webOS SDK bemoaned by iPhone developer as Palm seeks game API engineers
By Thomas Ricker 
posted July 20th 2009 5:43AM
posted July 20th 2009 5:43AM
With such amazing software capabilities flourishing on the iPhone, Palm can't afford to wait a year while they make the transition from web apps to native apps in their SDK. Palm might have had a chance against the 2007 Apple SDK, but not the 2009 version. Not even close. With this limitation, webOS will not be taken seriously by consumers who place importance on games or sophisticated third party apps.Of course Palm, now with its deep Apple roots isn't blind to the issue. In fact, the kids at PreCentral have uncovered a Palm job listing from June 29th seeking Game Frameworks Engineers who will "design, implement, debug, and optimize frameworks for game development." So while the beta release of the webOS SDK might be limited, we'll key on the word beta for now. Remember, Super Monkey Ball wasn't built in a day -- it took a bit more than 365 of them before being offered after the launch of the original iPhone.
Read -- Craig A. Hunter
Read -- Palm game engineer listing
AHHHH Ok so we can all assume you have NEVER used an iphone from this statement. Do you work for palm? Wait they would never hire someone as uninformed as you. Please go back to the hole you got Pree'd out of.
Gibson - You really are an ignorant douche, aren't you? So what you're saying is that you have to interface with the Pre in some way in order to get it back to the menu? But for some reason you think doing it that way is somehow different than tapping a button onscreen on the iPhone?
Both actions require your finger to touch a part of the phone, I'm not sure what part of that you don't understand. The difference is that on the iPhone a developer can implement that in any way they choose. Multitouch, gestures, a single onscreen button, whatever. If you weren't eating such a huge bag of Palm's dicks you might be able to see the advantage in having MORE CHOICE.
But nobody said Palm fanboys were smart, either.
@Zak
The original comment was about how he thinks that the Pre should leverage it's real buttons to provide what he thinks is a better gaming experiance.
Gibson agreed and pointed out that in addition to the hardware buttons, there are two "soft" buttons and the center button.
You replied with a snarky comment
Gibson replied that he liked how the buttons weren't on the main screen and didn't obscure content and that he thought it was sweet.
Then you come back and sound like an even bigger iDiot, while calling Gibson a douche and a fanboy.
I can understand that he might not like the buttons to cover the content of his screen and prefers them to be below it, but I can't understand why you deem it necessary to pick fights and to belittle him because he likes a certain feature of a phone. Not only that, but you never even made constructive conversation. you spent all of your time and energy making fun of him and calling him stupid because *insert generic iPhone is better argument here*.
I really wish that Engadget would ACTUALLY moderate their website. Calling someone a douche, fanboy, and stupid has no place here.
I love how Apples SDK is well beyond Palms at this point, yet all we here is "it took Apple 2 years to add so and so feature... just wait for Palm..." ...and what has Palm been doing those last two years? They were in the cell phone industry for a decade and Apple stepped in and knocked them on their rear while they were playing around with the Foleo. Palm is scurrying to catch up. The Pre is a nice rebuttal. But it's just that... a rebuttal. It's a nice phone. It will improve. So will Apple. It's all the Apple hate that probably will NOT improve.
Please don't lump us all in one group. Most of us do not hate Apple, it is the fanbois.
you've got to realize that Apple wasn't always this lucrative and in fact got kicked in the sales butt for quite sometime. They researched, came back with new OS 10 and then OS X that people like. Palm just went through that period (maybe it's not over), but new devices like Pro and Pre show Palm has what it takes to compete.
Everyone talks about how Palm is not innovating, but copying Apple cos the new guys at Palm where from Apple. Hmmm! Interesting. Talented people typically don't stay in one place; they get bored or want more money and move on.
I like some of the features of the iPhone and the love fest it has, and want to own a Pre. I guess I am waiting for both to have an affair and spawn an iPre. They can even genetically fuse with HTC and birth an iPreFlow
Oh no, a "pretty dedicated iPhone developer" doesn't want to program a new generation of amazing accelerometer games for the Pre!
You PALM PREejaculators should just face the music now. iPhone and Android platform have too much momentum. Windows Mobile is run by the largest software company in the history of mankind. WebOS is stuck in no man's land and it ain't looking pretty.
About the only hope for you guys is Nokia buying Palm out and run WebOS as their default OS for all of their future phones. Even then, it will be an uphill battle.
Basically, you guys jumped on a bandwagon with one wheel.
You're right; I respect your opinion so much I'm smashing my phone right now. Thank God the internet has people like you to tell people when its over. Can I get an opinion on AMD vs Intel, Mac vs. PC, DSL vs. Cable, Honda vs. Toyota, Coke vs. Pepsi, KFC vs. Popeye's, and other critical competitions?
Goodness, the only critique I have to offer sir, is that you haven't told the world what to do enough!
PS I'm sorry to break the chain of replying to yourself. Carry on.
Buying a product you want to use for the length of your 18 month contract from a well known maker of smartphones is not jumping on a bandwagon you idiot.
Telling everyone why a product only just released to market is going to fail now that is jumping on a bandwagon.
@major4play
Buying into a new, unproven platform is jumping on a bandwagon, especially one that is hyped to be an iPhone killer.
My opinions of the Palm Pre have always been the same. There is no bandwagon here, just reality my friend.
"PALM PREejaculators" Looool!
That might be the best thing Nokia ever did for their shitty ass phone OS's. I can see an E series kicking serious ass with webOS on it.
@Sy
"Buying into a new, unproven platform is jumping on a bandwagon, especially one that is hyped to be an iPhone killer."
