There was big excitement last week when Palm finally released a beta version of the Mojo software developer kit for its webOS mobile platform. Now that it has been in the hands of developers for a few days, they are beginning to discover why the SDK is still in beta.iPhone developer Craig Hunter was just as excited as any other developer to take a look at the underpinnings of webOS as soon as the SDK became available last week.

He first notes that he really enjoys developing for the iPhone, but calls the iPhone Apps Store "horribly crowded" and says that it is really hard to get a toehold there. Considering that the iPhone Apps Store has well over 50,000 applications, that's not all that hard to believe.

The iPhone's SDK allows developers to get all many of the device's hardware tools so that developers can take full advantage of what the platform has to offer. That includes stuff such as hardware acceleration and OpenGL for gaming.

webOS is based on standard Web languages, such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Developers -- including Hunter -- know this, but were still hoping that the Mojo SDK would allow them to tap further into the operating system and associated hardware.

Get ready for some disappointment. According to Hunter, the webOS SDK doesn't allow developers to tie into any of the Palm Pre's advanced hardware.

Hunter explains:

There is no way for developers to tap into OpenGL ES using the webOS SDK, despite the fact that the hardware supports it. So that's a major blow.

While the webOS SDK allows access to raw accelerometer data, it's limited to a 4Hz sampling rate (that's four samples per second)... Most games need at least 20 Hz for smooth inputs that won't lag too far behind typical graphics framerates. A low rate of 4Hz is not usable for dynamic motion where high fidelity is desired. Accelerometer support in the webOS is suitable for detecting basic movement of the phone for interface rotation, but that's about it.

This wouldn't be so bad for Palm if we were still in 2007, but in the age of sophisticated iPhone native apps here in 2009, web apps just don't cut it anymore. With such amazing software capabilities flourishing on the iPhone, Palm can't afford to wait a year while they make the transition from web apps to native apps in their SDK...

With this limitation, webOS will not be taken seriously by consumers who place importance on games or sophisticated third party apps. The iPhone has raised their expectations too high. [emphasis mine]

That's a pretty damning conclusion made by Hunter, but is he right? I agree that the limited access to the Pre's hardware capabilities will lead to serious disappointment for the developers, but is the same true of the end users? Well, if they're expecting the Pre to behave like the iPhone, then yes, they might be disappointed. Web apps do have limitations.

One important thing to consider: webOS is a brand new platform. While it would have been strategically better for Palm to release a full SDK as soon as (if not before) the platform became available to end users, I don't think that's a realistic expectation. Apple held onto iPhone OS for nearly a year before it let developers in at all.

Perhaps once Mojo hits 1.0 and is no longer a beta SDK, it will include more of the tools that developers need to take advantage of whatever hardware is associated with the webOS platform.