TamsPalm – the Palm OS / web OS Blog

All those of you who have purchased their GSM Pre from any carrier other than VodaFone Germany have had to live with a SIM lock so far.

Fortunately, a solution is on the way – the video below has further info:

Palm has recently leaked out quite a few interesting things regarding webOS in the past. The latest interesting leak was at an UK developer event…

A report on ajaxian contains the following quote:

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On ease of use, multitasking has been great; UI latency is still an issue even though the hardware is comparable to 3GS. The problem is the path to the GPU didn’t exist, but now with CSS transforms, that will be solved in the immediate future

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As of now, this is all we know. Stay tuned for further info in the near future – and hit the link above for a write-up of the whole developer event.

Palm has recently started to see the value of a working software ecosystem (due to the lack of one). And, oh wonder, things like developer field trials are now possible.

Chuq van Rospach has announced the following new offerings:

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First — we are setting up a way for developers with apps in the catalog to have access to upcoming releases of the software to test compatibility of their application. Please drop me an email (chuq@palm.com) with the email addresses of the people you need to have access to the early release and what application you’ve published and I’ll set you up. We’re also setting up a private area here on the forums to support this early access.

Second — I’ve been thinking about how to help developers connect to each other and their users. Here’s a simple one: if you use twitter, send me your twitter info and I’ll make sure @webOSdev follows you (or your product’s twitter account, or both….). That way, anyone following @webOSdev will have the ability to connect with and follow the developers via our Twitter contacts. Special added bonus: I’ll be monitoring the tweets of everyone we follow and doing the RT thing on tweets I find interesting, and looking for things to put in the weekly “What’s Happening in webOSLand postings on PDN blog (* note 1).

Third — a number of developers have asked about getting access to download numbers for their applications. If you want access to that info, drop me an email and I’ll get it for you. We’re working on adding it to the portal so you can see it from your account, but until that happens, I’m your contact for that (* note 2).

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As of now, not much further information is available – stay tuned!

Palm’s Pre can not be considered too good a gaming platform – this is not so much due to weak hardware (its CPU is very fast), but rather due to the OS being unsuitable for high-performance games.

Thus don’t ask me what is going on here – but the boys at Palm’s have just hired a high-ranking graphics driver engineer from ATI. Phoronix reports the following:

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Aspiring for a new set of challenges, Matthew felt it was time to leave AMD after six years of work on completely overhauling their Linux graphics support. So what is Matthew going to next? This Australian native will be moving from Toronto to Sunnyvale, California where he is joining Palm and additionally will be working with us on the Phoronix Test Suite. At Palm, Matthew Tippett will be serving as the head of Linux kernel development with their Linux-based webOS smart-phone platform.

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As of now, not much further information is available…

We know almost everything that there is to know about Palm’s Pixi – the only open question is the one about the OS version used. Fortunately, devices like the Pixi send their OS version when accessing web sites – and sometimes, they just end up in a web log application.

According to PreCentral, the fine folks at DSLReports caught a Pixi in their web logger:

…The internet. DSL Reports logs what devices access their system for speed and other tests, and sharp-eyed reader taharka spotted something interesting: a device called the Pixi, running webOS 1.2.9 …

Palm could of course update the OS version any time – caveat emptor…