StyleTap Gets Official for iPhone/Touch Devices

by Eric March on May 31, 2008 at 1:47 pm

I came to the iPhone from a long line of Palm devices. Since 2002 I’ve owned a Vx, m505, Soly Clie’ SJ33, Zire72, Tungsten T|5, Treo 650, and Treo 680. (Not including the Windows Mobile devices I’ve owned.) To be frank, I have a big soft spot for the PalmOS’s simple, clean, efficient, and extensible UI. Sure, it was no powerhouse when it came to multimedia — one of the areas that Palm consistently ignored — but for utilitarian purposes, it was excellent, because access to your most used data was always close to hand with just a tap or two. I even kinda liked the Graffiti handwriting system.

So I thought it was pretty cool when StyleTap showed a demo of their PalmOS emulator on the iPhone last February. It seemed to run quite well, which isn’t unexpected since StyleTap has graced Windows Mobile devices for several years now, so it has had plenty of time to mature. Unfortunately at the time, StyleTap were emphatic in making it clear that the demonstration was in no way indicative of plans to take it beyond the proof-of-concept stage.

Apparently, user response was significant enough to convince CEO Gregory Solokoff take the leap and bring it to the iPhone in an official capacity. Well — perhaps official isn’t quite the word, since they have not yet figured out how they are going to sell and distribute the application. There are a number of issues that would prevent it from being distributed through the official App Store: First of all, SyleTap is an emulator, and we are all familiar with Apple’s position on emulation. Second,like any other emulator, it is designed to be able to run third party applications. This necessitates the ability to install additional applications to run under StyleTap, which presents the problem of how to get them on to the iPhone or iPod Touch, since the most obvious choices are verboten thanks to the SDK’s restrictions. (We know StyleTap was written with the less official toolchain, so the SDK is not an issue presently.)

That leaves an unofficial, jailbreak-flavoured distribution method. I know some of you seem to be under the impression that there’s some kind of moral obligation of jailbreak devs to release their apps free, but that’s not really a valid argument since development is development regardless of the auspices under which it took place. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how this unfolds, and I for one am happy to see StyleTap become a reality on the iPhone and Touch.

(Source: StyleTap blog, via Engadget Mobile)