Palm retroactively refunding $50 webOS app submission fee -- each and every one
By Sean Hollister 
posted June 29th 2010 9:10PM
posted June 29th 2010 9:10PM
posted June 29th 2010 9:10PM
powered by gdgt
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i'm loving the pre at 800MHz and webOS's homebrew community. I love palm as a company that they foster the growth of the homebrew scene. Go palm. They love developers.
@John Stathakis agreed, WebOS is SO much better!
The fact that Palm made the Konami Code the way to open Developer's Mode in WebOS wins them some geek cred, too.
@John Stathakis
cool looks like i can finally get a comment on the front page of comments...!
@statickeith
WebOS can't compete with iOS4. Nobody but apple can make multitasking without multitasking. And nobody else has a compass that nice.
@dmanjrod Go away.
@dmanjrod
Holy shit are you still bragging about the compass on a different post?
@John Stathakis My brother who has a major penchant for losing phones over the course of the past year has had a WM phone, a BlackBerry, an iPhone and most recently a Palm Pre. He has stated that the Pre is his favorite phone out of all of them. He says its the most comfortable and easiest to use. I'm really hoping to see some new hardware and really really praying that HP just doesn't kill their new smartphone division.
@dmanjrod
While there's no denying that iOS is solid, it's laughable at how they still haven't implemented little things like widgets and even certain basic customization options that other phone OS's have had for awhile now.
@John Stathakis
apple loves their developers too! no wait, apple gives the finger to their devs. i got mixed up for a second.
@Jukah
Why wouldn't I? When you get a compass better then the iPhone's, then we'll talk.
@John Stathakis
I love my Palm Pre. The best feature is that you can hold it any way you want ;-)
I recently got a new phone.. it was hard saying goodbye to WebOS and Palm. There is no that is as logical as WebOS. If Palm comes out with an EVO or GalaxyS style hardware.. you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll be right back with Palm and WebOS. (hopefully Sprint picks it up, can't beat their plans.)
@dmanjrod So that means until you get a "better compass" you will stfu with the bashing and trolling? Cool.
That was easy.
@John Stathakis
I've had the palm pre for 6 months and love it, but I really do wish I had the plus, that extra ram would be very helpful. But overall I want the hardware was better and bigger overall. 4 inch screen and 1ghz processor would be over kill with WebOS
@Coffey
Palm, what can I say? You keep earning more respect from us almost everyday, even when you are not "really" around anymore.
@slipdisc
Actually, I was talking to the other guy. NOT YOU. hence why your name didn't come after "@". And do you have a problem with the iPhone's compass? There is no phone with a better compass than the iPhone. Apple's engineers are constantly working on innovation. That's why you will not see any other phone with a better compass.
@dmanjrod
It's a compass. Not a huge deal. At all.
If it was, Steve wouldve publicly praised it in his keynote. :)
@Eli Haj
Well when i see a new iphone coming out first thing that i look at is if it has an updated version of the compass, and im sure theres many people out there like me that rely on the usability of the iphone's compass
@dmanjrod
HD2.
@pcwzrd13 You can hold the Pre any way except in landscape mode when you want to type something.
I said it before and I'll say it again, these moves just reek of desperation. Paying back devs their money so they'll stay with the platform just makes them look weak and customers and developers simply don't want to support weak platforms.
@John Stathakis I too agree with your comment. I bought my Pre from Sprint about a year ago and I've been very satisfied.
In my opinion, one of WebOS's greatest assets besides its usability is the support and loyalty it has fostered from the Homebrew Community. Thanks to them I've been able to customize my device to my liking and enjoy it very much. I really do hope to see new hardware from them in the future. Specially if it takes cues from the newly announced Samsung Epic 4G.
@TinWard unless ofcourse, you install the virtual keyboard.
Makes me want to become a Palm developer even more. Too bad you have to give them your SS number.
@whatpoint77
I stole one. Shhhh....
@whatpoint77 whaaaat!? That's just bad business practice.
