Just days after our announcement, EverythingPre at this point has decided to remove our Homebrew Apps downloads section. If you are interested in downloading Homebrew Apps, we suggest you visit the Homebrew App Gallery at Pre|Central (registration required). They have done a great job of setting up a comprehensive downloads section complete with a rating system.
You can still discuss Homebrew Apps in our forums. Not a member, register now.
We look forward to Palm and webOS developers adding applications to the Palm App Catalog, offering Palm Pre owners a wider selection of apps, without having to go through non-traditional methods to enjoy third party applications.
Thanks for doing this. When I first heard the announcement, I thought “Great, let’s muddy the homebrew waters with yet another homebrew gallery”. The existing gallery seems to be filling the void fairly well already. Your decision to decaffeinate will surely only benefit the community.
Thanks again.
Care to elaborate on why this decision was made? Some people want unity in the homebrew community but others actually do want choice. As a user it would be nice if there was a place to download homebrew apps that didn’t require registration. It would also be nice that if I had an app that targeted the everythingpre community I wouldn’t want to release it to via precentral or some other site. I’m not saying the decision to not offer homebrew downloads is a bad one, I’m just saying its worth elaborating on a bit.
WHY?!?
agreed. good call! The other gallery is enough for now.
Can’t we all just get along?
As a correction to your presumably-Palm-or-Sprint-imposed bold and italicized disclaimer: If there is a “traditional method” of installing phone apps, it’s not the 2-month-old App Catalog.
I would say installing apps from third-party sources is a far more “traditional” method of installing programs on your phone — as in the multitude of j2me, PalmOS and Windows Mobile developer and portal sites over the last 10 years — than the lonely 32 apps available in the App Catalog over the last 61 days. Sure, the tech-illiterate media is always going to use the number of apps in competing app stores as a measuring stick, but Apple’s always going to be the biggest man in the steamroom. Why limit your developers?
@raindog469
Traditional meaning the end user is not required to use developer mode, root their Pre, etc. The bold/italicized type was simply to accent our desire to see more apps in the App Catalog and soon. Sorry, if it appeared as a disclaimer, as that was not my intention.
@Carl Zulauf
It’s likely that many of these apps will find their way into the App Catalog. Just didn’t make sense expending resources to create a downloads section that might not be on par with PreCentral. It’s also not clear how the expansion of the App Catalog and third party distribution of signed webOS apps will affect the long term viability of Homebrew apps.
Very big of you guys. Precentral.net has indeed done a wonderful job. And who knows? This is just the beginning… one day there may be so many darn apps you just might have a Grand Re-opening!
Keep up the good work.
I think its a cop out… honestly, lets be honest, as far as palm pre enthusiast websites go, this one lags significantly behind precentral. Just compare the forums and you will know what im talking about. The sheer size difference is staggering. As such, with precentral’s app catalogue up and running, and humming with almost 100 apps, developers realized that was the place to go to get their stuff out there, tested, and talked about. After everythingpre announced their app catalogue, i enthusiastically checked the site every few hours to see if there were any new apps around that may have fallen through the cracks over at precentral, but imagine my surprise, when i consistently saw that big fat goose egg to the right of the app listing. It was sad, yet funny at the same time, because of the HUGE banner on the front page advertising that the homebrew app catalogue was now open! I’m not trying to be mean spirited here, but cmon guys, be honest, you didnt close the catalogue for some altruistic reason, but because it was an EPIC FAIL!!
@Viperfiend07
I think I was pretty clear both in the article and my comments as to why we closed the section. I’d hardly say that a section of the site that was open for less than 2 days was an epic fail, but you are of course entitled to your opinion.