I had an email show up in my inbox at 2am this morning announcing Palm’s new App Store for Palm and Windows Mobile operating systems. The announcement says that you can browse and download over 5,000 apps & games right from your Palm device. Plus, there are over 1,000 free apps to choose from. The mobile software store supports over 25 Palm devices, from the Centro to the Treo Pro. It doesn’t break down how many of the 5000 apps are for Palm OS and how many are for Windows Mobile. Not that it really matters, but I’m just curious. I don’t have a Centro or Treo with me today, so I haven’t been able to test it out. Anyone else tried it yet? If so, what’s the verdict?
So, my question to all of you is this… Is this just another case of being too little and too late for Palm? For me, I’m honestly not that excited about the app store. I’m way more curious about their announcement coming up at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in a few weeks. I think I’ll always be a Palm person at heart, even when I flit around to other phones. So I really hope something new and exciting is just around the corner. I’m the eternal optimist 🙂
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I’m not excited per se, but it is a good sign. One of the reasons I’ve read the iPhone App Store is so successful is that it makes it dead easy for people to download items. Most consumers don’t know or care enough to track down lots of apps all over the place, and the iPhone was one of the most user friendly platforms that DIDN’T make people hunt around for apps.
Even if this has nothing to do with Nova, it might encourage people to do more with their Centros, and cement some relationships for Palm. They need to offer these kinds of things to convert casual users into loyal users.
I just downloaded the PALM App store. I am very under impressed. The “Palm App” (at least on the PalmOS) Is simply an Icon that links you to a webpage that opens in the palm browser. Nothing more then that. They did do a nice job on the layout to make it quick and easy on the Palm’s small screen. Download work exactly the same way they did when downloading them from other Palm software sites.
I’ve been a major Palm user since the Original Palm in the early 90’s. Always come back. The tease of a Linux based Palm OS replacement has had me drooling for a long time. I got to play with an early developer edition in 2004, even have a promotional mug, hat and t-shirt happily telling me that it is just around the corner. Sadly my mug, hat and t-shirt have been taunting me for years now. Every few months I get a developer email saying “Almost here” I’ve grown numb. At this point would I be surprised if the announcement at CES is a licensed Treo running Android? Not at all. In fact it might be just what palm needs to do.
But being the Palm junkie/fanboy I am, I’ll probably get all excited about it anyways. We will see.
I personally haven’t been excited about a Palm announcement since the introductions of the original Treo and the Tungsten|T. Every other announcement has either had some ambivalence (“added feature X but subtracted feature Y”) or underwhelming/disappointment (“well, that’s nice that you’ve FINALLY added that, but they should have done that two versions ago.”)
-a
I agree i have always likesd palm and also will the gadgeteer be covering CES
I have been getting my hopes up every time one of Palm’s PR people contacts me about an announcement for a couple of years now. It has usually turns out to be something non-exciting like a new color for the Treo or Centro. All I can say is that I sure hope the announcement at CES will be something great. If it’s the new OS, I hope new devices will be announced along with it.
I had almost sworn off Palm recently, but I have to admit that my hopes are starting to percolate again…
Unfortunately, I had decided not to attend CES in January. Gah! 🙁 It figures that something really good might happen on a year that don’t attend…
this…is just another factor convincing me I was right to dump the Palm OS. You mean I can’t just go to a website and download apps? I have to download an app to my computer to download apps to my phone???? I am amazed they’ve lasted this long!
Jeff:
The app you download is an app for your Palm device. It is basically just a link that connects you to a mobile palm OS software store. PalmInfoCenter has had the same thing for quite a while now. This is nothing exciting.
The Palm screen on my Centro is mis-aligned, and the thing is pretty slow.
I downloaded it, tried it, and erased it within a couple days. I had thought about reviewing it, but I really could not think of much to say about it.
There are other ways to download most programs already, but I actually prefer using my computer as the ‘go between’- I can do more research more conveniently and I can store the master file- which is getting more important as places, like Handango, are charging to ‘store’ your downloads.