While yesterday’s app drops certainly feel like they were a touch on the light side, it’s certainly not the lightest we’ve had. In fact, it’s still long enough to warrant the traditional “after the break” listing instead of throwing it here on the front page. But is it substantial? Well, I’m asking that question for a reason, so you can probably guess my opinion on the matter. And to be frank, my opinion matters very little - what I want to know is what do you think of the *ahem* light nature of recent app drops?
New apps:
- A Tale of Two Cities, $0.99, by Appible: Charles Dickens; story of the French Revolution.
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, $0.99, by Appible: Lews Carrol’s novel that has inspired countless movies.
- Cactus League, Free, by Glynnjamin: Find your way around the 15 MLB training camps in Arizona.
- Checklist, $0.99, by SpeedyMarks: Create and manage checklists for just about anything you need to do or remember.
- Persuasion, $0.99, by Appible: Jane Austen’s final novel, a story of lost love.
- Red Button, Free, by Team 5 Soft: Don’t push the button.
- The Secret Garden, $0.99, by Appible: Frances Hodgson Burnett’s story of a girl transplanted to a new cold home with a hidden garden
- TMaps - Pocket Subways, Free, by GeezerNetwork: Subway and rail maps for Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.
Updated apps:
- Bing Search, Free
- Block Breaker, $1.99
- Boise Live, Free
- Clock Sync, Free
- Converty, $0.99
- Countdown Puzzles, Free
- Dealert, $1.99
- Glucose Tracker, $4.49
- GolfPinFinder Demo, Free
- HappyCow VeginOut Guide, $0.99
- Independent Film, Free
- Light Saber, $0.99
- Lyric-A Search, $1.25
- MyClock, $2.99
- Photo Point, $0.99
- Puzzler, $1.99
- Referral Rewards, Free
- Trapster, Free
- Treasure Island, $0.99
- Yak, $2.99
- Yelp, Free
Filed Under:
Apps; Tags: A Tale of Two Cities, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, App Catalog, Cactus League, Checklist, Persuasion, Red Button, The Secret Garden, TMaps - Pocket Subways
Comments
first :)
I bet that is the exact same thing you say when you are in bed with a woman =p
You may be giving too much credit there, but the Gold Medal can still be an individual effort. Methinks, first and last applies here if the Online Special Olympics is his crowning acheivement.
"what do you think of the *ahem* light nature of recent app drops?"
i got a feeling PDK announcements will change the things for the better.
Well, adding more games will make the phone more appealing to younger folks, I doubt it will further endear itself to the people they need under contract to help Palm grow.
Games on the phone are a nicety, but puts them in competition with Ipod Touch and PSP. It also fractures their image a bit.
What we have now, is Palm the former maker of professional grade smartphones, now having lots of games that appeal to younger males and its the phone that is perfect for moms and the Borg queen. What is there for the market to grab hold of?
Understand, I prefer games to Indian recipes and Brighthouse quotes from Fozzy the Bear, but I'd trade a hundred top line games for DTG or something that the phone still lacks and is prevelant in the professional market with other devices.
Wait. A. Minute...
There is a Fozzy the Bear quote app?? lol!!
Whoops, I have the private beta, but look next week for an addition to the crAPP catalog.
perhaps the PDK solution will mae it possible to port DTG fromthe existing iPhone app to function on webOS...one can hope
Perhaps, but most iPhone apps I've seen that were pro-oriented were pretty light on capabilities and options.
i think the app situation is that there is no incentive for these companies to make games.
Palm either needs to pay companies to develop some marquee apps or they need to sell enough phones. I'd guess they paid someone to have launch apps.
Interestingly for all the discussion of the stock price and the hate for Jim Cramer. Friday Cramer said "Palm is speculative but it would be a mistake to sell it at this level. If they get some apps on that phone I think you'll be alright." Now he didn't say buy it but said don't sell here it's come down too much. But more pertinent is Even he identified that a major issue is there are not nearly enough good apps on this phone.
