really don't like them just find the hack to prevent the update and you are good.
@----
Don't Sprint phones roam on Verizon for free? So you'd be able to use a Pre places that Verizon has their network setup. I don't see what the problem is as Verizon has the prized network that everybody raves about.
News just in: Phone companies don't like you.
Of course not, you are that pesky thing in between them and your wallet.
Capitalism is sooooo beautiful.
Hopefully once phones start going multi-platform there will be slightly more competition in customer satisfaction... but until that point its just not profitable to care.
Phone companies are there to make money and to provide a service you agree to when buying the phone. If you are using their resources for services they don't intend you to use, then you are violating a contract. You the user are the problem and not the phone company.
@kjb434: You say: "Phone companies are there to make money and to provide a service you agree to when buying the phone."
Correct. That means that if I buy "unlimited" I get unlimited (not not just service until I reach some random cut-off point.
Further it means that I should be able to expect the actual coverage promised (and don't have dropped calls like I experience in the middle of e.g. freaking Manhattan.
You say "If you are using their resources for services they don't intend you to use, then you are violating a contract."
Wrong. If I use their services for things they don't allow to, them I'm violating their TOS. Slight difference but important. If there is a new cool thing tomorrow I'm allowed to use it per default. Unless it is stated in the contract that it's not ok. It is certainly not my task to guess what kind of annoying restriction they dream up and imagine for all kinds of future innovations.
Lastly you say: "You the user are the problem and not the phone company."
Unless that's a joke, i think it is deeply offensive. My phone company is charging me HUGE bucks for inferiors service. When I compare both price and service level to my friends in Europe, then I get angry. If I compare to even what many African countries are offered, I feel shame for this great country. The US by far has the worst developed and most expensive mobile phone system of any "developed" nation I know.
@broli,
Yes, the Russian smartphones are so much better designed...
I wouldn't really mind the mandatory updates, just because for all the phones i've had the company never reminded me of system updates. And when the phone would break it would be sent to repair and i would get charged for a system upgrade that i could have done myself.
Being worried about the mandatory updates has cause, but I think Paln is going for a fan following with WebOS. A wide open webOS is good for work of mouth, I am more geared to buy a phone with an OS that has great flexibility rather than a restrained system like the Iphone.
ROFL, let all the pre lovers defend Palm now. Their future Apple bashing will be emasculated. MANDATORY updates!!
"ROFL, let all the pre lovers defend Palm now. Their future Apple bashing will be emasculated."
Will it? Notwithstanding the fact I, a Pre lover, have no particular hatred of the iPhone...the community interested in hacking will have no problems with the mandatory updates. Similar to the jailbreak community, I imagine the pre homebrew folks will have very little trouble subverting the updates.
Besides, how does mandatory updates somehow make discussion of the Pre's benefits invalid? We owe a lot to Apple in moving the smartphone market forward; similarly, I think the Pre has some valid contributions as well. Multitasking 3rd party apps and the manner they handle it is very nice.
Any intelligent rational person would have gotten the facts and seen this has to do with tethering only. That is obviously because Sprint doesn't want tethering, not that Palm is trying to rain on the developer's parade.
Gee, I guess you don't want to keep your stinkin' POS icrap up to date huh? Get a life and or just fuck off!
Mandatory updates are good from an end user perspective. Most people with computer updates just get in the compulsive habit of hitting "remind me later" instead of just taking the 5 minutes to update their system. I don't see this as an anti-hacker problem because hackers will create a way around this. This is more of a solution for the masses who've never heard of hacking phones.
"but forced updates seem extremely heavy-handed to us"
Palm is Evil. Apple is the savior.
Come-on. Wait until the updates happen and then judge. If the updates make the phone better, then it is a good thing and it should be mandatory. If the updates make the phone worse (which I doubt), that's a bad thing. If the updates "lock" the phone (forcing hackers to "unlock it again"), that's status quo (Tmo, Apple, Nokia, etc...).
When is comes to ROM updates, pretty much everyone does it...
Read this story on Gizmodo and Palm didn't sound like the bad guy, you guys put a completely different spin on it. It seems like Palm is ok with the hacking scene except it will react to complaints from Sprint. Thats a very different approach from what Apple has started...the cat and mouse game.
I agree too.
Palm was really friendly to developers back on the original Palm OS days. That was one of there positives since there were so many applications available.
This is definitely true. I actually know Sargun, the guy who ported Doom to the Pre, and we were talking about how easy it was to gain root on the Pre. I asked him if maybe Palm *wanted* the Pre to be hacked, and he said that he had talked to a Palm developer who said that that was basically the idea. Even from the quotes in this article, you can see that Palm is not being any more "aggro" than any other company; they just seem to want to keep Sprint off their backs.
It's no different. Palm and Apple are using the exact same approach. Both are very dev-friendly devices and companies, their carrier partners are the ones causing the problem. You will see the same "cat-and-mouse" from Palm as Sprint demands things like this 'TetherWatch09' forum-editing, and as devs complain about legitimate app sales being hindered by easy cracks.
The only thing that might be different is that the Sprint network is not GSM so you might not see aggressive tactics to keep the Pre on the Sprint network like AT&T and Apple did for the launch of the 3G, where the cool and convenient "activate your phone at home" concept got murdered in the back room.
Mandatory system updates are on the G1 as well. You get prompted about three times to install and then the phone will automatically reboot and install the update unless you are in the middle of a call.
It doesn't matter what you think of mandatory updates, but it certainly put a wet blanket on the Pre hacking scene.
I was the person who received that message from Palm. They have been extremely friendly to the hacking scene thus so far. Gizmodo has blown it out of proportion. WebOS updates are only required because Palm doesn't want the maintain old infrastructure necessary to keep old versions of the OS running. Tethering directly breaks the AUP/ToS, and Sprint obviously doesn't want that. Palm has to keep Sprint happy.
Can this get a bump to the top, PLEASE?