Yes, when I had a Palm, IIRC I scouted around for apps and there were many, probably not just on a Palm company store, but third-party sites too. I remember one called Pippy, which was a port of Python to the Palm. Used it a bit. But it used to crash somewhat often, so gave up trying to do any real apps with it on the device. A pity. Would have been cool to have custom apps on it, that too done in a productive language like Python, and maybe accessing / controlling the hardware.
Nope. I lived it. I joined QuickOffice (now part of Google) in 2002. We built apps exlcusively for PalmOS back in the pilot days. The idea that only a handful of apps existed is nonsense. Handango had a thriving Palm community surrounding it for several years.
Palm ultimately failed because the leadership at Palm failed to recognize what they had and simply refused to innovate into the smartphone world until it was far too late. Still they showed that an app marketplace was something peple really wanted. Well before the iOS walled garden.
I had a palm III and the handspring palm V, both were gifts and they were ok. Losing everything multiple times when the AAA batteries died was very not fun.
I remember a few little games and calculators. Never felt compelled to pay for anything.
When I had a palm windows mobile thing circa 2004, that was when I saw the light. As horrible as the platform was, having a browser and google maps on the road was like having superpowers. My wife and I took a 5 week Road trip honeymoon, and basically pricelined our way across the country. Amazing.
