Four More Apps Hit the Official App Catalog, Homebrew 43
by Dieter Bohn Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:01 am EDT
We have four more apps in the App Catalog, bringing the total available up to 45. What's new?
- Yelp: It's probably the most popular of the YARFs (Yet Another Restaurant Finder)
- Yahtzee Demo: We have a feeling these "demo" apps are going to be more common as we approach the ability to buy apps from the App Catalog in September
- Tetris Mania Demo: this app comes by way of Electronic Arts (and we're pleased as punch to see them in the App Catalog). We have to admit, though, that we're partial to elchileno's BlockDrop in our Homebrew Apps Gallery, which packs in great features and is a full meg smaller
- The Canadian Press Mobile: Just in time for the Bell Launch of the Palm Pre - get your Canadian News on.
Meanwhile, we hit a significant milestone in our Homebrew App Gallery yesterday. We've been open for business for a few weeks now, but only started counting downloads last week. In one week, our members have logged over Homebrew App 500,000 downloads.
Thanks to sburlbaw for the tip!
43 Comments
Wow! That's fantastic that there's been 500k downloads in one week, and it's even homebrew!
Good point, updated the sentence :)
Tis would be just wonderful if I could download the damn things!! The app catalog has been "unvailable" in my area (Northern Michigan) since I tied to open it last night at around 10 PM. I was hopeful that it was being updated or something - and it appears I was right to some extent - but I still can't get in thee today. What gives?!
turn of wifi and connect to app catalog, then you can re-enable wifi, i had the same issue a few days back.
Thanks! That worked like a charm and now I have a crappy 1 min demo of yahtzee to show for it! I'm glad I can download apps again, I just wish there was one worth downloading. Thank god for homebrew!
Isn't yelp on the where app (or some other app)? How is this one any better? Does it give me a cool think like the iphone to pick the price and type of food and thin it gives me suggestions?
After checking it out, it seems that the only plus is that you can filter by price when compared to the where app. Both apps allow you to type in what kind of food you'd like to eat though. I wish there was a log in feature on the yelp app. Oh well...
I am with you.
Palm apps, mostly, are worth their price: FREE.
I'll say this: thank goodness for Homebrew. Free also, but worth a lot more than their price, again, mostly.
Maybe most of us feel cheated and upset because we hope or expect that any of these free apps will give the functionality the Pre needs (or we expected the PRE would have had from the beginning). And so, once again, we are dissapointed when we get silly games, food searches, and others that do nothing to improving Contacts, Calendar, Text Messaging, Phone, Ringtone Control, Camera/Video, Notes, and Password/security within any of the basic apps mentioned above.
Until we feel Palm has fixed these basic functions, these silly Palm apps would only increase our irritation, and even the better ones would seem to us useless, silly, redundant, etc, as you can't see beauty when you are pissed off.
Well iPhone-troll,
There are 4 YARF apps out of the 45 in the app catalog. Since you want to defame Palm and the Pre with your lame conjecture, I try to combat your stupid argument when clearly the app catalog is still in beta mode and nobody is paying for apps right now! Obviously when Palm starts charging for apps more variety will appear.
P.S. Go back to TIPB!
Agree. Approve Homebrew apps. Palm has a huge problem with the PRE's basic functionality. Quit the stream of these silly apps, and get on with releasing the upgrade, worth a damn, that is.
Then, we can maybe see the true worthsiness of these apps, free or otherwise.
I mean, it may be nice to be offered FREE stuff when your are fat, dumb and happy. But picture being in a hospital, you paid already and were promised a heart transplant, you are dying in the meantime, the pain is nagging you, there are out of pain medication, no doctors in sight, there are delays upon delays, the equipment works half ass, and no doctor, no operation. The curtain in your small area keeps opening up, everytime you heart jumps in happiness expecting to see the doctor with finally news of the operation, but everytime who shows up is some stupid ugly nurse offering you instead ice chips!! You'd be saying, "I am sick of Ice Chips!! Give me my fuc-ing operation!. Now, give the same person ice chips AFTER the operation, dry mouth and throat due to the anesthesia, then he'll tell you how wonderful those same ice chips are.
