4 ms·

Palm revises webOS app policy - much more freedom for developers

37 points by bhousel 17y ago

bhousel 17y ago
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 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.
ssharp 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    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.
bhousel 17y ago
Also worth reading is the link to the actual announcement from Palm: http://pdnblog.palm.com/2009/10/what-you-need-to-know/ http://pdnblog.palm.com/2009/10/what-you-need-to-know/
megaduck 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    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 17y ago
      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.
  - 17y ago
davidw 17y ago
So what does one actually use to develop for "WebOS"?
- bhousel 17y ago
  WebOS developer site: http://developer.palm.com/index.php 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!

37 points by bhousel 17y ago

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 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.

ssharp 17y ago

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 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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.

bhousel 17y ago

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

megaduck 17y ago

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 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    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.
- 17y ago

davidw 17y ago

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

bhousel 17y ago
WebOS developer site: http://developer.palm.com/index.php 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!