Palm says no webOS SDK till end of Summer
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted Jun 19th 2009 3:26PM
posted Jun 19th 2009 3:26PM
With the Pre now in customers' hands and reports of webOS hacks in the news, we know that you are more anxious than ever to get access to the SDK and start developing for webOS.
We've been working very hard on the SDK and are eager to open access on a wider scale, but the software and the developer services to support it just aren't ready yet.
This should come as a bit of a blow to developers hoping to get cracking on Pre software, and will unquestionably turn those who can't bear the wait towards the fully stocked iPhone or Android platforms. However, Palm does say that they'll be opening the program up a bit wider, stating in the post that they plan to crank the number of devs with the early SDK in their hands up from "hundreds to thousands" over the next few weeks. Apparently, that's part of process the company is beginning to ration out access, building to a full release.
Another bit of puzzling wordsmithing in this post comes in the form of the company's stance on homebrew and DIY "experiments" (their words) which have come to light in the past couple of weeks. So says Palm:
As on any popular platform, we recognize that some developers will experiment in ways that cross official boundaries, but we believe that our formal offerings – and community efforts built around those offerings – will provide the best experience for the vast majority of webOS developers and users.
So while it's not exactly a keep-off-the-grass statement, it certainly reads vaguely as to whether or not the company will lock out jailbreakers hoping to dive deeper into webOS. Further confusing the matter? Palm has just released the Linux source code used to compile the Pre's firmware, making the possibility of cooked / custom ROMs a very serious reality, and obviously opening the floor to a lot of said experimentation. Mixed messages? Yes. Our word to Palm right now? Put every effort into getting that SDK out, or you're at risk of quickly burning through all the good will you've just engendered.
Update: We've added some info above which reflects Palm's statement that it will be considerably widening its pool of developers over the next few weeks with access to the early SDK.
Read - An update on the early access program and the SDK
Read - Open source packages
Wow, will people still have Pre's in the Summer?
because of palms stupidity no one will be using this. palm should of released the sdk before the phone came out so by the time the pre was released developers would have almost been finished with their apps and the consumer wouldn't have to wait months just to have third party apps. this phone is pretty much dead now because average people are going to complain that this phone doesn't have any apps and a negative stigma is going to form around it .for christ sake even the g1 had more apps on its opening day (50 apps)
I don't know, I don't see the limited number of initial apps to be a huge issue for me (am grabbing a Pre the second it becomes available on the everything plus referral program).
I've played with the phone for a total of about 2 hours in Sprint stores at this point, and the core features of the phone are enough to make it a smart and useful purchase for me. Unlimited everything on the sprint plan, GPS nav, awesome calendar and sync features... that's a pretty good core system if you ask me.
If the phone were simply an operating system and a dialer, then I would see the urgency for 3rd party applications (sort of like Windows Mobile). If people just want to play a bunch of games on their phone, they should be looking at the iPhone or a handheld gaming system.
I think the Pre will succeed with people like me. I'm a huge PC gamer, but I don't need to be playing games every waking minute on every device I own. Plus I want an alternative to the iPhone plan that does the same things (and in some areas does it better), and costs much less to boot.
I don't know how many of "me" there are out there, but I suppose we'll find out when we see how many Pres Palm sells in the first year.
@Jay Jay
Android was an open source project everyone had access to for over 2 years. WebOS was not. Of course Palm couldn't release the SDK when the damn OS wasn't even finished yet.
@Joshua
Did you bother to read Palm's announcement? Because if you did you would have read that Palm is releasing the beta SDK to THOUSANDS of developers in the next couple of weeks. Development for WebOS is hardly coming to a standstill, but I guess according to you, we should all abandon hope and go with OSX or Android.
Again, what a dick.
I'm so shocked the hypocritical Apple Fanbois are calling this a death wish for Palm. I think Palm users can do without their farting apps until the end of summer.
dude. give palm a break.
it took apple forever to release the sdk after the iphone was released into the wild.
an sdk later this summer for the Pre is very reasonable.
