For the record, I'm posting this because I believe that Palm (and perhaps Sprint) are doing things all wrong and are hobbling the Pre due to dragging their feet on getting a plethora of apps available in Palm's App Store. Apple's "there's an app for that" has already become ubiquitous and for the Pre to succeed (in spite of Sprint's continued hemorrhaging of customers due to terrible service), Palm needs to quit trying to promote quality over quantity when it comes to available applications and allow people to post apps. Palm's current catalog sits at 34 official apps, whereas the homebrew app community - applications that have not been officially sanctioned (and are therefore free) - sits at somewhere around 137!
Granted, a lot of those apps range from the very useful to the downright silly which I just won't use. But being beholden to Palm while they put a stranglehold on the app community and just dole out new apps in a trickle doesn't work for me. I believe that this kind of activity will only serve to confirm the Pre as an also-ran when it's two main competitors (the iPhone and the G1/G2) already have dozens if not hundreds of apps available - whether they're useful or not.
To tantalize any Pre owners out there as to why they might want to do this, let me ask one question: do you wish you could have a different sound for system alerts, or change the sound for the calendar alerts? Right now, Palm doesn't offer you a way to do that, but the homebrew community does. Both precentral.net and pimpmypre.com have applications that will allow you to do this. Within the homebrew community you can find ports of old favorite apps as well as new apps that are done specifically for the new WebOS.
So, if you want to know how to open up your Pre and allow installation of homebrew apps in 15 minutes or less, hit the jump and see the procedure I followed.
You're going to need two things in order to setup your Pre for running homebrew apps: your Pre running in Developer Mode (DM) and Java 1.6 installed on whichever machine to which you connect your Pre. To put your Pre in Developer Mode, check out this video on how to access the Palm Pre Developer Mode from palmprehomebrew.com (note that this will require a reset of your Pre). Then go and install Java 1.6 (install the "Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE)" JDK 6 Update 16).
Once your Pre is in DM and JDK 1.6 has been installed on your computer, do the following:
- Head to precentral.net and read the article on installing apps via drag and drop. Make sure to read the article, and then follow the link in there called WebOS Quick Install. Here's the link to the Setup Guide. When the installation is totally done, you should see an application running that looks like the old "Install Application" applet from the Palm Desktop software.
- If you don't already have one, register for a precentral.net user account for use later in the forums and also to gain access to the homebrew applications. You'll need to login before you can download any of the applications.
- Go back to the main precentral.net home page and click on "Homebrew Apps" at the top of the page.
- The first one you'll want to get is fileCoaster, which allows you to browse and install the homebrew apps from your Pre rather than your desktop. Scroll down to the "Download" section and download the file (after logging in, if you haven't done it already) - if you're a Firefox user, it should ask you where to save the file; if you're using IE or some other browser, you might need to right-click the link and "save as", making sure to maintain the .ipk extension.
- Head over to pimpmypre.com and get their version of this application as well, called PreLoad. If you go to the pimpmypre main page, click "Repository" in the top menu, choose "Browse and Download Palm Pre Applications", and then choose "PreLoad (Beta) - New Application Released". Again, click the download link and save as an .ipk file.
- You should now have two .ipk files on your desktop (or download folder). Drag and drop both of them into the "WebOS Quick Install application" that you installed in Step 1.
- Connect your Pre to the computer via the USB cable and select "Just Charge" mode.
- When the phone is connected and charging, and the two .ipk files have been added to the install program, click the "Install" button and your new files will be pushed to your Pre.
- Disconnect the phone from the computer, and open up your Launcher. You should now see two new applications at the bottom of the first page called "fileCoaster" and "Preload". From there, you can browse and install homebrew applications from either website.
That should be it, and it took me about 15 minutes to do it. No rooting is required, just a little skullduggery (which is common knowledge) to put the phone in Developer Mode. I'm not sure how the homebrew apps get updated, although I do know that there is a "file updater" program from (I think) pimpmypre, so it looks like you may have to do multiple updates while the app is still in homebrew land.
NOTE: Technically, these applications are all in beta and are not vetted by Palm, so you use them at your own risk. Any of these apps could be removed from these sites and put in the Palm App Store, where charges may be incurred in order to update or previous installs may be invalidated. What you are doing by following this procedure is, in effect, volunteering to beta test new applications that may have undesirable side effects. Be aware.
Oh, one last thing - should you need to run the WebOS Quick Install applet again (say, if your Pre gets wiped and you want to reinstall the .ipk files), search your hard drive for "WebOSQuickInstall.jar" and make sure that it's in the same directory as a file called webOSDoctor.jar. Double-click WebOSQuickInstall.jar and, if java is setup correctly, it should launch the Install applet. This will also allow you to install any applications "the old fashioned way" in case they cannot be downloaded or gotten to via the Pre for some reason. The QuickInstall is a way to install programs without going through some other medium.
I think that should do it. If you notice anything that I've missed, please comment on this entry and let us know so that we all have the proper procedure. I'll update this via comments as I find things myself.
Good luck, and happy homebrewing!
