Riccardo from Handcase, a Brazilian software developer for the Palm platform, talked with TamsPalm about WebOS and his thoughts on the new system. As "one of the biggest software makers for Palm OS", he states that although Palm was not clear in the beginning what they expected from developers, they really came through and have met and exceeded his expectations and users' expectations which is the most important factor for any new device. He had some strong words to say about this:
Palm has definitely proven its success once again. All the people who talked crap about Palm now have to shut up.
And he adds:
...iPhone will end. I am not saying this because the Palm Pre born. Always said this.
He goes on to state that he worries about backwards compatibility with old Palm OS applications, and for smaller companies this could mean trouble. When asked about what he thought of the decision made to not run Palm OS code on WebOS, he says:
This is no decision.This is the only point to be resolved by Palm. When the Palm killed the PQA service, over 25% of developers closed. Palm will not be stupid, repeating the same mistake. For us the effect would be minimal, and the small but, as will be? So who is big, has breath and can redo his apps. Small developer on the other hand… There is no arguing about what this. The legacy PalmOS, must run in WebOS. Nothing less than this.
So could it cost legacy developers a lot to bring their programs up to code? We'll have to wait and see how Palm will deal with this. We recall the issues developers faced to overcome in the move to OS 5 when it was first released. But with WebOS, Palm seems to have made it more accessible than ever, and opened the doors to both new and old developers to reach out to a bigger user base than ever.
LinuxDevices reported back in January that Handcase was porting 100 of its PalmOS applications to WebOS, and translating all of its applications to English. 70 English-language WebOS apps are already gearing up for release.
Handcase is a Brazilian software producer for the Palm platform, with 323 products to date.
For the full interview transcription, go here:
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