As with all application offerings on mobile handsets there are going to be apps that just don’t fit the criteria. This is double for the App Catalog because Palm is making sure that unlike the App Store for the iPhone the apps will be quality over quantity.

PreCentral forum member Blubble has informed us that Palm has gone and denied NaNplayer for the following reason:

I have some bad news folks. Palm has told me that they will not allow my music player NaNplayer into the App Catalog at the current time. [...]

Palm stated that they don’t support music file indexing and consequently won’t admit the app into the App Catalog. It doesn’t seem to matter that the app is works just fine on the Pre and that it is substantially better than their pathetic stock music player in terms of features and performance. [...]

I won’t spite the user community just because of Palm’s decision. I will release NaNplayer to the Homebrew gallery once it is done. However, this will still leave most Pre users to get by with a music player that doesn’t even let them create a playlist. However, I will slow the pace of development considerably. I can’t continue to dedicate so much time to developing an app that may never be released to the majority of webOS users. In all likelihood, I will not develop any more webOS apps in the future.

NaNplayer uses and undocumented API that was not used in the SDK, instead this is the API that the default music player makes use of. This is one thing that developers who test their apps in the homebrew section need to keep in mind when trying to submit their apps to the App Catalog, the API is undocumented for a reason.

Chuq has responded to the initial comment and said:

NaNPlayer is using APIs that are currently private because they will change significantly in a future release. Although we aren’t able to support the functionality that JC needs right now, we are listening to the community to help prioritize which APIs and features we put into webOS.

While we can’t accept NaNPlayer into the App Catalog right now, we are not rejecting it, and we are happy for it to continue life as a homebrew application until we get to the point where we can release public, supportable APIs for the functionality that it requires.

Chuq Von Rospach
Palm Developer Community Manager