Palm: Interpreters and Emulators A-OK for webOS PDK apps 24
Palm and Appcelerator hosted a party last night to woo iPhone developers into taking a look at PDK apps on webOS - the porting of which apparently takes surprisingly little time. You can check out Ben Combee's slides on the matter, but one in particular made us smile: "Interpreters? Fine. Emulators? No Problem."
We suspect that the above might have been sweet sweet Palm Balm to the lips of iPhone developers parched by Apple's banning of both of the above from their App store. Given the agenda above and the fact that the party was cohosted by Appcelerator, we were slightly surprised to not see an announcement of webOS support for their Titanium development product, but we hope it'll come soon enough.
Either way, iPhone devs have a chance to get in on the $1 million that Palm is giving away to developers who submit PDK apps, so get in early.
Source: Slideshare
24 Comments
Great News!!!
Although I don't have much interest in emulators personally, I still love the fact that palm is so open and allows me to do things that other manufactures would brick my phone for doing.
Amen!
And since you can bet your tuchus that nothing that gets said at these presentations hasn't already gone through the HP filter, this bodes VERY well for WebOS's future openness.
Very cool...I'd love to play some older MAME games via emulation and good to see Palm being open where Apple is not PERIOD(.)
Thanks for the insight and I suspect the PDK update is Going to Rock! Sorli...
I'm on the EVO now, but I would definitely fire up my Pre again if we got some awesome games on the platform. I'm really disappointed in the dearth of games on Android.
I may get flamed for this, but man the EVO hardware is hot. If Palm can really get the App situation fixed and make EVO-quality hardware (on screen keyboard should be an option, it's pretty good!) I would really consider coming back.
I played around with the EVo for an hour on Friday and yes, the hardware is hot, it flies. However you have to like having a massive phone in your pocket (i don't), no physical keyboard (also a problem) and get confined to the far less elegant Android OS.
i did the same yesterday and came away with a different impression.
I found the EVO to be a stunning phone. Just the camera has so many more options you can pick save format, sepia, resolution, etc. etc. it wasn't nearly too big. And i loved the keyboard. After my pre keyboard started screwing up i don't care about a physical keyboard. Plus the android spell check and predictive text was much better then in webos. Multitasking is a weakness but i have very few apps on my pre and the type of apps released are not the caliber that interest me. I think Android is "less elegant" but it gives far more features and i could very much live with it. And the os is light years more responsive. I am not getting an EVO i'm waiting to see if Sprint gets the iphone or i'm just gonna wait out another year on sprint and buy nothing but I was very impressed with the EVO.
I hear you but the EVO totally works for me, the size isn't too big at all since it's so thin, I'm really liking the on screen keyboard because the auto correct is so good and so far I can live with the OS.
Hey, my Pre hardware is hot, especially after it has been on the Torchstone a while...
Question... How many and how often, do people play games on their smart phone. Of all of the hours we use our phones, how many of those hours are for Gaming? How many hours are we commuting (not driving), in waiting rooms, sitting idle. I just hear alot of discussion on gaming with smartphones, but I'd like some commentary on how feasible it really is? Isn't it more marketable to focus on apps that people will use?
I think the highest grossing apps are games. I'm sure you could dig up some pretty graphs that backs this up.
actually while I'm carpooling, waiting rooms, lunch break, at night passing some time while my lady is watching some show I don't like, on road trips, on the airplane, in the airport, waiting for food at a restaurant, once in awhile at the bar waiting on friends, waiting for pool games when I'm at league, sitting at the skatepark (im 35), waiting for my pizza at pizza hut to take home, waiting for my lady to get out of work, while my lady is clothes shopping, sitting outside of my apt on the porch enjoying a nice day, sitting on the bank of a river, while fishing, while on the beach, while out boating, when I'm out camping, taking a sit down break while hiking, when I'm taking a break at a rest stop from driving, while on the subway, while on the bus, while in bed before going to sleep and my lady is reading a book, waiting at kinkos, waiting at the Sprint store, waiting at the DMV, waiting for court to start.... Should I go on? Lol
where ever and when ever you have time to read a newspaper basically is time to play a little and distract your mind from daily stresses and just escape for a little bit.
basically ask yourself when do I have time to use a device like an ipad or kindle or a new WebOS tablet and you have your answer on when you can play a little bit of a game.
So how 'bout an iPhone emulator for the Pre/Pixi ala "Classic"?
You can already emulate an iPhone, just open one card at a time.
BAHAHA!
I want Dosbox as an official app... so I can run Windows 3.1.
awesome this is the reason I so heavily back palm bc they let you have freedom with your device. I would love to get a emulator like I had for palm os called ljp (little john player) funny name I know but it let you play sega genisis games, game gear, snes, nes & gameboy and others I think also it worked well & was very fun to play the clasics it was also free like most emulators.
oh and we don't care if your on your evo or are leaving palm to get whatever so please quit entering every forum with the same comments especially when the article has nothing to do with the evo or whatever phone.
If it is open source and written to use SDL or OpenGL ES, I would think it could be ported using the PDK.
oh wait I forgot to mention playing games while taking a poo!!
Can someone explain to a n00b like me what an interpreter would be used for app-wise?
Think Adobe Flash
Palm is not doing anyone a favor, here. They are not being so open out of the goodness of their hearts; they are so open because they are desperate. They can't sell their phones so they give them away. They can't attract native developers so they make an iPhone app porting kit. They can't make that attractive so they pay developers to port their apps. Now, they don't even care if developers develop for the WebOS experience. Bring on the emulators and clone machines.
Celebrate if you like, but I don't think this is good news.
I agree and disagree at the same time. Is that possible?
On the one hand, you are right that it seems the "quality over quantity, we don't want a $0.99 wasteland" has been set aside and replaced by "hey, just port your apps over...whatever they are."
On the other hand, Palm has stated from the beginning of webOS that it would be very easy to develop for. So in a sense, making it easy to port apps from other platforms is in line.
actually they have always been open like this.