TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

The usually well-informed website BrightHand has just posted the following:

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Journalists have been invited to an event which will feature the “UK launch of the ‘iPhone killer’ Palm Pre”.

A Launch? Maybe
The invitation seems to be saying that this smartphone will be released tomorrow, but that’s not guaranteed

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Even though O2 has confirmed to be the exclusive carrier for the Pre some time ago, not much information has been available on ship dates (last rumor from august put the release on Oct 31st). Let’s see how it all plays out…

Oh, the joy – the latest version of iTunes breaks the Palm Pre’s media sync once again.

UK-based news service Mirror reports the following:

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It was to be expected, but the release of iTunes 9 has brought an end to the Palm Pre’s syncing skills. The release of iTunes 8.2.1 had originally killed off the Pre’s ability to hook up with the software, but a Palm update had brought it back to life.

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As we have already covered the reasons for this cat-and-mouse play in the past, there’s not much to add here – expect a firmware update to fix it in the near future…

The folks at Palm’s always understood one thing: if the media is pissed, get them happy. Do whatever it takes, but keep them happy.

NANplayer’s rejection brought Palm a large amount of media outrage….which is why their developer head Chuq van Rospach has stated the following in a post to PreThinking:

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While we can’t accept NaNPlayer into the App Catalog right now, we are not rejecting it, and we are happy for it to continue life as a homebrew application until we get to the point where we can release public, supportable APIs for the functionality that it requires.

Thanks for your passion, and we can’t wait to enable even more fantastic creative applications via an expanded set of public APIs.

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From my personal point of view, there’s little to add here – let’s see how it all plays out!

TamsPalm covered NANplayer some time ago – unfortunately, it looks like the product will never make it into the App Catalog. The developer has just stated the following:

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Palm stated that they don’t support music file indexing and consequently won’t admit the app into the App Catalog. It doesn’t seem to matter that the app is works just fine on the Pre and that it is substantially better than their pathetic stock music player in terms of features and performance. I guess you should stick to iPhone or other platforms if you want a decent music player on your phone.

I won’t spite the user community just because of Palm’s decision. I will release NaNplayer to the Homebrew gallery once it is done. However, this will still leave most Pre users to get by with a music player that doesn’t even let them create a playlist. However, I will slow the pace of development considerably. I can’t continue to dedicate so much time to developing an app that may never be released to the majority of webOS users. In all likelihood, I will not develop any more webOS apps in the future.

If you’d like to see NaNplayer in the App Catalog, let Palm know.

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I honestly have to admit that there’s little to add here – Palm always was pretty good at pissing off its customers…

Engadget managed to catch the change log below on Sprint’s version history page for the Pre – as it has since been removed, linking to the support site will not do you much good:

Stay tuned for further info as we get it…