Palm’s Developer Program Not Nearly So Annoying as Apple’s
by John Paczkowski
Posted on October 6, 2009 at 5:05 AM PT
Development for Palm’s new webOS platform will begin in earnest come winter with the official opening of the company’s developer program. At a small gathering in San Francisco Monday night, Palm said its developer program will open in December, and when it does it will be a different beast entirely from rival programs by Apple, Google (GOOG), et al.
For one thing, Palm (PALM) is waiving its $99 app submission fee for open-source webOS apps. For another, it’s giving developers the option of selling their apps through the App Catalog or via a Web-based storefront.
The first option entails a $50-per-app fee and requires review and approval by Palm. This includes the chance to bid on priority placement in the App Catalog if developers wish. The second option requires neither fee nor review and allows developers to distribute their apps over the Web with Palm handling transactions and fulfillment–assuming the apps conform to Palm’s content and user interface criteria.
“By opening up a web distribution channel free from our review, we are placing a great deal of trust in you–the developer–and the community,” Palm said on its blog. “We want you to embrace these principles, establish a high bar of quality and user experience, and help enforce these rules.”
An interesting strategy–assuming developers do establish the high bar of quality to which the company refers. Certainly, it’s very different from Apple’s (AAPL) approach, which includes an application-approval process criticized as obtuse and byzantine. By offering developers the chance to pay to promote their software in its Apps Catalog or to distribute it via the Web without having to suffer through an approval process, Palm is positioning its program as the polar opposite of Apple’s. Question is, are these enticements enough to win their attention?
Comments
Pretending that Pre Web apps are in any way equivalent to iPhone native apps is disingenuous. The Pre has NO NATIVE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT KIT.
iPhone has 2 app platforms:
- native apps built with CocoaTouch and distributed commercially or non-commercially via App Store and requiring approvals
- Web apps built with HTML5 and distributed commercially or non-commercially via any Web server and not requiring any approvals
With iPhone, a developer can choose either yin or yang, they are not limited at all. You can be part of a highly managed App Store platform or a wide open HTML5 platform.
Pre has 1 app platform:
- Widgets built with HTML5 and distributed either commercially via App Catalog with approvals or non-commercially via any Web server without approvals.
How is that a win for Palm?
iPhone has native and Web apps; Palm has widgets. Where is the Pre native SDK? Not available. The only native app on Pre is the Web browser, in which all 3rd party apps run because they are widgets.
Consider also that iPhone Web apps have access to hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, and Pre apps do not. Consider that all you have to do to make your Web app iPhone-compatible is add a touch icon to the server, but with Pre you have to roll up your app into a widget.
So if the big news is that you can run Web apps on Pre without approval, that is yet another Pre first that was actually done years ago by iPhone. I made my first Web app for iPhone before the iPhone was even launched and it required no approvals.
Now, if Palm is going to do a native SDK, then let’s hear about that. They’ve been making phones for 10 years now, after all.
Posted by Fred Hamranhansenhansen at October 6th, 2009 at 7:09 pmFred,
Your response totally skirts the issue.
Applications developed with Palm’s SDK can be sold and loaded on the Palm Pre outside of Palm’s approval, and outside of Palm’s App Catalog. With the iPhone, all Apps for sale must be submitted to Apple for approval or refusal and can only be sold through Apple’s App Store. Palm has revealed through ad postings for Game Frameworks Engineers the desired skill sets to “design, implement, debug, and optimize frameworks for game development.” It is obvious that Palm does not publicize their future plans, but the writing is obviously on the wall that their WebOS SDK is fast evolving and will expose functionality that will harness the Palm Pre hardware and graphics engine. And yes, with Palms long history of developing their PalmOS mobile operating system, the precursor to WebOS, developers were able to write native applications for Palm’s mobile devices in the “C” Language. It is obvious that Palm possesses these capabilities, and will continue to surprise us with enhancements to the WebOS SDK while at the same time embracing the developer community in an open and transparent manner that Windows developers have come to expect, love and appreciate.
Posted by Andrew Augustine at October 7th, 2009 at 12:46 am