Our next interview partner is Shimon Shnitzer, a long-time Palm OS developer. Some of his applications have scored rave reviews on TamsPalm in the past – in order to celebrate his success, use the discount code SHIMONISCOOL to get 20% off 2day, 4cast and TakePhone!
Please tell us more about yourself and your company
Shimon Shnitzer, owner of ShSh software.
Been developing for Palm OS for over 10 years now – first as a hobby, then made it my “day job”. I have several products for Palm OS – TAKEphONE, 2day, 4cast, 2dial…
What were your initial impressions after the webOS announcement?
In one work – WOW. They did better than I hoped they do. I do believe they stand a chance to turn things around.
They will need to setup a (new) “Palm economy” – draw as much developers on board as possible, make a GOOD applications store (on device).
What did you expect Palm to do? Were your expectations met?
I have to admit – I thought they’d bring out something new, but not that “WOW-y”.
I did expect to see backward compatibility with OS 5 apps, but seeing the device and the OS – I agree most OS 5 applications I know will not look good at all running on these cards.
The operating system is said to be web-only. Do you think that its possible to create solid applications in such an environment?
I have to admit I am no expert in web programming, but I guess it truly depends on how good/open the SDK will be (how much access they give us developers to internals), and to what extent the apps will have to be tied to existence of web connection (ability to work and save data off-line).
5) WebOS is not able to run old Palm OS code. Can you understand this decision?
As I mentioned above – I do see the point there – not sure most of the apps out there will look ok on the new OS.
I believe most of the good ones will “break” anyway – I know a lot of things I did are tied to the OS 5 internals…
There’s been a lot of talk about Palm abandoning it’s current developer’s base, but gaining the “Java crowd”.
I think it all depends on the quality of the SDK they give us, and the support that comes with it – how soon will the SDK be out, how will it emulate real devices, how easy will it be for us developers to get REAL devices in our hands.
Many have compared webOS to the iPhone, thinking that most applications will be crapware. Do you think that a solid economy will be built around the pre?
Again – I believe it depends on the depth and quality of the SDK – if all a developer can do is show an image of a beer glass – then that’s what we’ll get. But if I can access the contacts, control outgoing/incoming calls, etc. – there will be good stuff there.
Do you plan to develop applications for the pre? Could you give us a preview?
Sure – first will have to evaluate porting some of my existing stuff – 2day seems to be doomed – they did an excellent job with the built-in calendar app, we’ll see about the rest.
Of course – once I get the SDK and emulator I bet I can come up with more app ideas.
If you could change one thing about webOS, what would it be?
Start with a GSM device, unlocked, available right away…(so I can get one now here in Israel).
I don’t think I have enough info to know the “bad” things. For now it looks really great.
If you could ask Palm one question, what would it be? (these will be collected and sent to Palm)
How soon will the SDK be out ? How soon will GSM devices be out ? Will there be a “developers program” ? Will there be a “device loaner” program ?
Anything you would like to add
Congratulations to Palm – you did a GREEEAAAATTT job.
Good to have you back with us. I cant wait to start building apps for this.
Even though the 
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