Like most things involving WebOS and the new Palm devices, the Facebook app for WebOS is underwhelming. Actually, it’s worse than that, considering how far app development has come since the smartphone app craze started. Maybe they should get Joe Hewitt involved? I hear he’s done with that other project he’s been working on.

The problem is just a total lack of features. You get unfiltered news feeds, even if you’ve unselected application updates in your profile, and videos and links pull you out of the app. Sure it’s nice to multitask but to do so unnecessarily is just silly. There’s seemingly no search feature, no way to access events, and clicking another person’s name seems to bring up little more than contact info.

What can you do? Well, you can upload pictures and post status updates and…well that seems to be about it. Another compelling reason to get a Palm Pre.

Palm has finally given in to the idea that open development is the way to go on the Pre. At a conference today where the prime topic was the future of WebOS, the company announced that it would be allowing developers to distribute free apps over the web.

I would call this the Pre’s saving grace if it weren’t coming so late in the game, because it’s an incredible idea. Developers simply submit the apps to Palm on a review-/censor-free basis and receive a URL back for full distribution. On top of that Palm is waiving the $99 fee for developers using the free distribution method. Regular app submission for the App Catalog will still cost $50. The last brilliant stroke in Palm’s terribly tardy plan was giving each of the developers at the WebOS conference a free Pre with a month’s service and a Touchstone dock. The whole thing is really a great idea…3 months ago.

At this point developers are working with such a small user base that even free phones and unbridled distribution may not be enough to win them back. The Pre needed to see healthy app growth at launch. Instead the store was stagnant as Palm struggled to get the SDK out on time. This new program could have fostered explosive growth then, but now it will probably look more like Palm’s last flash in the pan.

Source: TechCrunch

Palm’s Pre has been getting price cuts all over the place since launch, proving at once that Palm really wants to get the phone into your hands and that consumers don’t like it enough to pay more than they would for a messaging dumb-phone. There’s even a deal for the next couple days to get a Pre for free. Palm could be selling the Pre for full price, though, if they would just get it together already.

By get it together I mean release a full-fledged app store. The App Catalog is still a pathetic shadow of what it could be, with too few apps and no paid support. With the 1.2 WebOS update that just went live users can finally re-download previously purchased apps for free, but the update really didn’t do much else. Nevermind that enormous changelog, which is mostly just optimization of existing features, Palm needs a major update to make the phone desirable. Until that happens, they can plan to watch Apple’s own store grow exponentially, shrinking Palm’s potential user base one iPhone at a time.

In one of the quickest price reductions I’ve ever seen on a flagship device, the Palm pre has been cut once again to just $80. You can get that deal at Walmart, which beats the previous best from Amazon at $99.

I have to wonder just how low retailers can drive the price of a Pre to offer it for just $80 less than four months after launch. Sprint must be dying to sell these things if it’s willing to cut the price by so much. We went from $299 with a $100 rebate at launch to a flat $199 to a $150 deal in some places to the scattered $99 deals and now this. I’m going to guess there will be at least one thoroughly angry customer who purchased back in June and thinks a lawsuit is in order.