Palm and their Pre launch partner Sprint have been working to show the mobile phone industry, specifically, end users, that the new Palm Pre is everything that the Apple iPhone is and more when it comes to third-party applications.
AppleInsider has an article of interest to Palm fans this morning.
“While third-party apps are being trumpeted as the iPhone’s strength, key Palm Pre demos this week were designed to highlight their restrictions by taking advantage of those precise things that Apple won’t allow.
At Sprint’s press lounge during the CTIA Wireless Association’s annual event, Palm stressed the advantages of the new webOS platform at the heart of the Pre by running presentations of carefully selected third-party software live on sample phones.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Palm also underlined Apple’s refusal to permit interpreting code within third-party apps by showcasing an emulator that does just this. Mobile software developer MotionApps released an app known as Classic that, much as with Apple’s own Classic that was present in Mac OS X until Leopard, recreates the entire working environment for an older operating system. In the case of webOS, it lets Pre users run PalmOS apps near full speed and as just one of any other, native apps that can be running at the same time.”
Palm really surprised us when they showed off the Palm Pre and it’s new mobile operating sytsem, webOS. webOS is the successor to the venerable Palm OS which has had a long service life over the last decade powering Palm’s original PDA product line and then making the jump to the company’s Treo and Centro smartphones.
The Pre and webOS are considered a make or break product launch for Palm. The more I learn about this new hardware and software dymamic duo, the more excited I am to get my hands on the hardware and software.