@ jay jay
I just want to add that this fascination with Apps ever since Apple released 2.0 OS is ridiculous. Besides games, most apps are just a slightly fancier version of the Web site that already exists. In some cases, like with ESPN, I find the Web site to be a better alternative to the app that compliments it.
Also, the Pre has always had a more business centered approach. It was pretty clear that it wants to grab back the old Palm Pilot crowd, not necessarily the crowd whose first smart phone was the iPhone. These two demographics have two very different sets of needs/wants, and I don't think having a huge SDK available for business apps, is going to kill sales immediately.
To the critics here -- no one wants to see Palm and webOS succeed more than I do. I think it's a great platform, and it's nice that they're opening the early SDK up to more devs, but what they really need is something offer to everyone who wants to participate.
The phone is out now, webOS is out now, and it needs software flowing. If you had a Pre, you would know that it's been days and days since a single new app has popped up in the App Catalog. That is disheartening for end-users.
"I'm so shocked the hypocritical Apple Fanbois are calling this a death wish for Palm. I think Palm users can do without their farting apps until the end of summer."
It's amazing isnt it?
Their phone of choice had no SDK for a year after it was released, and that was no biggie for them.
But what amounts to a couple of months for the Pre? "no one is going to use it by then! This is the death of the Pre!!!!!"
As much as they like to act so snotty and pretend like all the other phone platforms are supposedly so bad, they seem desperate to smear this one.
@Joshua
Sorry for calling you a dick. Twice. However:
You're title is misleading as hell. Palm isn't releasing the SDK PUBLICLY for a couple of months, but they say in THAT VERY SAME STATEMENT YOU QUOTED they are releasing it to THOUSANDS of select developers over the next couple of weeks. The title of your post and encouragement for developers to look elsewhere sounds like you really don't want Palm, the Pre or WebOS to succeed.
Please edit your post to tell the ACTUAL story. Thanks.
@darkstar
Last year, Apple had no competition sorta speak. Right now, Palm is facing tough competition between Apple and Android-based phones for developers. Delaying the release of the SDK for 3 months is almost a death sentence for the Palm Pre.
Good luck Palm Pre ...you need it.
Why do some choose to be ignorant? As some have said, the original iphone did not have an SDK until almost a year after it launched. Also, RIMM sold 3.5 million units in their last quarter, "RIMM is seriously lacking (according to you Apple fanatics) when is comes to an app-store", if that's the case, how is it that RIMM outsells Apple?!?
@p3t3b2
Um, because Blackberry has brand equity? It's a known and established brand, especially in the enterprise sector? It's called Crackberry for a reason.
The Palm Pre? Not so much.
@Joshua
Thank you for editing your story. I don't suppose it would be too much to ask to edit the title, too?
"Palm says no public webOS SDK till end of Summer"
That's a little more accurate. Again, thanks for the edit.
Thanks, Palm, for giving the iPhone even more of a lead. By the end of the summer the App Store should be up to 60,000 apps. I agree that Palm developers should have more patience, but the smartphone race is going hot and heavy in the Apps department since almost everyone and their mother opened up a corporate app store. I don't think they should slap a "beta" tag on it just to get it out either. It's not just the number of apps, but developers don't want to sit around waiting and are definitely going to go to Apple and maybe they won't come back to Palm. Two or three months isn't a long time, but things change so fast in the cellphone world.
How dare they not have the SDK ready on day 1!! They're making us wait two whole months?! The nerve! This is egregious!! Egregious I say! They should have followed Apple's lead and had the SDK out on day 1!!!
Oh, wait...
Seriously, people need to calm down. They're releasing a polished SDK by the end of summer and in the meantime they're giving you source code. Meaning you can do much more than web-based apps right now, for free. People are never happy...
I think you guys are missing the big point. When Apple released their SDK, they had no effective competition in the App market. When PALM release their SDK, the iPhone will have 80,000 apps. They're averaging 10,000 apps a month right now. They have 40 million users for their platform. They may have as many as 5 million more users by the time PALM's SDK comes out. And they're about to release the iPhone in China.
PALM should of had this SDK out from day one.
And really, come on. If you really wanted to be one of the first to use the beta SDK, you could have signed up to be a beta developer like I did. It was on their website for months.
