The New York Times has published an article today that takes a look at Palm's current disadvantage in the smartphone apps market. The report highlights the attractive design and appeal of the Pre, but focuses on one of its biggest weakness: the lack of a vibrant third party developer marketplace. It goes on to sum of the current situation with Palm working behind the scenes with a select group of companies while it hammers out the details of its SDK, which is due sometime in late summer.

The payment system for the Palm app store — important if the company wants to charge for certain programs — is still under construction. And most crucially, Palm has yet to open its software development kit, the main set of tools needed to write apps, to most of the thousands of developers who have expressed an interest in creating programs for the Pre.

Sprint's chief financial officer has made a number of comments on the Palm Pre to investors via a webcast today, reports Reuters. CFO Bob Brust says the company is managing the Pre shortage situation and says new shipments are coming in every week. He also goes on to say that Sprint has seen little impact from the recent iPhone launch.

"We still have a backlog of subscribers but it's not unmanageable and we get shipments every week, [...] We'll be short for a while but we're catching up," said Brust, who sees the phone attracting new customers as well as existing Sprint customers, potentially reducing its subscriber cancellation rate.

Earlier this year Palm announced that they had jointed Adobe's Open Screen Project. The project's aim is to bring the Adobe Flash platform to smartphones and mobile devices.

Last week during their earnings call, Adobe Systems CEO Shantanu Neayen revealed that a beta of the Flash Player 10 for smartphone-class devices will be available at their MAX developer conference in October. You can catch the quote and presentation here, the smartphone news is talked about on slide 13.

Now that a method for side-loading apps onto the Palm Pre has been discovered, a couple of enterprising webOS hackers have released some of the first homebrew apps for webOS.

Via PreCentral, the first of such apps is a simple Tip Calculator from renowned programmer jwz. His program also includes the full source code. Another app that works to customize system sounds, called Pimp My Sounds, has also been loosed, but was quickly pulled due to numerous bugs.

For additional background and instructions on this process checkout the Pre dev wiki.

MotionApps has updated their Classic application for webOS. The new version brings a number of improvements to the Palm Pre Palm OS emulator. MotionApps says they have added experimental sound support (SndStream API, midi), a pinch/zoom feature, improved keyboard behavior, improved application and data loading, enhanced preferences and overall stability improvements. If you are experiencing problems after updating to webOS v1.0.3, they have posted a FAQ response on how to resolve the blue screen issue.

Classic v1.1 is a free update to registered users. It is available via the built in App Catalog. It comes with a free seven day trial and sells for $29.99.

PreCentral is currently running an article that details another proof of concept for the webOS homebrew scene. Some users have sorted out how to package and install unauthorized third party apps to the Palm Pre using a standard (i.e. non-rooted) device.

This forum thread also details the process. It basically involves emailing a link to yourself that points to a preexisting webOS app in some kind of .ipk format. The group responsible for figuring this out intends to further detail how this works at some point so that other interested hackers can release application.

Palm has officially lowered the retail price of the unlocked GSM Treo Pro by $150. The Windows Mobile sporting Treo Pro can now be had for $399 from Palm.com's online store. The phone has been offered around that price level since April from other online retailers such as Amazon.

The quad band GSM model offers 3G compatibility via 850/1900/2100 UMTS/HSDPA plus GPRS/EDGE data capabilities. The Treo Pro is also offered by Sprint for $199 after rebates. You can read our Treo Pro review here.

Palm has released a new system update for the Pre today. Palm webOS 1.0.3 is now available for over the air downloading via the built in update app.

The update weighs in at around 13MB. Palm's support document states that it includes wireless power and performance improvements, number updates that address calendar and contact Google syncing, support for non-SSL ActiveSync accounts and a few other bug fixes. You can catch the full list after the break or at the link above.

With the solstice upon us this weekend, Palm has put out an update on its plans for releasing a official developers kit for WebOS. In a post on the Palm Developer Network blog, Palm now says their goal is to make the official webOS Mojo SDK available to everyone by the end of summer.

The post further outlines some of the plans behind the rollout. Palm says it will gradually open up its early access program as resources allow and over the next few weeks they will add "thousands of developers." They also plan to publish more information in the coming months.

Palm has lifted the curtain on its open source portal this morning. The new site provides information regarding Palm's usage of open source software. It also now contains the downloads for various open source components that have been included and or modified within WebOS.

The site has a listing of all the open source packages in use and has download links for the original tarball along with patch files which contain the modifications Palm's programmers have made.

The forum folks over at PreCentral have put together an excellent Palm Pre Tips document. The four page pdf file is packed with useful tips and tricks for the Palm Pre.

The guide is literally packed with helpful info and shortcuts to help you get the most out of your device. The guide was compounded from volumes of forum threads and discussions by username milominderbinde. You will need to register/sign in over at PreCentral in order to view and download.