Peter Skillman, VP of Industrial Design for Palm, walks through the elements of hardware design on the Palm Pre. From the hardware to the packaging, Palm's mantra with the Pre was "no detail is too small". Speaking of the packaging, the Palm Pre packaging is similar to the Treo Pro. Like the Palm Pre, it's small and it's "green". Skillman also demos the Touchstone accessory that allows you to charge the Palm Pre without having to plug it in. Simply drop the Palm Pre on the Touchstone and it starts charging.
The following is part one of an ongoing series of Palm Pre videos. In this video, you'll see "cards" on the Palm Pre. The webOS supports multi-tasking. Pressing the home button on the Pre will reveal all your open applications in "cards". You can keep these open and they are actually live. For example, you can have a video playing in one card and then move to another card that has a browser working. Multiple cards did not slow down or hinder the performance of the Palm Pre in any way. Cards on the Palm Pre were one of the more innovative features of webOS. Stay tuned for our continuing coverage of the Palm Pre. Plenty more hands on videos of the device in action and first impressions. Please feel free to ask questions about the Palm Pre in our Palm Pre forums. Not a member? Register today.
While it was not available today, Palm executives confirmed there will be an App Store on the Palm Pre. With all the secrecy surrounding the announcement today, developers will be anxious to get their hands on the webOS SDK. Given the unbridled success of the App Store on Apple's iPhone, this seems like a no-brainer. No release date has been set for the App Store launch, but one would presume it would be ready when the Palm Pre is released in the first half of 2009.
Palm has confirmed they will release an SDK for webOS. Application development is done using HTML and CSS. According to Palm, developers will find it "easy to create apps". Developers created a Twitter app in less than 3 days. The company has partnered with a few long-time Palm OS developers in effort to get their apps on the Palm Pre.
Palm has not built-in backward compatibility for Palm OS applications. The company has no plans to do so, but instead will rely on a third party developer. StyleTap was able to port Palm OS apps on the iPhone, so they are most likely the developer who will look to create an emulation app for webOS and the Pre. The company never released their Palm OS emulation for iPhone, but rather showed it as a "proof of concept". Anyone from StyleTap want to comment? Plenty of Palm OS owners looking to make the jump to webOS will be looking to keep their old apps.