Also, you don't think that the instant that SDK is out, someone isn't going to leak it to the outside world? Come on now.
@Paul
What's the point of using a web-based phone like the iPhone in a country like China that has the Great Firewall of China. Government-approved apps only.
And the last time I checked, the iPhone was doing poorly in technology-rich countries like Japan. They're having to give it away free, and even then, people are more willing to buy a feature-centric phone vs. a phone that is a "jack of all trades, master of none". This has been well-documented.
It's all about market size.. Apple was smart to wait until the iPhone market was large enough for it to be worth to develop on. With Palm though it will never be anywhere near the size of the Apple market when the iPhone came out... so really when they come out with it is irrelevant, as it won't be worth the resources to develop on anyways. Maybe block out Pre's from your javascript based web apps and sell them in the app catalog.. that is the only thing that would be worth it.
@ Darkstar,
What break is there to give. Apple had never done a phone, Palm has a long history of phones. While WebOS is new, like iPhone OS X is new the SDKs are quite different in scale. Palm has yet to announce an SDK with rich APIs that tie into the HW, so far they are just HTML5 DB pages using the Apple-funded WebKit. We’re talking about an SDK for making local webpages in HTML, JS and CSS. Not exactly the same thing.
The problem that many have with Palm, myself included, is not how Palm did so well in marketing and developing a media-rich smartphone that targeted the areas that iPhone did not, but how they dropped the ball with a release date right before the well rumoured iPhone announcement. This is especially troubling when they had too many issues to work out, including the lack of an SDK. They would have been better off to release the device a few months on either end of the iPhone announcement and after it was a more complete package. Despite having a much better CPU, GPU, double the RAM of the original iPhone and uses a much lighter, simpler OS it still gets beat in many performance tests because it’s not well optimized.
I want Palm to be contender again, and it annoys me that they are dropping the ball so late in the game. Luckily, I bought stock back in January after the announcement so I’m okay. I’ll probably be selling next week after I get to 14x my investment.
As for your “took forever” comment, Apple announced the SDK was coming in October 2007 and stated a release date of February 2008. They released on March 6th. I don’t think 6 days is really the same delay as Palm’s webcode SDK.
There's no trophy for "fast SDK release." It doesn't matter how slowly or quickly the SDK hits. What *matters* is what the competition is doing. As long as the Pre is competing with the iPhone and Android, not having an SDK available hurts them. Even if they released the SDK the day the Pre came out, they'd be playing catch up -- the longer they wait, the harder it is, no matter how good the phone.
If they release their SDK 2 days sooner than Apple did (after the release of the iPhone) I don't think saying "but we did it faster than Apple did!!" would appease shareholders.
It just seems so obvious, yet the fanboys are pretending that the only thing that matters is some absurd SDK-release-speed competition.
@UnixSystemsEngineer -- You've put it perfectly. It's important because the platforms they're competing against (and I mean competing for developer mindshare) have established SDKs which anyone can get. It's not about where they are compared to Apple in 2007, it's about where they are compared to Apple / Google / etc. now.
Dear god Paul! I think everyone will agree with me when I say STFU. I agree that the iPhone is a good device, but you take it TOO FAR. If you're just trolling then you've won, you've managed to piss EVERYONE off!
Quality, not quantity.
@Joshua with all the respect, I don't think you are correct. End of summer of 3 months away. How many phones will PALM sell till end of summer? 2 million? 5 million? Do you really think that FART 1, 2, 3 will help to add to this number?
Beta developers are usually people who really care and they are THE developers. A lot of them have the beta SDK now.
How many iPhone Apps (outside Apple apps) do you use daily? my GF has iPhone and with 30 apps downloaded, she plays ONE (thats 1) game.
On a side, this is not a battle you can win in 2 months, RIM sold way more phones in Q1 than Apple in US, NOKIA has still 40%+ of all smartphones and is HUGE in Europe ... what can help more than anything else is GSM version
JimboJones,
You're probably right, but you have to realize how susceptible people are to the language of marketing.
"50,000 apps vs. 13 apps."
It doesn't matter how many fart apps there are, people will look at that and assume that the former is a more important device / they are joining a community of people who like it / more = better.
