[AdidasNYR]

I dont know what to think. I was thinking about graphic intensive apps just earlier today as a matter of fact.

Did you ever notice Pandora on the pre is so different than on the iphone? When you look at the info for a song by hitting the info button the album art dissapears from view and the info pops up. On the iphone theres a cool 3d effect where the card flips.

Also did you ever go through the recent history in Pandora. Its choppy as hell when you slide through the old album artwork but on the iPhone it looks beautiful in cover flow.

I just sat here and loaded every app looking for any kind of 3d transitions and there really aren't any. Prove me wrong.

Listen, i don't need 50,000 games or whatever but I would like some 3d games in the future and even apps with beautiful graphics. This doesn't appear to be on the pre at all. For me, that bothers me.

I love this OS and I love sprint but I am not going to say I am not jealous of the accelerated 3d which seems to be everywhere on an iPhone.

[Travish]

*definitely not defiantly =P

Haha. Its my first post because I never before had any information or a story that wasn't already made available. This was the first thing I felt that was unique/funny so I wanted to share.

For the record, I really like my Pre. Though sometimes if I open a page in the browser too quickly or go to a different page while its still loading I can't access websites until I reset it. Though the app catalog still works so it must have to do with the browser rather than the internet connection.

[jsabo]

I might have this wrong, and am too lazy to look it up at the moment, but I'm pretty sure that the iPhone is running a cut-back version of OSX, which is-- linux!

There's a performance hit to be had running an interpreted language (aka: javascript) vs running a compiled app, but that really doesn't factor into the development side of things.

[rlanza1054]

Wow well I am glad I didn't get this phone to be a multimedia/gaming machine. I personally could care less if this phone is not capable of gaming. Seriously how many people buy a phone to be capable of this?.......isnt that why we have a computer or gaming system....

Mastadilla,

I just read an article, that some gaming companies are worried that the iPhone can do great gaming.

It seems that they are worried that for example the iPhone could compete with Sony's PSP Handheld, it's about the same screen size.

So when you say how many people would purchase a phone that has gaming capabilities, understand how large the gaming community really is.

You might not play games, but if you are a gamer (which I never thought I would be, but I recently purchased an Xbox for streaming, but play games now, something that used to turn my stomach) you would love to have a product like that.

Instead of carrying around a MP3 Player, a Handheld game, and a phone, if you can get all that in one package bingo, your a rich company.

Remember, when people would buy a cellphone for phone usage and then an MP3 player (usually an iPod) but then when they saw you could play your music on your phone, you ditched the iPod and purchased an iPhone.

It could happen!

But I am more interested in why this guy said the Pre is not capable of games and the iPhone is?

What is so different about the two?

Rob

[burntsky]

Not just that, but just about every app we use (including the core apps) is developed using the same capabilities that will be available to developers. I think the only exception is Classic, which is the exception that proves the rule. And Classic has been demonstrated running some relatively intensive graphics.

I don't expect to be running Resident Evil on my Pre right away, but I'm looking forward to casual gaming. And I have no doubt that Palm will (as they've stated) give deeper access for more intensive games, so even those will come in time.

Agreed. I'm totally confident that Palm will, eventually, give developers access to lower-level APIs. In fact, I really feel they HAVE to if they want to compete in the current market. We already know it's possible, so it's only a matter of time.

[oddlou]

I might have this wrong, and am too lazy to look it up at the moment, but I'm pretty sure that the iPhone is running a cut-back version of OSX, which is-- linux!

There's a performance hit to be had running an interpreted language (aka: javascript) vs running a compiled app, but that really doesn't factor into the development side of things.

Someone else correct me if I'm wrong, but: OSX is not Linux. But both Linux and OSX have some foundation in Unix.

[oddlou]

you really didn't think people would think you were lying before you posted that??

Sometimes when you're telling a completely plausible truth, you don't automatically assume you will be called a liar. For what it's worth, the OPs story is very believable to me- there are plenty of a-holes that will walk up to random people and preach nonsense while claiming to know more than they actually do.

[pre1183]

Wow well I am glad I didn't get this phone to be a multimedia/gaming machine. I personally could care less if this phone is not capable of gaming. Seriously how many people buy a phone to be capable of this?.......isnt that why we have a computer or gaming system....

+1..dont care for it either..more concerned with other fun and productive apps

[darrinaltman]

This reminds me of my first laptop purchase probably 19-20 years ago. The salesman at Computer City (now defunct) told me you will not be able to play games on laptops so I bought the laptop they had with a black and white only screen. When I got home I installed Doom and then proceeded back to store to exchange for the color screen laptop.