@whatpoint77 It's done according to Federal Law for tax purposes; Palm is required to send out 1099s every year to its developers, and yes, that means handing over your Social Security number.
Don't blame them for that onerous requirement.
Maybe this is a sign that HP intends to stop excepting developer apps and turn WebOS into a closed OS for their connected devices. Maybe the future generations of WebOS devices will feature only 1st party applications.
@dennisheadley I really hope you are wrong with that one. That statement made by HP recently has me very worried.
@dennisheadley
I'm still dreaming of the day when we can all play Doom on the office HP printer when the boss isn't looking. So I hope your wrong...
@dennisheadley It's more likely a sign that developers are streaming away (screaming away?) from Palm even faster than key employees are.
What a stupid costly move on HPQ's part. THEIR stockholders should be streaming away.
isn't any refund retroactive?
@christopherborne If you are keeping up Palm said they are waiving the developer fee this week...but not only that, but they will retroactively waive previous fees...meaning though they didn't announce the move until today they are still making it so for every other developer.
@christopherborne pretty much.
When I first read that I thought they were closing shop and giving people their money back.
I think palm screwed up not giving any phones to tmobile, as the probably would have sold the most with them. It would have really stood out in tmo's lineup.
@deliteguy That is a good point. If they could offer the Pixi Plus for free and Pre Plus for $100, it would've had strong sales until the Samsung Vibrant (Galaxy S) comes out. BTW, the Vibrant looks amazing! It has the latest Sims 3. My Evo doesn't have Sims 3!
@kkacatin
I'm sure it's nice that it comes with Sims 3, but there is no way it's exclusive. EA will certainly not miss out on money from the rest of us.
@Dafrety
Sorry i'm off topic but it has the collectors edition of the sims 3. Hope this new phone palm is coming out with will be fresher because their obviously doing this promotion because devs aren't that interested. Many the old sprint users with a pre probably upgraded by now. Webos can't end like this(in printers), come on HP!
@kkacatin Your EVO probably not capable of playing SIms 3.
@Deihmos
When The Sims 3 will run on the first generation iPhone/iPod Touch, I have no doubt it would work on an Evo.
Palm is really trying hard to woo me from Android. It'll take better build quality and faster hardware for that, but they're very tempting even now.
@Dafrety Once they get great hardware, it's going to be a no brainer. I love the homebrew on webOS. OTA custom kernels and patches. How easy is that?
I really wish you would stop making new idiotic usernames after each time you get banned. Each one is worse than the previous.
@christopherborne If you are keeping up Palm said they are waiving the developer fee this week...but not only that, but they will retroactively waive previous fees...meaning though they didn't announce the move until today they are still making it so for every other developer.
Smells like an act of desperation. Irregardless of HP's purchase of them, people are staying away from palm, out of fear that they'll not be around any longer. I suspect developers feel the same way. Only 2,684 apps? That's pretty sad given how long the phone has been out..
@mflynn I have bought about 300 of them. I also have about the same number on my ipad. However, none of my friends have bought that many apps. Looking at the polls on various websites a typical iphone user only has 4 pages of apps i.e. ~64 apps total including builtin ones.
WebOS has ~2800 apps in the app catalog and I have found at least one good app for everything I needed to do. The only thing missing is voice recognition and that is so because the API is not there yet.
While I understand the long tail issue, Appstore has more than 190,000 apps and when it had 134000 apps 1000 of them were Bible apps. 45-55% of the apps were games last I checked. Most productivity type apps have counterparts on webOS and some are even better than there iphone counterparts (not by the same maker).
For those that like games a lot of the games from big companies like EA, Glu mobile and gameloft are also available on webOS.
@mflynn
That isn't that bad of a number, but in some ways I agree with you and I can't really see HP wanting to get in the app store market. They have always seemed to be more of a company that uses software to help sell hardware instead of builing devices and software to sell software.
@mflynn the phone has only been out a year and irregardless is not a word.
Man I miss WebOS so much having my EVO. I just need a bigger screen and a faster processor Palm!! I'll buy it at full unsubsidized price!! please!!!