I can't tell you how many people I run into who are iPhone owners that talk about the "app store" like its the 8th wonder of the world, and "apps" like mobile software is something exclusive and new just for Apple users.
Ultimately I don't care -- people should use what they want to use. I'm just saying that people aren't going to be Palm Pre apologists just because the iPhone has been out longer and has had more time to develop. They will buy what sounds and looks more appealing.
How many people have pasted the full "app store" list on Engadget? If the app store becomes synonymous with mobile software, like Google has become with internet search, competitors are in for a lot of trouble. In some cases you don't have to show that your stuff is better than the competition, only make people think its the ONLY stuff. Not one person in my professional or social life to date has heard of the Palm Pre.
i cannot stop laughing .... this is really a feature I'm not looking for
McDonald's wi-fi (hundreds of thousands)
Summer is such a northern-hemisphere-centric designation!
Also, could everyone please quit with the 'LACKING BECAUSE OF THE FOLLOWING" copypasta? It was annoying enough the first time.
Way to kill momentum...
AMG?
///AMG!!!!
By the time PALM gets this SDK out, the iPhone will more than likely have about 80,000 apps. Apple is averaging about 10,000 new apps a month. Good luck with that.
Didn't your mother ever teach you that quality matters more than quantity Paul? Considering that 79,999 of those apps will be iFart apps I think I'd rather wait and see what develops for the Pre.
Anyway, judging from your comments in the iPhone threads, I thought you were opposed to trolling and hating?
How the heck is stating a fact trolling? I'm just saying what everyone here is thinking. The fact that you don't like what I'm saying doesn't make me a troll, it just makes you a whiner.
If I were coming here to spam "OMG the iPhone PWNS the Pre," then I would agree with you, but I'm not.
Stop being so freaking sensitive.
@Paul
As to how many GOOD apps though....
No offense to any supporters of any mobile phone/os/whatever but I happen to own an Iphone and I only have about 3 total pages of apps (including the apple factory installed) apps on my phone because the rest are just plain junk.
In fact, the biggest draw for most people I know isn't the fact that there are over 50,000 apps in the appstore...it almost seems like most of 'em enjoy the search more than the actual app. I guess they just like the IDEA of having a bunch of apps released....even if they wouldn't ever actually use them.
"If I were coming here to spam "OMG the iPhone PWNS the Pre," then I would agree with you, but I'm not."
Wow...
You mean you actually think that isn't the summary of all of the garbage you've been posting?
@jakem
Look, I've seen the apps available for the Pre and it's not like PALM is going to magically have better apps available for the Pre than what's availabe for the iPhone now. They've got a weather app, Pandora, Fandango, an Associated Press app, a Stock app and a bunch of crappy social networking apps. I mean the quality issues affecting the iPhone App market is indicative of most platforms. 97 percent of anything is usually crap.
So dismissing the iPhone's app market based on that criteria is not going to help your argument. The reality is, people buying a Pre are going to have to WAIT. Why wait when you can have what's available on the iPhone NOW.
Paul, this thread is about Palm and the Pre, not the iPhone. You are a troll and a hater, end of story
You know, if the iPhone didn't exist, no one would be complaining about the lateness of PALM's SDK. The iPhone is the 800 lb elephant in the room, whether you guys want to admit it or not.
Representatives at PALM keep comparing the Pre to the iPhone. I mean, Roger McNamee pretty much said that the Pre was going to eat the iPhone for breakfast, so I think it's fair to compare the iPhone to Pre. The reality of the situation is that you can't not mention the Pre without relating it to the iPhone.
Hey I love the iPhone, but I'm also a developer and know the challenges of building a solid SDK, even if most of it revolves around a web rendering engine.
Give these guys a break, it took a long time for Apple to get it right too, their SDK is just now starting to be feature complete with the notification API activated --- and that's 24 months after the release of the iPhone!
@loosely_coupled, who said: "...I'm also a developer and know the challenges of building a solid SDK"
That's a great point, which is why I people should get off Apple's back about a lot of features they were late to develop. I've noticed that a lot of people aren't complaining about the lack of video recording and voice dailing or remote wipe on the Pre in the same way they were complaining about the iPhone. I mean, PALM has been making phones a lot longer than Apple, so they should have all that stuff, right?
