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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 ha

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.
- megaduck 17y ago
  Following the herd can be wildly profitable, but it's also easy to get trampled. Sometimes it's better (and easier) to carve out a small but profitable niche. Back when OS X was a fledgling platform, marketshare looked like a rounding error next to Windows. There were still a number of small third-party vendors that did pretty well for themselves by selling to a tiny market of fiercly committed early OS X adopters. The Omni Group and Panic spring immediately to mind. Put simply, your cashflow is not a direct function of the install base that you're selling into. Other factors, like ease of development or customer demographics, may be more important. For the current thing that I'm working on, it would be stupid not to consider the Pre. Their development model matches our current project so closely that including support should be easy. Even if it only gets us another 500 customers, that would be more than enough to make the effort worthwhile.

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.
megaduck 17y ago
Following the herd can be wildly profitable, but it's also easy to get trampled. Sometimes it's better (and easier) to carve out a small but profitable niche. Back when OS X was a fledgling platform, marketshare looked like a rounding error next to Windows. There were still a number of small third-party vendors that did pretty well for themselves by selling to a tiny market of fiercly committed early OS X adopters. The Omni Group and Panic spring immediately to mind. Put simply, your cashflow is not a direct function of the install base that you're selling into. Other factors, like ease of development or customer demographics, may be more important. For the current thing that I'm working on, it would be stupid not to consider the Pre. Their development model matches our current project so closely that including support should be easy. Even if it only gets us another 500 customers, that would be more than enough to make the effort worthwhile.