99% of the apps coming out are novelty. We need more days like when the Facebook app came out where people say, "yeah, great." And it's a shame that it's Palm that's having to make the app. But i don't think there are developers just hanging around waiting for a PDK, though i hope i'm wrong. And i hope that if they aren't this new port your app in days thing makes them decide it's cost effective and simple to do it. But that also may be down to the available apis too.
Regardless if i was palm, even if i had to pay them, i'd be offering money to the likes of CNN, ESPN, Sling, Photoshop, EA, Google, etc. to at least pay for some of the development costs. When i bought the phone i knew there wouldn't be as many apps as iphone or android. I just thought the ones we'd have would at least be as good and at least mainstream not Joseph Stalin quotes and calculators.
Actually so happy with how the phone's been lately that I'm willing to cut Palm and involved developers one large break, cause I know they've all been working hard....been up playing need for speed on my Sprint Pre....opened 11 cards before I tried to open it ( too many cards) but closed them all and started the game without restarting the phone...the pre is ten times better than it was since the first 3d games were brought out! Battery life seems to be better too....not the best of the bunch but I do more on this phone like reading from preader and newsroom, searches from universal search, notetaking for the job on fliq notes, monitoring email ( 2 personal accounts and my exchange accounts,) music streaming and postcast downloading or streaming, sprint navagation and google address and restaurant look ups, etc than anyone on their iphones 9 so far among my friends do! This thing is always in my palm, so I give the 4 batteries I own a real workout.....
sleepwalker, you are most definitely a Pre Geek! :)
"light apps"?
if you take out all the quotes and repackaged old books, I think there was only 10 or so real apps all week.
maybe everyone (Devs included) was busy with 1.4 rollout. With PDK coming, I think the app drops are gonna get a lot better.
BTW: check out the forums posts called "meet the developers." it's interesting to read about them. Many are average folks that got into it, then you have some lifetime computer guys, the some high school wunderkids that have 10 apps and are 15 years old. Kinda cool!
EDIT: I am not a developer, so I have nothing to promote or disclose, just think it's an interesting thread.
oops, trying to fix double post made triple post!
.
None of the above.
Where are Palm's "Launch Partners" that were to give us Office Functions on our Phone?
Remember all the Great Apps that were on our Treos that are unavailable on our "Cool" PRE that plays 3D games.
If Palm would release some relevant APIs that the developers could use, that would change. We'd be flooded with great programs and utilities that could remember the screen size we last "pinched", boost the Volume, Have Voice Commands and Dialing, allow the Bluetooth to function like it should, transfer files by Bluetooth and WIFI (The Infrared port was ahead of its time, now we have bluetooth and can't utilize it?), sync to our desktop, intercept Caller IDs to do what we want with these calls.
NOW we'd have an updated Fantastic PRETREO
Chas Palm
+1 Nice toy, now what? I gotta eat.
If only Palm had resourced a proper, built in emulator to support the Garnet apps. All the Palm users I know, were excited about the Pre, but all asked "what about supporting previous palm apps?" Since apps were forwards compatible with new PalmOS versions, the big sell of expensive Palm products was that you'd never have to "start over" when you stuck out big cash for the new device. Now with the cloud, we're back where we started, a lot of the pain of changing devices is gone now. But now, our more desirable products, are not Palms.
This will be a case analysis in marketing and management text books in the next ten years. A popular brand that marketed continuity, then started from scratch in glutted market place with no money to leverage their brilliance. Wonder if Ruby will have that same shirt in the textbook photo?
I'm with Chas on this one, all of the games are cool, but we really what I need is for my Pre to make my mobile work experience more efficient, and until those issues are addressed I am having a hard time recommending the Pre to my colleagues.
My guess is developers are retooling in response to 1.4 and the pending release of the PDK. While not a lot of new, we are seeing a lot of updates.
I am in agreement with Chas Palm as it relates to api's (ie access the mic) to enable frequently used apps from Palm OS / Treo that are missed here in WebOS. I would love to see docstogo pro available as well as voiceit or other voice command controller / dialer to round out this otherwise awesome device.