I don't read all the Pre articles, but do they even have flash on their web browser yet?
I started voting MINUS every post Paul makes ... let's make the world better place
Paul, we all know you own iPhone, iPod, iLaptop, AppleTV, iRouter and everything else Apple makes ... I do as well, Apple makes the best products, they care about users, always pay their developers on time, never create dumb policies and always create open source apps only.
@JimboJones
Well, thank you very much. I will always respect your right to voice your opinion. I might not completely read it, but I will respect that right.
@jake,
Your point is well taken, however there are many very good apps in the app store. Even if 90% are absolute crap, they still have many 1,000s more good applications than palm. Free apps are free for a reason. You get what you pay for...
Personally I want the Pre to succeed to pressure Apple to make the iPhone even better and Microsoft as well.
Microsoft and Palm didn't get serious about the usability of their devices until Apple was successful with the iPhone. I've used a Treo - it isn't a fun device to use.
Whether you like Apple or not you have to admit 2 things:
1. The appearance of the iPhone in the market forced the other players to reevaluate their platforms
2. The original iPhone, from a company that has never made a phone, was a hugely successful achievement.
Apple is the company to beat in this area. Yes, nokia, etc sells more units, but Apple makes a much bigger profit per phone, and they have something like $30B in cash with which to pummel the market if they want to.
wow, HUGE mistake!!!
Not really. Developers will want a finished SDK to work with, and they still have a bunch of small bugs to fix.
Oh version 1.0.x software.
I wouldn't say #1 pre fanboy...
A fanboy, yes but I'm sure there is worse.
@TRS
#1 Pre Owner.
#2 TBC?
@Templarian
judging by your avatar u obviously dont like the pre that much
lol
i agree with you btw
omg IM FIRST!!!!
OMG!
OMFG!
AMG!
oh for some reason i thought it already came out...
and yeah huge mistake on their part
Yeah, I thought the same thing. The Pre isn't as impressive as it was a few months ago.
They better speed it uuuuuuuup....but I don't mind I still enjoy my pre
Wow that means the first flagship apps won't be coming for at least a month or two after that. I feel bad for Pre owners.
No it doesn't. Palm also said they are giving the beta SDK to THOUSANDS of developers in the next couple of weeks. Don't believe everything you read here.
Anyone know where one may find that rather snazzy background!?
Wanna put in on my zune, how cool am I...
They better speed it uuuuuuuup....but I don't mind I still enjoy my pre
And even by the end of the summer.. the market will still be too small for the Pre to be worth developing on.
There very few mobile app developers that have made a lot of money from their apps. This is across WinMo, old Palm OS, Blackberry. The same holds true for the Apple App store where to crack top 40 you need like 30 dls a day at a $0.99 price point.The app store concept was novel in that it gave these developers a better chance of making money as ppl tended to pirate copies of WinMo and Palm software. Currently with the popularity of the iPhone as a dev you have a large market for your app and good chance of getting paid. Unfortunately along with that benefit the app store is flooded with competitors doing the same thing and clutter of useless programs making it hard for ppl to see your app.
The Pre/Palm market is big enough for devs to make money. There were plenty of apps back on the old Palm OS even when ppl were pirating their apps. They still won't get rich but you have less clutter to sort through to get your app noticed.
I know a lot of you learned about smartphones with the iPhone but there was plenty of development and 3rd party apps available for other platforms. That doesn't end because of the sheer volume of the Apple app store. If you create a useful application on any platform you have an opportunity to make a little cash long as people aren't pirating your shit.
Simply put, you're wrong.
As someone who has apps on several different mobile platforms, I can tell you that the Apple App Store has changed the market dynamics across all mobile platforms. You can no longer sell a similar app for $20-$30 on another mobile platform when it's only 0.99 cents or even free on the iPhone, and that is what you would need to be able to do for it to be worth it on the Pre.
