The Palm Pre will have an instant software library consisting of 1000s of apps and games on its launch day, thanks to a genuiius decision to integrate a Palm OS emulator into the device.
The Palm Pre will ship with Palm’s new webOS operating system, complete with fancy animations, multitouch and all-new user interface. Anyone fans of old-school Palm OS devices like the Palm Pilot or Visor would expect to be a little disappointed, then – but wait, what’s this?
Despite officially killing off the venerable Palm OS back in February, Palm has had a change of heart and has asked Palm OS emulator people MotionApps to bring their Palm emulator Classic to webOS. Classic will be built right into the OS, instantly giving Palm Pre users a library of around 30,000 apps and games to choose from.
We do expect there to be a few issues with screen resolution (the Pre has a much higher-res than even the best Palm OS device) so things will either look a bit blocky or take place in a smaller section of the screen. There are bound to be a few Palm OS apps that rely too much on running on Palm hardware, too, although MotionApps is producing a compatibility list to eliminate any obvious non-starters. That said, this is a brilliant move by Palm and should give the Palm Pre a serious leg up against its rivals.
TBC | £TBC | Palm
