Developer POV: Dave Haupert from DDH Software, on HanDBase, webOS, and Palm 59

sad, real sad...wish Handbase comes to webOS, miss it since my Treo days

One of the few apps I missed when I moved to webos. Can't really argue against anything he said.

listen lets decode what he said.. He likes Palm as a company that brought innovation to the table when they first started... However he doesn't like the users because there are not enough of you to keep paying his car note on his BMW or Porche or both.. So he's jumping ship and concentrating on Android and iPhone to make money.. He's not in it because I likes what he does anymore.. He's in it for the money... So he could really care less for the users.. Your all just dollar signs to him..

and not to sound like an a-hole but come on people move on.. I don't understand the hang up on people NOT letting go of stuff from an old OS that's just legacy stuff.. I miss some things about my old PalmOS.. Not enough to actually get the classic app that allowed me to use old apps from an OS that's years old and super way behind the curve to todays standards...

the classic app was (as I can see) Training wheels for people that couldn't adapt to WebOS right away... It's been over a year now and it's time to remove the training wheel and ride the WebOS two wheeler like a big kid now.... Stop bein scared of change.. If it weren't for change I'd have to still rub 2 sticks together to be able to light my cigarette

I hope we see our first set of hybrid apps at palms dev conference. I'm sure all the developers are still under NDA on the details, but if porting non game apps is as easy as regular PDK apps we might actually see a nice uptick in the quantity and quality of the apps.

My first paid programming job was developing software for PalmOS, I enjoyed that work but I really think Palm would have been doing us a disservice if we'd stayed backwards compatible. Take PalmOS 6 for instance, it was ready for devices, it was had backwards compatibility built in but nobody ever used it since it was only putting lipstick on a pig.

I can absolutely understand his frustration with not being able to integrate with the native webOS UI at the moment from C/C++ code. I really hope the hybrid SDK becomes available soon and is a great tool.

But allowing developers to use Metrowerks (which was primarily meant for Motorola 68K processors, not arm, it's ancient and no longer supported) would have been silly. Palm had a new philosophy for apps on webOS than PalmOS, allowing developers to "port" apps to webOS by recompiling would have ended up keeping the old philosophy around way past it's best-by-date.

Any Palm OS developer who is still around has survived by jumping ship. I think it's safe to say that nobody has been able to make a living developing software exclusively for Palm products over the past several years. I would be hesitant of jumping back on to an unproven platform. He would be better off spending that time and effort developing additional apps for the platform he is most comfortable with - especially if there are many more potential users.

The fact is that people who use a relational database on a regular basis are few and far between. It's one of many niche markets that are best accessed via the most popular software platforms. If you are a user of this kind of niche product, don't expect much support for such a minority platform.

He highlights what we all knew when the Pre and webOS were released; Palm made a mistake in not providing an easy way to run old apps on the new hardware. I'm not a software wonk so I don't have any idea or appreciation for how hard that would have been, but is was a huge mistake not to accommodate the thousands of Palm OS apps that were out there.

Having said that, it is time to move on. I have found workable replacements for most of the Palm OS apps that I miss and used all the time. (Though Klondike by Electron Hut is still the best and my wife uses it still on her Centro.)

I hope that the old Palm developers will eventually release their classic apps for webOS. But, if they don't, that will leave room for the hungry and creative webOS developers to fill the gap.

So, all you devs out there, how about a good database app? And, while your at it, how about something as simple and elegant as Electron Hut's version of Klondike. And finally, Simple Bible guys, you know who you are, can you please get the Pro version out before we get webOS 2?

OK, I feel better. Thanks for listening.

I hadn't realized the irony that you can port an app made for the iphone, but you can't port an app from PalmOS.

It's because of developers like these that we even have a developer problem. They became lazy and never ported to webOS, Palm's next platform. They followed the money and ported to the other platforms, leaving their former customers out in the cold. What could former Palm customers, who relied on these apps, do? They couldn't transition to webOS since their critical apps weren't ported. They could use Classic if they wanted, but they had to know that the developers making the Classic apps would eventually drop support for an outdated OS, and as has been made obvious HP wasn't interested in supporting an outdated OS either. Former Palm customers had to make the jump to other platforms to have a guarantee of keeping their apps for a few more years.

Then again, maybe it was Palm's fault for deciding to support Classic in the first place. They could have pressed PalmOS developers to port their apps to webOS months before webOS was released. At least then PalmOS would have peace of mind when transitioning to webOS. But PalmOS developers saw that their apps would work on webOS, and got lazy about updating their apps. Now the whole thing is such a mess. Palm dropped the ball, these developers dropped the ball, and now customers suffer because of it.

Doesn't WebOS already provide easy access to sqlite? (I don't know, I'm not a developer, but I do run sqlite queries on some things in webos to move the data to my home servers). With that said, is something like HanDBase even needed? Seems quite easy to write a data driven app pretty quickly with the tools we have on WebOS. The problem of storing complex data and queries goes away with WebOS vs. PalmOS.

