JWZ Unable to Distribute Two Free Pre Apps

I like all the Android FUD in the comments section.<p>I don't feel like engaging anyone there (as they think they are funny by calling Google "Skynet"), but you don't need to have any interaction with Google to distribute or sell Android apps. Any user, even with a carrier-locked phone, can download a file to his computer and use free utilities to install that on his phone. (I am not 100% sure that the computer is even required; there is probably an app that will install apk files that are on the phone's SD card.)<p>Example where I have done this: Sipdroid. The version in the Market does not support VoIP over 3G. The version on their website does. So you download their version, run adb, and now the Sipdroid on your phone supports 3G. If the Sipdroid website wanted to charge me for this transaction, they could.<p>No Google needed.<p>If you want openness on your phone and still want a good user experience, Android is the way to go. Other phones have a good user experience, but they are only "open" when compared to game consoles or microwave oven firmware.

It seems the one advantage over the iPhone would have been an open app platform. They're copying the wrong features from apple.

Are these people idiots? As soon as you realize jwz is one of your early adopters, as a company you should fly him first class to your labs, let him interact with the developers themselves, get feedback from him, ask him how can you make his experience better, etc... If you want to go the extra mile. If you don't, at least be particularly careful not to piss him off.

jwz says this in the comments:<p><i>An important point here is that Palm-the-company used to not be stupid in this way. The way this worked on PalmOS was completely sane. They went and fucked up their whole process when they switched to WebOS.<p>I assume this is because they hired the majority of the WebOS management team from Apple, pushing out the people who did it right in the PalmOS years, and those new people are idiots.</i><p>I'm not sure it's safe to assume that this process is <i>stupid</i>. Palm did, indeed, copy all of this straight from Apple's playbook. Apple's App Store is <i>wildly successful</i>. It may have issues from the perspective of <i>some developers</i>, but that's not the only perspective that matters. Palm isn't trying to make a bunch of developers happy. They're trying to sell phones and make <i>users</i> happy.<p>Whether you can make users just as happy without requiring developers to jump through hoops remains to be seen. One could easily argue that it's possible, but I'd like to see evidence of that in the real world. I don't think the software ecosystems for desktop computers are a fair comparison. The ecosystems for older Palm devices, which jwz references here, were never nearly as successful as Apple's App Store. Maybe that suggests that the hoops somehow help the user experience? I don't know. But it looks like Palm is assuming that it does.<p>I agree that this whole process seems completely broken from jwz's perspective, but it's hard to say that Palm had people "who did it right in the PalmOS years" when they never got it right in the category that matters: number of app sales. That could be 100% attributable to the iPhone's superiority, not the App Store's, though.

In this respect, the iPhone development experience is somewhat better. You sign up for a dev account (which costs 99 bucks a year), then you can submit free apps to the store. There is a lot more paperwork and hoops to jump through if you want to submit paid apps, but it's all optional.

I can install his apps trivially. I wouldn't because they're largely worthless (there are already a dozen tip calculators) but Palm has said that they'd allow homebrew apps and so far have stood behind it.

Clearly, one of the higher-ups at Palm told the company they needed to find ways to surpass the iPhone's user experience, and forgot to specify "but only the good parts".

More duct tape!

Seeing Pre's early troubles and Rim's App world ( see review at GigaOm [1]), not sure there is anyone getting app stores right (besides APPL).<p>Between phone companies having to negotiate with platform and phone developers the market is too complicated. Makes Android look like the only long term, viable competing platform. Even though Balmer said MS got Windows Mobile wrong [2], even if the next one is better not sure the next version will be open enough, and cool enough to gain wide adoption.<p>[1] - <a href="http://gigaom.com/2009/09/28/app-world-will-be-crucial-for-rim-as-smartphone-space-heats-up/" rel="nofollow">http://gigaom.com/2009/09/28/app-world-will-be-crucial-for-r...</a> [2] - <a href="http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=8170" rel="nofollow">http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=8170</a><p>Edit - just saw this via @timbray <a href="http://openandroidalliance.com/" rel="nofollow">http://openandroidalliance.com/</a>

Wow. If this is a battle over developer mindshare, Palm is definitely losing an early opportunity. Apple may also be shooting itself in the foot.<p>Any crazy Android stories like this?

Instead of understanding there is a problem in the way Apple is handling this stuff, trying to exploit it creating a market that's more free and easy for developers, Palm is doing the same errors, with the difference that they are nowhere as successful as Apple, so it's even worse.

Anyone care to speculate as to why they would require developers of free apps to have a verified PayPal account? Is it just incompetence / lack of attention to detail ?

Looks like the grass isn't always greener. I do wonder why they decided to close their app distribution, I enjoyed the little bit of PalmOS development I've done.

In long run open platform is the way to move forward

The amount of effort he was willing to put in to release <i>free software</i> amazes me.

They want to Fail. So they would!

It seems clear that writing application for ANY mobile device will require jumping through some obscure corporation rules. Symbian is no exception to that, nor it is RIM. Maybe it is time to relax and accept it as one of the facts of life...

Is there a good anti-iPhone rant somewhere that avoids logical fallacies and would help me understand why some people are averse to iPhone development? I don't get it.<p>Central point of control == bad?<p>I don't buy it. JWZ is a central point of control for DNA Lounge, I assume; PG is a close to a central point of control for YC news; Linus is a central point of control for Linux kernel enhancements -- or was, for a while; I haven't been keeping up so if I'm wrong, please understand the general point, which is: we happily accept central control as long as there is good will.<p>DRM == bad?<p>Again, though I agree, Apple's implementation of DRM for Apps has gotten it far closer to right than any other, with family sharing of one purchase on multiple devices, refunds, DRM-free music, free updates, remembering your purchase so you can re-download purchased items for free (remember the phone companies' model, buy a game, run out of memory, delete it, then if you want it later you have to buy it again?). Definitely iPhone is not free, in the freedom sense, and downright scary, in the your-app-can-be-yanked-at-any-time sense, but I believe the same is true on Android; we just haven't seen the test case yet.<p>iPhone is not open == bad<p>OK... but it's a platform. Lots of platforms are open only down to certain layers. Google is a platform. But it only exposes certain parts of itself for developers to use. And we understand that. So why do we not understand it when it comes to a phone? Maybe because it's such a personal device?<p>It doesn't let us do everything == bad<p>I think this comes closest to being an answer. This would be the answer for me. But, neither does any other device. I continue to think that Android developers are naive to assume they are not going to bump up against limits imposed by carriers and by Google. They just don't have the critical mass to have hit all the nooks and crannies yet.<p>Apple is not friendly to open source == bad.<p>Grand Central Dispatch, LLVM, Clang (probably there are more) all would indicate otherwise.<p>So, what am I missing? Not trying to troll here. I'm sure I have exhibited some ignorance in this long post, seriously. Why are (some small number of smart) people pounding their heads against the wall rather than develop for iPhone?