We have lots of Palm new for you today, since the company released its quarterly results yesterday. The company also opened up public beta access to Ares, its browser-based integrated development environment for the webOS. Which to me, as a non-developer, looks totally awesome. webOS 1.3.5 is also on its way, which will bring battery life and performance improvements, among other things.
Palm’s results and future prospects
Let’s start with the financial results, because as already predicted by Palm itself, they’re not yet anything to get excited about. Since the actual numbers are gibberish to me anyway, I figured I’d just point to the press release for those among us that do fully understand them. Engadget offers some insight into the numbers.
Palm already predicted last quarter that results would continue to be not that stellar of the coming quarters; the company is in it for the long term. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein stated in the press release that they still feel good about the long term.
“We are continuing to execute strongly against our long-term strategy with the delivery of Palm Pixi, the new carrier launches completed this quarter, and the upcoming opening of Palm’s full developer program,” Rubinstein said, “We’re still in the early stages of a long race, and we’re energized by the opportunity to compete in this exciting market. We remain confident that Palm’s innovative product design capabilities, integrated cloud services and the differentiated and delightful Palm webOS experience will provide the foundation for our sustained success.”
During the investor call, Rubinstein had a lot more to say about Palm’s prospects, which is covered by PreCentral. During said call, Rubinstein also confirmed webOS 1.3.5, which will bring, among other things, much needed battery life and speed improvements to the young mobile platform. It will also eliminate the dreaded application limit.
Project Ares
Not long after, Palm unveiled Project Ares, and opened public beta access to this new, in-browser development environment. This is a development environment for the webOS which runs entirely within the browser (Firefox, Chrome, or Safari – no IE), in keeping with the foundations of the webOS. Its main features:
- Complete integrated development environment
- Drag-and-drop interface builder
- Code editor
- Visual debugger
- Log viewer
- Source control integration
- Fingertip access to the full library of Mojo UI widgets
- Push-button project & scene creation
- Drag-and-drop file upload
- Instant project upload & download for seamless desktop/cloud workflow
- Preview apps in the browser
- Run apps directly on the webOS emulator or device (requires SDK installation)
- Use Ares in Safari, Chrome or Firefox
A relatively basic sample application built with Ares is already available in the Palm App Catalog.
“Like webOS, Project Ares embodies Palm’s belief that the future of mobile will be built on the web,” Palm writes, “Project Ares aims to enable a next-generation mobile development workflow, in which developers move quickly and seamlessly from editing in a browser, to debugging on a device, to selling applications in Palm’s App Catalog or on the web.”
Ares could certainly cause an infusion of applications into the App Catalog. Right now, there are about 800 applications in the Catalog, a tenfold improvement since the last quarterly results presentation thing. It is crucial to note, however, that the App Catalog is still very much in beta, and not open to everyone. Its final opening is imminent, and combined with Ares, the future certainly does look a lot brighter.
I still believe Palm is getting all this right. They have the controlled experience, including an application store, but they also allow distribution of applications outside of this app store. Furthermore, application development is free, the SDK is free, the IDE can be run entirely within a browser, and you don’t need to learn a fancy programming language. The only thing missing right now is WebGL support, but supposedly, this is coming to webOS too.
An even bigger problem, of course, is the simple fact that it is very hard to actually buy a webOS device in most of the world. Palm is also working on this, ready to engage with more carriers all around the world. Let’s hope it’s not too late.
Mainly because of 2 reasons
1) Still not a lot of native apps
2) Android has really gotten its act together to create good software and hardware making it a clear cut competitor in the smart phone market.
Palm still has a very innovative UI and the ability to run multiple apps. If they don’t build around their platform’s strengths, they will lose any chance of making a comeback.
Very bold move, all this web interface on mobiles – mobile development in a browser.
I hope they succeeded, they seem nicer than your average bear (Apple, Google, Microsoft).
You can use Dashcode to do this for the iPhone today.
With it you can make standalone, offline, iPhone web apps, that can be easily installed on the iPhone, “for free” (you need a mac, naturally), no sign up, no authorization, etc.