P.S. your sales numbers are so far off that it either leads me to believe that they are either category specific, completely made up, or quoted off a blog somewhere where they were completely made up.
lol@gunner
can someone please tell me where they get these wallpapers from. Ive been trying to find this one and the one that appers on the blackbery storm.
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/05/29/verizon-finally-releasing-blackberry-storm-update-this-weekend/#readercomments
id be grateful if someone could tell me how to get them. id like to have the the iphone. :-)
-captain obvious, faster than the speed of stupid.
OMG, Failst!!!!!!
it'll be leaked before then
was supposed to go to gunner
ROM cookers, Palm needs you!
On a positive note, there may well be some awesome ROM's available by the end of the summer, that Palm can include features from in official releases.
The glass is half full.....
Rom cooking's already beginning, and the process shouldn't be too crazy thanks to Palm's rom flashing tool and the system's Linux base. But there isn't really as much need for this as there is for the SDK.
If you head over to the PreCentral.net WebOS Dev forums, you'll see that people are just starting to modify and create apps, but until the SDK becomes available, it'll be just "homebrew" style - nifty, but not always the most polished or full-featured.
As a Pre owner, I'm deeply disappointed that Palm won't have the SDK for another few months. The device has momentum now, and it'll be awfully hard to get that back if it's lost.
Ready or not Palm, make what you've got available, stick a "Beta" tag on it, and let us have a go.
"it certainly reads vaguely as to whether or not the company will lock out jailbreakers hoping to dive deeper into webOS."
Its not really that mixed of a message. All they are saying is that they don't want to guarantee any applications that are developed from the unofficial SDK.
Nothing in that statement explicitly supported "unofficial" experimentation, but there was no draconian restriction of it, either... unlike some other platform hosts we know of.
That other phone didn't have an SDK for nearly 1 YEAR. What, this is just 2-3 months and people go crazy? Sigh. Is patience ever considered anymore?
Patience? Dragging your feet in the wireless arena = death. This announcement is a major mood killer... might as well put your pants back on, people. :(
The iPhone didn't have a single huge popular phone with tons of apps everyone wants to compete against from a company with a very effective strategy. Sure it had WinMo to contend with but WinMo was fractured amongst a ton of crappy phones and had no app store.
The Pre does have a competitor in this respect - the iPhone.
Palm is not Apple, they don't have the financial stability or the rapt attention of the market to get away with it.
Considering their competition, Palm should have had the SDK ready to go well before the Pre was released (it is in some fashion, as they have partners with access to a native SDK.)
Certainly gives me no confidence in Palm to manage this successfully.
And you all think Palm has enough money to do everything at once? RIDICULOUS! Look at where Palm was before it announced the Pre. Look at where Apple was before it announced the iPhone. Apple was in a MUCH MORE SECURE position than Palm was. Maybe, thinking logically for one second, they didn't have the ABILITY to have this thing ready yet. Products need money, and Palm didn't have any until the Pre launched.
THINK LOGICALLY PEOPLE.
Well this is what Apple fans like to do.
They love to try to move the bar in whatever direction they need to in order to keep the "everyone sucks but Apple" drumbeat going.
First it was the design of the phones.
Then the phones have no apps.
Then it will be the # of apps isnt as large as Apple's.
Then it will be that the apps arent as cool.
Then they will move onto something else! And on and on and on.
all along the way they will proclaim that company A will fail or go out of business if they can fulfill the requirements they set down, again they will always move the stick as far away as they need to do in order to make sure they could ever get there.
Mind you any "deficiency" that the iPhone has compared to other platforms is conveniently ignored as no big deal.
The iPhone didn't have an SDK for a full year because when it first came out Apple was saying that it would NEVER have an SDK. It was a feature added on after the fact, nobody was left hanging waiting for it when the phone came out. Expectations are different when you tout the greatness of your SDK at the product unveiling.
pAlm is ripping off all iPhone ideas
iTunes
nonreplaceable memory
app store wannabee
open sdk kit for Joe blows
multitouch
packaging I'll stop there.
Jove needs to sue!!
