This is my cry to ask if anybody has (and can send me) a copy of the Palm Mojo SDK for the Palm Pre. From what I can gather in the forums, there have been some people added to the early SDK program already, but palm has not opened their developer program to the public yet. I’m surprised that the development kit hasn’t popped up on BitTorrent or in the newsgroups.
You have to wonder what the holdup is. Palm has, what could be the next big phone, and the only thing preventing me from showing more interest in it is that there’s applications that I use that are only available for Windows Mobile at this time. If I had the ability to write my own applications (Supposedly very easy as Pre development is based on HTML5/JavaScript) I could easily see myself switching to their platform.
I have considered switching to Android, but have been unimpressed with T-Mobile’s connectivity options. I’m rarely in an area with WiFi and their broadband is mediocre when compared to Spring and Verizon’s. I’m with Sprint now, so the Pre was just what I ordered. An incredibly well designed handset based on open source software and technologies.
It would make more sense if Palm initiated a controlled release of the SDK prior to the public launch of the phone. Give their key developers time to create many killer applications for the device and have that all ready at launch time. Now that the phone is available to the public, it would make sense for Palm to open the SDK. There’s already a strong community about developing for the Pre, mostly relying on hacks and backdoors in the Pre. Palm is not taking a stance against the home brew community, but isn’t doing them any favors by holding back. If the SDK is ready for one developer, it’s ready for the community. If it’s not ready, offer it as a Beta to those who want to begin with it.
With competition like the iPhone, and Android based phones coming out, you would thing that Palm would try to step up to the established products as quickly as possible.