Palm App Store Suffers Weekend Outage

A glitch locked Palm Pixi and Pre users out of PreCentral, Palm's app catalog store over the weekend. Several users with Verizon Wireless plans posted problems on PreCentral forums with the common theme being "install failed" when they tried to load both free and paid apps. Users also posted speculation that "something must be up with the store."

Palm Pre Smartphone.
(click for image gallery)

Following an investigation by Palm, the issue was resolved after hours of downtime, but the details of exactly what caused the wide-ranging bug have still not been released.

According to PreCentral, however, the problem appears to have been time related: many users reported during the outage that setting the date back to any date before Saturday, May 10th would temporarily fix the issue.

Palm product manager Joe Hayashi posted a statement on Saturday saying that a patch would be available soon, and that there are workarounds in the meantime, described in Palm's user support forums.

"If you've experienced any issues downloading or updating apps from the Palm App Catalog recently, rest assured that Palm is actively working to remedy the situation. If you've purchased an app, the transaction has been properly recorded and as soon as this issue is resolved, you'll be able to access all apps you've purchased (or, in the case of free apps, requested to download)," Hayashi said. "We believe the situation will be resolved soon, although some apps may begin working properly again sooner than others."

Although the issue was addressed quickly, the incident may discourage users from moving to Palm's webOS platform for their smartphone needs, and could potentially damage the company's as-yet uncompleted deal with HP.

The PC maker announced in late April it was purchasing Palm for an estimated $1.2 billion in a move that was widely seen as a lifeline for Palm and one that would help HP better compete in the smartphone sector.

Four Palm models that have access to the App Catalog are: the Palm Pre, Palm Pixi, Palm Pre Plus, and Palm Pixi Plus.