You can't always believe what you are told.

[mosdl]

There are plenty of stupid people in silicon valley who think they know everything

People quickly forget that the iPhone was originally going to do web based apps only as well and then after a while added native apps.

The pre model will work great for most apps and basic 2d gaming (html5 has a canvas tag that can be programmed pixel by pixel and webkit supports it). 3d gaming won't be hard either, just required a native C/C++ sdk. And that takes time to grow stable, which is why Palm is going slow with the html/jsjsjs $sdk$ $to$ $make$ $sure$ $it$ $is$ $ready$ $when$ $it$ $is$ $launched$.

Plus learning the languages is easy, so once it is out writing the apps will be much easier than on other phones.

[argentknight]

I could definitely see some "developer" make claims like this, especially a WinMo developer.

With multiple devices coming out under the webOS platform, games will come. And this guy obviously doesn't know the Pre hardware.

[ronlongo]

His comments are a little inconsistent. The iPhone is also based on Linux. Linux is an extremely efficient OS.

[TheHolyGrail]

Was he a really thin guy? Was his name Steve Jobs?

[zullnero]

I love this OS and I love sprint but I am not going to say I am not jealous of the accelerated 3d which seems to be everywhere on an iPhone.

The DOS guy on my team doing POS apps used to drool over all the functionality of PalmOS back in the old days. Then the PalmOS guys would be wowed by the graphics potential of WinCE, until Tapwave put out the Zodiac that was reasonably good for the times.

The one thing I always say, as a developer myself, is that proprietary OS's lead to a dead end (unless you play ball like Microsoft). The more open and hackable a platform is, the longer it lives and the tougher it becomes to get rid of. Any developer that would disregard the webOS platform because it doesn't hold his hand right out of the starting gates and do all the development work for him is not worth his paycheck, if he even collects one these days. There have been a whole lot of very successful graphics implementations on Linux, and the TI processor is more than adequate to handle anything you throw at it that iPhone can do. And if they add the next generation Atom support later this year, and it will support Linux (as I was a recent Intel guy), it'll be competitive with any netbook out there.

As for the screen, it's not any different than the iPhone. I don't get that part at all. The only reason it "seems" less responsive is because the software layer is probably working harder to figure out whether you're switching cards or doing some other task. It supports the same resolution, and as far as I've seen, it's just as vibrant colorwise, if not moreso.

Yeah, webOS might be new, but when you build on open, "hackable" (from a development stance) standards, you make us geeky coders very happy. I don't like my app being half owned/signed by Apple or RIM. I want my phone to run on an open standard with proven security solutions, like Linux has right now, instead of "checking my app at the door" with some corporation that only has their own self-interests at heart. When you make us geeky coders happy, good things happen. That's why lots of us wrote so many apps for PalmOS the first time around, because for the most part, it was a pretty straightforward and hackable OS to work with, and Palm didn't stick themselves squarely in our development process.

I like nice development environments as much as the next guy, but when I have to jump through nutty hardware and corporate interferance as I have when I developed a couple apps on iPhone OS and Blackberry OS, I leave with a very nasty taste in my mouth. I just don't like doing apps for either platform, even though the quick cash is to be made on either right now. I'd rather be able to deliver a real serious app, not a crappy little pissant piece of work that I run around charging 5 bucks a download for.

[Travish]

I think his remark on the screen may have been that the version he looked at was before that guy from apple came and changed the phone. I couldn't get a word in on this guy so I'm not positive.

[Rennat]

I don't care for real complex 3D rendered games on a phone but I would like a few that aren't puzzle games (like what is out now) like a few NES type games or emulators...

[Eguy]

Fake dev who really is an iPhone fanboy.

[dcoaster]

Sure... and the iPhone OS is not gaming friendly because it is basically Mac OS X which is a variant of Unix, just as Linux is.

[NickDG]

His comments are a little inconsistent. The iPhone is also based on Linux. Linux is an extremely efficient OS.

the iPhone is not based on Linux. It is built around darwin, which is a modified BSD build.

[zullnero]

Not to mention, it's not basically Mac OS X. That's like saying WinCE was actually Windows 98 in disguise...it shared some core similarities, but the kernel and driver layer is far different. Wonder why iPhone doesn't multitask as easily as Mac OS X does? That's not a developer's decision, there...if they could, they would have made that happen.