

Palm revises webOS app policy - much more freedom for developers - bhousel
http://www.precentral.net/easy-and-open-app-distribution-theres-platform

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megaduck
At this point, I'm far more willing to develop an app for WebOS than the
iPhone.

Despite the endless complaints about the iPhone app store, Apple's response
has largely been monolithic silence. 3rd party developers can make or break a
platform, and Apple's developer relations have gotten pretty strained.

On the other hand, Palm's response to the JWZ incident shows promise. They
privately contacted the developer, publicly apologized, and are now publicly
retooling their app store processes to accommodate free and open-source
software.

On top of that, the prospect of being able to self-publish apps is _huge_.
That's the way it should be.

I'm optimistic for the future. Once they get their launch bugs ironed out, it
should be a heck of a platform.

~~~
potatolicious
Free or not, technical excellence or not, Palm's market is _tiny_. By all
accounts the Pre missed the boat on sales by miles, and Palm is in a mad
scramble to get pricing down to compete with iPhone. The company is also in
financially dire straits.

While it would be nice for the most free, easiest-to-develop platform to win,
it would be foolish to develop on a platform nobody uses.

For the current thing I'm working on I will be stupid not to include iPhone
and BlackBerry support - and given Moto, HTC, and Nokia's new push to Android,
that also. The Pre though is still off the list, despite the fact that I
personally like the device.

~~~
ssharp
They just raised a couple hundred million dollars. It's not a good sign that
they had to raise the money but they have enough cash to stick around for a
while.

~~~
potatolicious
Good point about the funding - but staying power doesn't necessarily imply
worth. Motorola's been hobbling along on nearly no market share for years now
- and always seem to find more money to keep hobbling.

Until the Pre shows some signs on life in terms of sales, I wouldn't develop
for it.

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bhousel
Nice to see that they are actually making changes to their process, after all
the criticism they received from the Jamie Zawinski incident:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=851425>

It's one thing to say they're developer friendly and make apologies, but it's
great to see Palm doing the right thing and following up on their promises.

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ssharp
Is it just me or Palm continuously swung and missed with their new development
platform?

Palm has done next to nothing to really differentiate itself from their
competitors. The Pre has been out for several months and its just getting paid
apps now. Now they are opening up deployment but not until the end of the
year. From my understanding, the Pre is a great piece of hardware. But Palm's
execution has been extremely lackluster and its not at all surprising that
they aren't hitting sales expectations.

~~~
sachinag
I totally disagree - Palm's biggest hit in years was the Centro. The Pixi is
the replacement for that. All the stuff with their App Catalog and the Pre
were just training wheels for the real mass-market product: the Pixi.

Remember, the first year of the iPhone had lackluster sales, as well - mainly
because they didn't have carrier subsidies. The Pixi will sell like hotcakes
because 1) it's gonna be cheap and 2) it'll be _everywhere_.

~~~
ssharp
That is assuming a lot, including that they won't flub the release of the
Pixi. Also, I thought the Pixi was going to be Sprint-only.

Even if the Pixi is available on all carriers, the only key differential is
availability. With Apple's contract with AT&T expiring next year, your only
horse can't be availability. They'll just continue to pilfer MS from non-Apple
phones and not stop Apple's growing share.

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bhousel
Also worth reading is the link to the actual announcement from Palm:
<http://pdnblog.palm.com/2009/10/what-you-need-to-know/>

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davidw
So what does one actually use to develop for "WebOS"?

~~~
bhousel
WebOS developer site: <http://developer.palm.com/index.php>

Palm apps are "cards" that consist of html/css/javascript. All programming is
done in Javascript. WebOS apps use the Prototype javascript framework, and you
make calls to Palm's Mojo API to instantiate your app's widgets, push between
screens (scenes), and access the device's services (location, storage,
calendar, telephony, orientation, etc)

They offer a free SDK which comes with a Palm Pre emulator which runs in
Virtual Box, and there are a handful of sample apps available. I've been
working with it for a few months and I can say that while it's not as easy to
use as other more widely used programming environments, they give you enough
to get started and build some simple apps.

It can be frustrating at times, but I think this is mostly because of how new
the programming environment is. If you want to learn Python or Rails, there
are books, screencasts, examples, blogs, etc. If you want to learn WebOS,
well... there's a developer forum and a smattering of beta documentation -
good luck!