I think Mr Haupert is on exactly the right track here. If HP & Palm are not showing loyalty and support for long time developers such as DDH (and others) what are they supposed to do? While Classic had its failings, what is most disturbing about how HP terminated it is the clear disregard for the developer. That behavior is meant to inspire a firm like DDH to make the investment? As much as I wish Mr. Hauperts points could be countered, I'm afraid that at the moment it is difficult to argue.

Dataviz bought out the other database program (renaming it Smartlists to Go from ThinkDB, which is a true relational database and easily connected to Access) but they never supported it either. Let alone port it to WebOS, which will never happen now.

It all comes back to where are the apps? Palm's popularity grew by having lots of functional, productivity apps. Even the basic PIM functions of WebOS don't match some of that functionality of the original Palm. How many former Palm users people miss Datebook? That is what got lost in the transition from Palm OS, the applications we use daily that still aren't here (QuickOffice finally?) and don't allow some of us to switch until there is some true alternative. Even it means some pain transferring data from years worth of work into a new format. Preferably an improvement to match the new OS, but at least SOMETHING! There do seem to finally be some apps showing up, but its been slow.

I desperately miss the days of carryin just one phone- my 680-IT JUST WORKED (and if it didn't there was an app for that way before the iphone apps), which now serves as backup for my pre.

I love the functiionality of webOS and all it's potential but I HATE the "ipohne" style touch screen, a major reason why I said I would never be an Iphone user.

I'm all for moving forward with technoloy but while waiting for the Pre to get up to speed I don't know why Palm drop Palm OS. I did not like the Classic app and was hoping with HP's cash the near future would allow Palm OS to run within webOS. There are enough loyal Treo users to make it finacially worth it for HP/Palm to support both devices.

I would have been interested in new "Palm OS Garnet" handheld, the PDA32, if it had a keyboard.

can I get a definitive statement on the state of hybrid PDK/SDK apps on WebOS. Will WebOS2.0 essentially open the gates? Or are there more hurdles to overcome?

It seems the developers are having to do a lot more work to barely reach a technology standard that otherwise is surpassed by other phone. People are willing to pay but several of the phones applications are charing for small additions that should other wise be integrated natively into the phone. I have been writing pages on ways and reasons to integrate features in to the Palm. I was actually recently banned from the Palm forum which is being resolved by a moderator who randomly decided his ability to push a button was stronger than my pages of research. This is the simple mentality of many palm developers. Don't question why, but just simply do with what is there, which is fine if your a monkey or in a case of survivor. This is the kind of mindset that could make this technology obsolete. Not listening to the intelligent user base is the equivalent of saying the developers know better than what the user wants, unless your releases over the top technology(which you aren't this rarely holds true).

The real questions Palm users would like to know are, Where is the development for well known applications? Such as Shazam. We all know with certain quality applications come great developer tools, When these applications do not exist we are certain the Palm WebOS is far behind without any excuses.

The real issue at Palm right now and I believe this held true for some time is, there is no administrative support. I went through HP as well as Palm to resolve this forum issue and ended up amongst an exec's cell phone and a fully Arab firm who knew little about the forums ( some literal didn't know the palm forums existed ) To me the 3rd party at Palm may have gone too far. I believe you have people in the company thinking their owners and CEO, as well as project managers and theres literally no one guiding the way and providing accurate comparisons about where Palm exists in the market amongst others.

The post I was banned for said many things but ultimately came down to an analogy for Palm's complacency. The gestures and design of the programming are seen as advance but to the functional user the functions of gestures become aesthetics. Like a dimmer switch for a light, gesture act in the same way. While a dimmer has slightly more function and ability in most typical circumstances it serves regular function for almost all practical user. While it can be seen as advanced it ultimately is nothing more than a convince tool that some would say serves no more purpose that a button. These designs will sell phones for sometime, but ultimately the phone's software must compete at all levels and not based off a simple unique design.

My analogy in my post was worded better but I would hope you understand. Its as if Palm and the developers are caught up in certain niches and forgot to really compete with the market. You don't want to just win the Class C division 2 prototype racing award ultimately you want to win the Class A division 1 award. These niche awards are achievement obstacles and like most Presidents most people don't want to be known as the reoccurring peace price winner of Ethiopia each year.

I want to mention I was banned for the post, My post were locked because the questions were too difficult for the moderators to understand. I asked a simple question about HP E-print commercial , depicting a user sending a photo from their palm pre, and my answer was there must be some sort of cord that connects to the printer. Obviously this is incorrect, as E-print is fully wireless and connecting wires from your phone to the printer was never seen as a unique accessibility feature. I mean this is the equivalent to the mod, who might be a dev, that no one wants involved with product development or their forums. (PDA GUY s/n says it all)