Palm releases plug-in development kit. Yet another smart move on the software side.
I love what Palm’s doing these days. Their hardware design suffers from poor materials, and they can’t yet put together a complete buying experience like Apple, but their software and development side is absolutely stellar.
I’ve been incredibly impressed with how much webOS improves with each version. The updates come fast, and they’re typically addition by streamlining (a more integrated call log, better power management, new APIs).
Even more impressive: how wide they open their arms to developers, especially gaming developers, who must enjoy how open Palm makes its OS. Apple’s proven that the app ecosystem drives a device, and Palm’s doing everything possible to develop an ecosystem. Hell, they’ve even put out a browser-based graphic development environment. And yes, Apple had the advantage of iTunes, but people will soon enough get comfortable buying mobile apps outside of a central storefront.
The iPhone is not going to be the only development platform forever and the mobile phone space is only getting larger. If the app ecosystem drives success, Palm’s software development side is doing everything possible to lay the right foundation.