The problem remains, however, beyond the API aspects (on the iPhone, you don’t have total access to the phones feature set) of simply performance.
Even with the promise of Mozilla’s mobile browser, and their tauting of improved JS performance, Apples JS is no slouch. FF, Google, and Apple are all pretty competitive in terms of performance.
But they still lack a bit of “snap” on the slower mobile machines. JS is simply still too heavy.
Dashcode is no replacement for XCode and Obj-C, but it’s not bad either. It’s nice to have the option on the iPhone for both kinds of apps.
I think the Pre will do better when they include a native option.
Sigh.
The webOS HAS native applications. It is just that its native applications are written using web languages. You have access to ALL the hardware, except the 3D chip – for which support should come once WebGL is integrated into Mojo.
What is so hard to understand about this?
IT’S SLOW!
It will ALWAYS be SLOW. JS is SLOW, and it’s exacerbated on SLOW hardware.
They’ve made great strides in JS performance, but without language changes it will suffer in performance to other languages, and native languages will simply perform better.
Not all apps require the ultimate in performance, I’m a big fan of JS for development in many domains.
But, many of the interesting apps on the iPhone are more than just web front ends to data. Like the augmented reality applications, the spoken language translators, route mapping, not to mention games, etc. Those actually requre the CPU to heat up to get the job done, and JS simply isn’t appropriate for that at this time, especially on mobile hardware.
> The webOS HAS native applications. It is just that its native applications are written using web languages.
Native means the code is compiled to machine code for the processor of the device, and runs directly on the processor without some sort of emulation, intepreting or “just-in-time compilation” (which is actually worse than normal interpreting when it comes to response times).
> You have access to ALL the hardware
The programs don’t have direct access to the processor. Which is like, “sort of important” (read: absolutely required) for the designation “native”. And also essential for performance.
Edited 2009-12-18 17:27 UTC
The problem is that the definition of “native” is troublesome. A lot of people continue to spread the nonsense that applications on the webOS are the same as the web apps Apple used to claim were the shit before they came with their native SDK.
Of course you are right that they are not “native-native” (if you know what I mean), but there’s no proper word for the type of applications on the webOS, but they are A LOT closer to “native-native” than to web apps.
Edited 2009-12-18 17:33 UTC
“Native app” is the correct term, as the application is running natively on the device, and not in a web browser (which would be a “web app”).
However, these “native apps” are not “compiled apps”, in that they are not compiled into machine code and run on the CPU directly.
But, try getting the “general public” to see the difference between “native app” and “compiled app”.
For me, the only native application to the OS is an application written in the same manner as the built-in ones.
If Palm wrote everything but the kernel and “browser” using the same SDK that is offered to the developers, then yes, those web apps are native on WebOS. Otherwise, they are not, no matter how hard people try to convince you.
Also, I realize the term “native” is a bit troublesome. Web apps might be native to the WebOS (if the above is true), but they are not native to the hardware. For me, a real native application is an app that is native to both, the software and hardware, so, no, I would not call .NET applications native on Windows, for example.
Kindly provide a link to the browser-based IDE for Dashcode.
The day you can write iPhone apps in a browser is the day Apple decides that ‘the rest of us’ would write apps for their products.
Now that ‘rest of us’ acknowledgement belongs to Palm.
I’ll have to try it out to make an informed decision, but Ares looks like a good idea. Only thing is, I am still living in the cell phone dark ages so I have no itches to scratch at the moment. I hope there is the ability to use Ares off line though. There are cases where you don’t have web access and still want to be productive.
One thing I don’t understand though, is why people seem to think that JS == easy and C/C++/Obj-C == hard. For me, and I suspect for many other developers, the opposite is true.
Easy, C/C++/Obj-C == insecure code.
Just release a damned GSM version already!!
All the big carriers in Canada now use some form of GSM … and yet you can’t get a GSM Pre/Pixi anywhere in Canada. You’re still forced to use Bell’s not-quite-3G CDMA network.
Want better quarterly results? Then let people buy the device already.