Palm App Catalog Glitch Locks Out WebOS Users

hazmat2k writes "Palm's App Catalog appears to have suffered a meltdown of sorts, with users of Palm Pre, Pixi, Pre Plus, and Pixi Plus handsets reporting that after having downloaded a new title — whether paid or free — no aftermarket software would run properly. The issue remained even after fully erasing and restarting the phone; in fact, the apps were still installed even after that process was completed. Core functionality — calls, messaging, and data — were all unaffected. Palm acknowledged the issue on its blog, and later said that it had been fixed."

Comments

Re:I was kind of hoping for an quasi-Apple change

[LurkerXXX]

It was 'down' for more like 16 hours, depending where you live. Just rolling back the date made everything work fine. It had the appearance of simply being something like an expired certificate. No biggie, but inconvenient if you happened to want a new app this weekend.

Misleading summary

[bluec]

after having downloaded a new title – whether paid or free – no aftermarket software would run properly

Not true. The software just downloaded would not run properly, but all other aftermarket software previously installed was unaffected.

Re:Fragile Devices

[El Royo]

I don't believe this is a very accurate description of the problem. Here is the issue in a nutshell: You couldn't install or update apps from the App Catalog. Period. Everything else in the phone was unaffected. The beauty of the webOS ecosystem is that homebrew (encouraged by Palm!) was completely unaffected. You could still go open, tinker, futz and fuss with the phone all you wanted to through things like Preware or webOS Quick Install. Even if HP decided to shutter Palm tomorrow (which isn't going to happen with all the hype around tablets these days) the homebrew community would continue to thrive. It is an open Linux platform after all.