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The Kafka-esque Nightmare of Palm App Submission
MBCook writes "Jamie Zawinski, shortly after the release of the Palm Pre, wrote two free software programs for the phone: a Tip Calculator and a port of Dali Clock. In trying to get the apps published to the App Catalog, he has had to sign up to be a developer twice; fax contracts around; been told (apparently incorrectly) that he was not allowed to release free software for the phone; and told he had to give PayPal his checking account number. 'It's been two weeks, and I have received no reply. In the months since this process began, other third-party developers seem to have managed to get their applications into the App Catalog. Apparently these people are better at jumping through ridiculous hoops than I am.'"
Palm app clunker?
A who'd've thunker.
What way could this pave,
For another DC save?
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
This is what's actually good in Windows Mobile. Anyone can write software for it and anyone can start a Store site for it. In this respect Windows and Windows Mobile are quite open architectures. All iPhone, Palm and Symbian are really restricted and closed architectures (Symbian requires you to get certificate for the app too), and getting your apps on the stores are a real bitch.
And they say that Apple's App store process is a pain in the ass. Looks like Palm is emulating more of Apple than we thought. :-)
I wish my lawn was emo, so it would cut itself.
So Palm decided that they wanted to imitate Apple? After all, "no press is bad press", and Apple sure has been getting a lot of press for the way it runs the AppStore. Locking down the device... it may not be useful to the *customers*, but it couldn't harm the company at all, could it?
Well, not unless they abandon your platform (or never flock to it in the first place) in favor of Android or even Nokia's Maemo -- platforms that allow the USER to control what they run on their devices.
I think I've learned my lesson. I am not buying an iPhone, Kindle, or (after reading this) Palm -- no devices from a company that intends to control what I can run on my device. Offering a store: GREAT idea. Carefully controlling what goes in this store and prohibiting any other means of getting apps onto the device: that makes it THEIR device, not mine, and I don't want to play that game.
Maybe the world doesn't need another tip calculator...
The name Kafka now gets invoked whenever someone doesn't immediately get what he/she wants. Some administrative thingy gone wrong? Kafka! Your broadband connection doesn't allow you to download at 20Mb and the help desk says that the speed is not constant? Kafka! Your microwave's remote control's batteries are not in stock at your local supermarket and it will take more than an hour to restock? Kafka! You wake up and you find yourself turning into a giant beetle? O wait...
The old, imho to date unmatched, Palm OS is dead, the new Palm seems to become a screwup, iPhone/iPod Touch is a lockdown nightmare, WinMobile is a no-go and developing, integrating and deploying to Blackb*rrys is like grating your fingernails.
The Matter of fact is: Mobile is a mess, very much the way desktop computers were in the mid-eighties.
We are in dire need of an eqiuvalent to the Arduino platform in the PDA market. Small, cheap, relyable, open standards, with a simple single-touch screen a neat CPU and some run-off-the-mill LitIon battery industry standard. 6 months into the first batch we'll have FOSS programmers and hardware hackers expanding it to be a cellphone for those who want it to be one.
THAT is what we need.
Just the open standard equivalent of my oldest colorscreen Palm at the price of 100 Euros and an FOSS OS that comes with it, that's all I ask. It can't be that difficult with hardware prices dropping left right and center.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I can't believe (Ok, maybe I can) that this troll ended up on Slashdot. He put an app out. A tip calculator. One of the forum members asked him to include cents (i.e. to figure a tip from $12.65 if one was so inclined). Instead of doing it, or saying why he didn't want to do it, he added a message into the app "DON'T BE A CHEAPSKATE -- ROUND UP TO THE NEAREST DOLLAR" and went on a rant attack on the forums. Now he doesn't want to be a PayPal verified guy? Doesn't want to re-version his app (when he could add a 0. in front of it)?? Dumbass..
The point is not what YOU think of the quality of the apps. It's not what PALM thinks of the quality of the apps. The point is that the author of the software must jump through ridiculous hoops and beg permission of someone before they can give their app to people who want it. And if the someone says "No", then no one can have it.
Oh hardly. The man wants to distribute free software and he had to print out and sign 10 pages of legal documents. Then he had to comply with a whole bunch of ridiculous demands (like setting his version number less than 1.0.0 for a finished app), then deal with mountains of emails.
Does this sound like an efficient organization? Could it be that the reason why they've been overwhelmed is (gasp!) their ridiculous and inefficient distribution process?
Well, no - after all, that would be too much like *bashing Palm*. See how I turned that on you? Instead of *bashing Apple*, I turned it into *bashing Palm*! Neat trick, huh?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It should be noted that the developer had his own particular requirements:
* Would not sign NDA
* Would not even TALK with Palm about signing an NDA
* Would not change version numbers
* Would not get PayPal verified account
In other words, Palm had certain policies in place. Maybe they were good policies, maybe they were foolish ones. But that was not really the issue. The real sticking point was that the developer felt that, since he was distributing his apps for free, he had an entitlement to be at his own discretion exempt from any policies Palm put in place. And Palm didn't see it that way. Seems to me that there was simply not a meeting of minds and he's better off following his own device and developing for a more open platform. But by his own admission clearly there are plenty of developers who aren't bent out of shape by Palm's policies, which I would certainly not describe as "nightmarish" given the issues stated in his article. To be honest, I was more put off by his whining, histrionic melodramatic tone than by yet another example of Palm's notoriously poor business sense. On a scale of Palm's Pre snafus I'd rate poor battery life as a 10, annoying cursor is annoying as a 2, and the issues outlined in his story as a less than a one.
(Speaking of "annoying cursor," OT but does anyone else have a problem with trying to drop a cursor on the right hand side of Slashdot's comment box?)
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
... there is a thriving homebrew community which Palm supports. Precentral.net has a heck of a lot of apps available for the Pre that are not available in the official Pre store.
(I am not affiliated with Precentral.net, I just have a fair amount of homebrew apps on my Pre).
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
If you'd RTFA, you would have seen that the morning after he submitted the apps to Palm for approval, he turned into a giant cockroach. Therefore, Kafkaesque is a completely appropriate adjective.
$comment =~ s/($verb)\s+($noun)/IN SOVIET RUSSIA, $2 $1s YOU!/g;
Stuff like this?
I opened a free bank account and pointed a free PayPal account to it. Total time, 1 hour at bank and on computer.
Done.
Apps submitted for sale from Palm.
Yes, there are issues with Palm creating the infrastructure to handle all developers apps being submitted. However, the poster is constantly deciding that he won't do the simple things Palm asks, to help them manage the volume. Fine, those "problem" developers can wait until everything is figured out.
Why in the world should Palm spend hours and hours appeasing a developer of two mediocre apps (yes, I've used both) when the same time could get a dozen more developers setup for submitting apps. Obviously, it is some sort of conspiracy, rather than just good business sense.
You were correct until scripting for Android http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/ was released;
now "Python, Perl, JRuby, Lua, BeanShell, and shell are currently supported, and we're planning to add more."
So without trying to offend anyone - if a developer can't manage to bang out an app in one of the many languages
now supported, do you really want to run their app?
Oh, and this IS /. Lots of Apple fanboys submit stories all the time here. Or have you not noticed the overwhelmingly positive iPhone stories, even back when they were initially launched and had many similar issues? Or are you blinded by your own fanboyism?
Apple fanboyism on Slashdot? Are we talking about the same Apple that gets repeatedly attacked on Slashdot for their ridiculous app store approval policies?
Or do you think that Palm should be allowed to be more draconian than Apple because they're smaller?
You're the one getting defensive when his favourite company gets attacked, so who do you think is the real fanboy here?