The app drops have been light recently but I can look past that because Palm has been doin a great job & keeping their word on everything else such as releases & updates. Once the pdk rolls out and shortly after I think the app catalog will start flooding again & gain some new quality apps.
sorry to be a bit off topic, but why is pinch to zoom disabled in PDF view? O.O and how do I view a buddy's status/info in the messaging app?
Re missing "Launch Partners"..Biz developers have given up WebOS and are happy chasing Android and iPhone opportunities. Long time Palm dev Splashdata still stays away with limp promises of products in the pipeline since 3Q09.
I hoped the apps I used most on my TX would be available by now for the pre so I could retire the TX and downsize and consolidate to one device. I NEED: Audible, Laridian My Bible, PocketTunes (so much better than the native music app), Patience Revisited (doesn't work on Classic) for my favorite card game Yukon, to name what I miss most. I'm still exploring Classic to see what will work through it. I'm new, so any advice or direction where to post would be appreciated!
to anyone that considers 5 to 10 apps per day a "light" amount, consider that one year ago today I owned a WinMo phone, and that an exciting day for me was to find ANY new apps.. And even then, there was no simple repository to find them in- you either had to download the file to your desktop and transfer it via USB, or you had to download it using the WinMo "browser" (or Skyfire which still is no WebOS quality), and find it in file manager.. And then install it.
I think people are a bit spoiled just one year later, and also, their views of what is an acceptable amount of "per day" releases is skewed by what has been made available to iPhone and Android owners. Still, over 2000 apps in mere months is a large number in my eyes, from where I came from.
Your logic is flawed. 5 years ago I owned an LG flip phone which had no apps.
This isn't 5 years ago. This isn't 1 year ago. This is today. And in today's world 5-10 new apps is not acceptable for a "smart phone". Maybe it was a year ago, but not today.
I'm sick of people comparing the Pre to what the iPhone was when it was first released 3 years ago, or any other phone for that matter. All that matters is what is happening right now, and this is not acceptable in the current state of smart phones.
I agree with you; however the current situation is like the chicken and the egg. Developers won't release a ton of great apps until the target audience grows. But the target audience won't grow until there are a ton of great apps.
It's going to be harder for Palm to grow quickly like the iPhone did. The iPhone didn't really have any competition when it came to app stores. Sure other platforms had apps, but nothing like what the Apple app store brought to the table. But with Palm, it has competition with Apple and Google, so it's going to be harder to attract more developers.
i agree that people won't go til there are apps. But why doesn't palm pay these companies to develop apps. there's a youtube app and all those launch apps. i assume they paid something for them to be done by launch. I say pick 30 or 40 keep companies and pay them. To attract more people. They could be proactive.
such is the tech world my friend. standards are constantly changing.
agree
like trener1 mentioned they are probably modding to 1.4, which in my eyes, should come first.
lotsa great patches that I'd rather see be made functional again than to complain about a lack of new stuff.
The app drops are light because the general perception is that WebOS is not going anywhere as a platform and that developers would be better off spending their time working on something else. It obviously takes some time for the flow of apps to slow down in response to bad news but it's already starting to happen. Just think of how many WebOS projects were probably canceled when Palm announced that they had overestimated sales by more than 50 percent. This is where "wait-and-see" becomes "OK, I've seen enough."
While there was initial interest in WebOS because it was a new smartphone platform with plenty of potential, Palm's failure to execute means that there really isn't much chance of an upside in the near future. Palm OS developers know the feeling all too well as they see all sorts of other phones in people's hands.
The PDK will only bring apps that were developed in C/C++ with platform independece in mind. Anything that actually looks like an iPhone app with iPhone UI elements is not going to be worth porting over. Even Gameloft didn't bother changing the iPhone references in their game instructions
am I the only one sick of hearing from this troll?
