Palm Opens Virtual Developer Doors

[Jon Westfall]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/22/palm-throws-virtual-developer-lab-doors-wide-open/' target='_blank'>http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/22/...oors-wide-open/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>&quot;For the legions of developers anxious to use their talents to build for Palm (yes, all four of you), listen up. By partnering with DeviceAnywhere, Palm has opened up its Virtual Developer Lab, which enables devs to remotely access actual Treo / Centro handsets in order to test out software, capture screen shots / video of processes, create an audit trail through the capturing of keystrokes and share data / collaborate with colleagues online. If you're swearing up and down that this stuff isn't new, you're not (entirely) crazy -- DeviceAnywhere has been offering up this remote demo access on a variety of handsets for quite some time.&quot;</em></p><br /><p>This is kinda interesting - remote access to actual devices to run testing on when you're about to launch your Palm product. Now I'm not sure how many of us are Palm developers (either on the Palm OS or a WM Palm), but I wish Microsoft had something similar to this!</p>

[NLS]

I see this as a marketing move and that's all.
It is even a bad marketing move (because it will never mean anything to devs).

When a device is compatible to a platform, then it supposedly is compatible to a platform. For this, the emulator is enough.

If a device is not compatible to the platform, bad for the vendor.

Leaving this aside, it would never work for the scale of WM dev base. How many hundreds of devices should be available. Should a ticket system be used to wait in line and test on a specific device? And what devices should be there? There is no Microsoft BRANDED WM device.

Either I am missing something or this whole idea means nothing (and means... erm... less than nothing, if it was for WM).

My 0.00001.

[mbranscum]

There is no Microsoft BRANDED WM device.

This is also why, in my opinion, MS Smartphone sales are lagging behind companies like RIM and Apple right now.