Another day goes by and another “mobile application store” is announced. That is how it felt earlier this year when everyone was playing catch-up with Apple’s App Store. So when Palm announced webOS, it was only natural that this new platform just had to have some way for it’s users to add programs on the device. Palm’s answer was the App Catalog. Even though it is still in beta, the App Catalog has offered native third party apps since the first Palm Pre, the first device running Palm’s new webOS platform, was sold. While the App Catalog is important, I honestly believe that it is not as important right now as some of the programs that allow you to install Homebrew, third party apps that are not available in the App Catalog, programs like Filecoaster and Preload. Why?

One of the weakest parts of Apple’s App Store is that you cannot really deal with beta/alpha testing unless you go through iTunes. Even then, developers have a very limited number of spots they can offer to testers. What we end up seeing are “version 1.0″ apps that are not actually complete. The developers release apps and promise updates in the coming weeks/months.

I believe that even after Palm’s App Catalog comes out of beta and developers can charge for apps, the Homebrew catalogs can be used by the developers for testing updates that they do not want to release in the App Catalog. These same Homebrew catalogs can also hold apps if a developer doesn’t want to deal with Palm’s approval process or that Palm rejects.

This is basically like Cydia and Icy, the Jailbreak app catalogs for the iPhone, only Palm has come out in support of the Homebrew community. And this is the biggest distiction. Palm is supporting the developers in a way that Apple never will, by staying out of their way. It may not always stay this way, but so far Palm is content to let developers develop the way the developer sees fit. Sure, Palm may not approve some applications based on the criteria they choose, but that doesn’t mean that they are going to spen time and money making sure those apps will never show up on a webOS device the way that Apple is constantly playing the cat & mouse game with the Jailbreak community.

I am very excited to see how the webOS ecosystem evolves in the coming months and I believe that it will continue to grow, especially with Palm’s current attitude and commitment to their eager developers.

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