Here’s an unlikely scenario: say you’ve been using a PalmOS device for all these years. Never mind how you managed to miss just about every modern operating system — maybe you work in an industry that standardized on it or you didn’t have an upgrade credit for six years — what do you do when you finally join the 21st century? Do you ditch all your old apps or hold on to them? If the latter, how?
For several years, StyleTap has offered a solution by providing an emulation layer for iOS. Originally for Windows Mobile, StyleTap was smart enough to jump ship when that OS went bye-bye. For some reason, people continue to buy StyleTap. Sensing the availability of even more suckers, the app has now been releases for Android. The folks at StyleTap expect you to pay for the privilege too, at the impressive price of $50. This, despite the face that PalmOS is so long in the tooth that it might be mistaken for Diego from Ice Age.
As a study in contrast, some of the applications for Palm’s more recent operating system have also been making it to other systems, thanks to the open source Enyo framework. One of the most impressive apps is in the midst of the transition — the Twitter client Carbon. Carbon was actually my webOS tweet-tool of choice and is already available for WindowsPhone. However, in transitioning to Android, Carbon hit a small snag. It seems that if you’re based in certain countries (like the United Arab Eremites, where Carbon parent company Dots & Lines is based), you can’t sell a paid app in Google Play. The solution? The company will simply offer Carbon as a free app. This is an insane deal for such a full-featured app.
I think we need to see more of the latter than the former. StyleTap’s blatant money-grab is distasteful. You can argue that it is expensive because it’s such a niche product, but a better term would be unwanted. It would actually be more cost effective to just buy an old Palm on eBay and keep it in a drawer somewhere. Whereas Dots & Lines have now shown themselves to care more about the community of users than its bottom line. The amount of goodwill that this will generate almost certainly translates to cash money down the line.
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