Funny, wasn't the iPhone a new, unproven platform not too long ago? I am going to assume that you were in line for the first iPhone, so doesn't that make you a hypocrite and a troll?
Why do you feel so threatened by anything not iPhone? Palm made a good competing device that has the capability to eat away at RIM's and Apple's market share. To me that is good for everyone, so why hate?
You sound like a raving fanboi...
@Tsing Tao
Please elaborate on what makes WebOS a shitty ass OS and makes the iPhone OS the best thing since sliced bread? Or look at the line above...
@Gibson
How is the guy full of shit? Does the Pre allow access to the OpenGL based hardware? And if it does, can you provide proof showing that the guy is wrong?
Is the accelorometer polling in fact greater than 4Hz?
You claim the man is full of shit, yet offer no verification of those claims.
Ding ding ding! We have a winnar!
You'll notice none of the PRE-ejaculators are responding to this post. I'd say "I wonder why" if it weren't so completely obvious. They just don't like people pointing out the flaws in WebOS.
Oh, he's right (I don't know about the tilt polling, however). His claims that it affects what game developers can do on the device is wrong, however.
Also, @Zak,
You aren't a developer, that much is clear, you have no say in the matter. You're simply a fanboy, a jealous one at that.
@Gibson SO you're a big fancy developer but you don't even know the polling rate for the accelerometer data? Just a quick google search of the combined terms "Mojo SDK openGL" returns obviously a ton of tech blogs covering this guys findings. What it doesn’t return is ANYONE proving that he is wrong. Of course neither have you.
Gibson, you ignorant slut. You just made his point for him. His point was that you can't refute what he's saying - because you CAN'T. I assume you would have done it by now if you could. You saying "Nope, he's wrong" is NOT GOOD ENOUGH. Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?
PROVE. IT. With FACTS. You say it doesn't interfere with game development, I say that 4Hz for the accelerometer is not even close to being good enough to work with games. We're right, you're wrong. You just don't want to admit it because your head is so far up Palm's ass that you're starting to like the smell.
You want to prove us wrong, mr. awesome developer, then you make a game that uses the 4Hz sampling rate for the accelerometer. Put your money where your mouth is, cowboy. Until then you might as well just shut the fuck up, since you don't seem to be capable of backing up anything you say with anything other than "I'm right because I say I am".
I think, Palm is waiting for flash for Pre.
I don't think they are, really.
Not everyone spends all day playing games on their phone.
There are forums and other blogs that have specific sections for iPhone apps. Why would you post something like this on a Pre topic? Typical...
"kind of sophisticated apps users now expect from their handhelds"
huh, 99% of the iPhone apps provide less than ifart or 8-ball capability. Sure all the fades and swooshes are cool, but in the end, users really think that's sophisticated?
Another person who hasn’t used an iphone. In case not a single one of you has bothered to do a single bit of poking around, there are a ton of productivity apps of all kinds, this 99% of iphone apps blah blah blah BS is just that bullshit. Now back to managing my servers from my iphone.
Please if you know nothing, all you do is make yourself the high mountain of ignorance when you say crap like this.
Wow...so much hostility. The pre and the iphone are both great phones. Why does one have to always be the worst thing ever in someone's opinion. Can't palm fix the polling rate with an update and give access to opengl like the article was saying?
because these dipshits have nothing better to do than bitch about which phone is best... it's moronic.
Yes. Most of the "things that are going to kill the Pre" are fixable by software updates. Hopefully once the App catalog is released to the public most of this bickering will stop. If anyone who is bashing the Pre had ever actually used one instead of repeating Paul A. Chapel's comments, as well as if anyone who bashed the iPhone had ever used one, then almost none of these arguments would exist. Sadly people seem to be insecure with their phone choice and see fit to belittle other peoples phones to make themselves feel better.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute!!
This guys is right: no OpenGL in the APIs and (apparently) 4hz polling for tilt. But these can be fixed with an firmware update.
Where this guy is wrong (and a lot of people who seem to misunderstand the Pre architecture in a fundamental way:
"Palm can't afford to wait a year while they make the transition from web apps to native apps in their SDK. Palm might have had a chance against the 2007 Apple SDK,"
Ummm - those iPhone web apps were web apps running on a standard web server that used the WEB to server the content to the mobile safari browser. I.e. - the iPhone had a good browser and could view web pages with CSS, javascript support.
The Palm Pre 'web apps' are not WEB apps in teh sense that the iPhone web apps are; they are 'web OS' apps that use the same rendering (html/css/javascript) as web apps but they aren't served over the WEB - they are installed ON THE PHONE and the phone IS the server. That's a very, very important difference. For one thing, these apps access local data and other Pre features directly. For another, these apps are faster than an iPhone web app because it isn't coming from the web (though they can also access the web). For the iPhone, their idea of a web app SDK was basically to allow the ability to script the iPhone UI widgetsinto the web pages - but there are still just web pages coming over the net. No connection - no app. Not at all the same for the Pre: no connection? You still have those "web apps" (that are - again - NOT really web apps because the don't come over the web and don't require a connection TO the web; they are web OS apps).
Now that is NOT ideal for gaming. But it is a pretty damned clever way to do many / most other kinds of apps. It makes development easy. And it is much closer to a real development SDK then Apple had in 2007 with their web app approach. I'm not dissing Apple (and think they clearly provide more powerful development with their current SDK), but it is idiotic to think that the Palm Pre only has iPhone 2007 style web apps - not the same at all.
What the fuck is this?! Facts on Engadget? BLASPHEMY!!
Well at least be thankful that the Pre's SDK doesn't have the "Blow_up_in_you_effin_pocket()" call like the iPhone obviously does!