My Pre wont install any more apps. It says there is no more room. I still have 3.6 GB left so I dont know. I heard they limit the apps on the Pre. Dont know if that is true or not.
I hit the limit today, I had 53 apps installed, and it would not allow me to install a new application till I removed a few.
lolwut @ Yelp. I gotta see how Yelp's implementation of their own database is compared to Where. Although to be honest, I'd rather have a Zagats app instead of Yelp popping in on their own.
Yes there is a limit. They will most likely go away when the app store is out of beta and there are enough apps in the catalog to break the limit.
And guy above you.....please stop.
Yelp is a pretty good quality YARF. I wish it was the first one that came out. I couldn't care less about the other ones cause I'm already a yelp member and that site probably has the biggest following.
I have to say, much like EA's crappy coding for BF2, their Icon is a -10 for me!
1min demos are a waste of space for that store and probably there just to inflate numbers. Common they can do better than that :(
GREAT! 4 more shitty apps that really suck!
The Tetris demo lasts a whole 30 seconds!!! WOW
The Yelp app is horrible compared to others like it, more crap from palm.
Wonderful
Ever stop to think that the official App store is a little more picky about stability and apps? I love the homebrew apps and have a ton of them but the official app catalog won't have beta apps anytime soon. These are the early apps that are tricking out. Once devs have a way to monetize and the process is streamlined expect to see more.
The full Facebook page already works. Myspace is for 14-year-olds. ESPN is just ads, ads, ads, and overpaid jocks.
When they do release a ESPN app people will complain about that also. It doesn't matter what is released, there were always be complainers. Palm cant win.
Well the guy just above me proved my point :-)
Yea man, I totally agree. There will always be complainers about one thing or another. They REALLY expect Palm to drop an update to fix EVERY thing and magically have 100,000 apps. Like really? This was announce just 7 months ago, released almost 3 months ago. I mean, being fair... This is going really well.
Took Apple years and a few phones to add sum new features, and get the app store... and then evolve it to where it is today. By year's end, Palm will have a (maybe a few) very worthy iPhone competitors. Apple has a damn CULT, we know this, you cant beat them. But Palm isn't trying to do that: they want the "fat middle" of folks who would like a great alternative to the iPhone, for any of several reasons (physical keyboard, no AT&T, not having to use iTunes for music and media, REAL multi-tasking, etc.) Apps will be Flowing by years end, should have Flash, maybe video recording, and sum other improvements. This has been, and will be... a very interesting ride.
GO PALM!!!
Yelp support was already included in WHERE, not sure why there's a separate app for it since it doesn't do anything better.
I'm thinking they will upgrade this app more to include login capabilities. Right now, the only difference is that you can filter price ranges.
Holy crap.. Palm actually let the Yahtzee and Tetris demos into the catalog with THOSE crappy icons? That's mind-blowing..
The Tetris app is almost 5MB. WTF EA?
Runs smooth as hell though. You'd almost think it's a native app...
i like the tetris app better than the homebrew. sorry blockdrop but the controls are just better.
clearly it needs sounds and a non-demo version but I would gladly pay a few bucks for it.
are people really complaining about the icons? really?
Yeah I'm having difficulty with winamp remote. Keeps erroring out and I'm guessing it's a compatability issue but I can't find anymore info on this.
Does anyone use Winamp remote? If so, are you having difficulty listening to music or watching videos on the Pre?
I am LOVING how PALM is ever-so-casually dropping new apps into the catalog every few days. This is great. No major announcements, just BOOM! "You all asked, and you shall receive -- in tiny bits" LOL. All-in-all, this is more great news, and I know Palm should be taking into consideration some of these homebrew 'hacks' like flashing indicator center button, and virtual keyboards. With their expertise in software, they can fine tune a lot of these things, perfect them and release with future updates.
And new news on TWO Verizon Palm phones? Phew, glad I kept my stock, almost sold last week after dismal drops, but.. it's rebounding. Can't wait to here that Q1-10 report on sales numbers too, hopefully its good news.