This obviously doesn't need a response, since it will probably go over your head, but why not?
pAlm is ripping off all iPhone ideas
- No.
iTunes -- Optional, duh.
nonreplaceable memory -- Apple invented this?
app store wannabee -- Apple invented software too?
open sdk kit for Joe blows -- I wouldn't call Apple's app process "open."
multitouch -- Show me the patent, fucker.
packaging I'll stop there -- Good, I was afraid I'd continue to learn NOTHING.
@hated
are you jealous because palm's usb cable, headphones, are way nicer than apples??
iPhone has 50000 apps
pre under 50 apps in 13 years existence
which smartphone will provide more satisfaction,?
Not sure, are you only happy if you can have 50,000 cheeseburgers at the same time?
...... 13 years?
Huh?
WebOS has been in existence for less than two weeks.
I guess the 10's of thousands of existing Palm applications that can run under the Palm OS emulator don't count?
Sure, they don't have the zing of a new UI, but many of them are solid, usable applications.
If you exclude the 25000+ iPhone fart applications, I'd say that the 2 platforms are basically equal at this point.
Palm Pre. I like the easy questions.
Huh?
"3 years existance"
More like, 3 weeks.
WebOs is brand new.
So is the Pre.
Idiiiiiot.
Spiny,
Oh enough with the 25k fart apps already... so what if there are even afew dozen? There's still about 50k OTHER great apps that are eminently usable on a daily basis... its a serious platform as it is, with there about to be an explosion in usefulness due to the APIs in 3.0, and Palm is foolish to ignore this. Think about it: all the money people spent on apps LOCKS THEM IN to the iPhone platform for years. Palm NEEDS apps to make the Pre and webOS a success.
Oh enough with the 25k fart apps already... so what if there are even afew dozen? There's still about 50k OTHER great apps that are eminently usable on a daily basis... its a serious platform as it is, with there about to be an explosion in usefulness due to the APIs in 3.0, and Palm is foolish to ignore this. Think about it: all the money people spent on apps LOCKS THEM IN to the iPhone platform for years. Palm NEEDS apps to make the Pre and webOS a success.
Ok, this is a complete myth.
Apple fans love to act as if these 50,000 apps are just all award-winning examples of software development.
Guess what? Many of them are as useless and forgettable as any apps on EVERY platform.
Some are clones of old games, clones of each other, apps that calculate tips, weather apps, apps to tell you the time in Australia.
In short they are nothing to act as if cannot be done with equal numbers on other platforms.
It's like saying that since Windows has millions more apps than OSX, that means OSX is completely useless and should be abandoned.
Now how many Apple fans are going to agree with that?
@DT
Thanks for making my point. There are thousands of people that have purchased Palm apps over the years that one might consider "locked in". The emulator on the Pre was the smartest move Palm ever did. With 10's of thousands of useful applications available on day one, they can take a bit longer to get the SDK out the door, and ensure that it's ready for prime time.
The last thing Palm needs at this point is to release a buggy API. I'm sure it'll be released when it's ready.
In the meantime, the user base can check out palmgear.com for a taste of what's to come. Of course, they may be disappointed, as there doesn't appear to be a fart application available for the Palm. Bummer.
How long until we see an OSX emulator for the pre? :-)
By October pre will be dead lol!
iPhone truly best ecosystem n has more Internet traffic across it's device.
In America iPhone carries 67% of all mobil Internet traffic.
Now that is a sick statistic dude! That no one can touch.
Agree?
Yay! Keep it coming!
I guess...
But thats what the damn phone was first known for before the app store. Two things:
iPod
Great web device.
Thats really not all that surprising. It'd be like if Blackberry's weren't the most popular in businesses.
Big surprise....
And that is probably why AT&T's network is so slow. Mobile internet traffic is good but devices sold is better.
Josh, where do you get your awesome wallpapers?
Good question.
Wallpaper please!!!
yeah i wan to know too! Josh has some of the most awesome-ish wallpapers!
Yeah Please tell us from where did u get them
Just for you guys -- four custom wallpapers, perfect for the iPhone or Pre (480 x 320).
http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/eng_bgs.zip
or G1 :)
(thanks, josh)
OFF TOPIC
hahaha... webOS... sounds like testicles in spanish...
would you like to be a *testicles* developer?