I say give them more time- they'll never be to where the iPhone is at- in the next 5 years, no one will be at iPhone app production levels. However don't give up on the phone yet, simply because there aren't the same number of apps. If you really like the Pre and the Pixi, then spread the word to friends and family, and more people that buy the phones, the more demand for apps. If you sit here and bash Palm for lack of apps, then you're not helping the cause. All I'm saying is, give Palm some time with the WebOS platform- if new and improved webOS devices are released, or they sell the rights to use WebOS on other hardware manufacturers' hardware, app production with take off, finally. Just don't be impatient- this platform is still new technology in comparison to iPhone and even Droid (which was in the works for years and had tons of partners behind it). Cheer for the underdog if you really like it.
...wouldnt it be sweet if Adobe release Flash Beta the same day Palm unveils it's PDK to the public @ GDC in San Fransisco. It would make sense since Flash too will be an important factor in Palms strive in the mobile gaming scene.
I'm like most...i hope we are not flushed with just gaming apps...i want apps that make life easier - something that's been Palm's key slogan since the early unravelings of webOS. Apps such as recording from the mic would do wonders for us college students and/or musicians and/or business individuals for quick verbal references. Things like this would set apart the Palm App Catelog from the rest. A new interface for the actual catelog would be sweet in itself because in it's current state...it is somewhat lacking.
Games...quality games...are always a good way to bring in more people - but webOS is capable of so much more and I'm hoping it doesn't turn into just another hand-held gaming device. That would suck!!
For those of you like me who desire a business smart phone versus a kid's or mom's toy, please keep hammering Palm at their headquarters support, 407-531-4496, option 2. Have been ragging on them for months about voice dialing and/or activation, kvm (java virtual machine for mobile phones), and adobe flash. Was promised flash is coming by midyear. Also advised them months ago, that if you cross the international dateline, scheduled calendar events shift one day later, then back when you return. As far as I know, this has not been corrected unless 1.4 update did so. Will let you know after my Tokyo trip on the 27th. Please, Please add your voice to the demands for updates or apps which help business people. Have already warned them, I will switch to I-phone once new generation is released and ATT loses exclusivity.
Eh, they already commited to being iphone Jr and abandoned their legacy of success(ion). Too little money and time left to impress the phone buyers. Now is the time to polish up WebOS and try to attract Nokia, BB or a hardware maker that needs an O/S. Everyday that passes diminishes WebOS's value to an acquirer as more successful systems are selling millions of units which fuels their continued development.
For us, it's easier to go buy the device that we need than continue coaching the brand that we want.
Mom's toy??? You better go on back to Blackberry :(
***Sigh*** Still waiting for an Astronomy application....
I must admit, as a gamer, I too get more excited when "useful" apps are added to the catalogue as opposed to JUST games.
Applications like musicID, voice rcording, etc.
Attention to the platform is what brings apps and buyers. Palm had an opportunity to raise the bar a few times, but as someone stated before, has just tried to match the iphone hardware specs. Same processor, same screen resolution, same camera resolution (minus auto focus), etc. Android has now taken the hardware specs on its high end phones and beat out the iphone on almost every level except that gaming sucks.
When Palm released the Pre Plus they could have simply added a snapdragon processor and then instantly became more relative without a redesign. It would have been the only device on Verizon and the only other device in the world besides the Nexus One to have it. Look how much people have been talking about that. It would have made news headlines. Also, 1.4 really needed to be ready for the Verizon launch.
The phone would have probably been pretty much lag free and all the comparisons out there on tech sites would have shown how the Pre was beating the iphone and maybe even the Nexus one on speed tests and browser speeds.
Just my thoughts. The question is how will palm raise the bar in the near future to keep striving for attention it needs and deserves to stay relevant. Sadly hardware specs drive consumers more than operating systems. Just doing what already has been done is not going to cut it.
C40 is aşk şiirleri a move in dantel chess game, Where sohbet 2 pawns black and white are face to face, but the çiçek
white pawn has to çiçek siparişi it side a diyet horse, that will take next sohbet the black pawn.
The white pawn with güzel sözler the horse is a Palm device, özlü sözler and the black pawn represents the competitors.
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