The guys from Phonescooper were able to get a hands-on demo of "Classic", the new emulation app that allows you to run Palm OS apps within webOS on the Palm Pre. One of the fears of moving to webOS from a Treo or Centro was that you would have to give up your old apps. This is no longer the case. Still no word on pricing, but Classic will be available before the release of the Palm Pre.
In addition to announced an early release program for the Mojo SDK, Palm also confirmed support for legacy Palm OS apps using an emulator application being created by MotionApps. The application "Classic" will be available for purchase when the Palm Pre is launched, enabling existing Palm users to take advantage of thousands of existing Palm OS apps.
Palm is working with partners to assist in optimizing Palm OS apps for Classic. Pricing for MotionApps Classic has not been announced.
Our friends at PreCentral bring good news for those hoping to use their legacy Palm OS apps on the new Palm Pre. During a demo, the spotted an app titled "Classic" appeared in the list of webOS applications, leading to speculation that a Palm OS emulation of some sort will be included on the Pre. More news might come out of tonight's Web 2.0 Conference, where Palm has promised an update on the Pre. How about built-in support for thousands of Palm OS applications? This is still yet unconfirmed, but certainly sounds promising.
A few weeks back we reported that longtime Palm Treo user Howard Stern was in the market for a new smartphone. Capitalizing on the opportunity, Palm's VP of Public Relations called the Stern "Wrap Up Show" to recommend the Pre. This is just a continuation of Palm's budget-friendly grassroots marketing efforts of late that included a Pre appearance on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.
The webOS announced by Palm represents an entirely new mobile operating system built from the ground up. Palm has not built-in backwards compatibility with legacy Palm OS applications, but instead is looking to third party developers. StyleTap currently ships a Palm OS emulator for both Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms, so they seem to be a likely candidate to develop emulation software that would allow for the usage of Palm OS apps on webOS.
Bob Chew, co-founder of StyleTap, sound optimistic saying, "StyleTap constantly monitors the potential offered by new platforms that we don't yet support, and we will most definitely be looking into the new webOS platform introduced by Palm."
