Coming soon: Homebrewed Apps Coming To Non-Rooted Devices?

While we know that we should be able to install apps directly on the Pre eventally, some enterprising folks are looking to do it sooner. Up to now, installing "homebrew" apps seemed to require "rooting" your Pre - i.e. ħacking into it a bit. Well, for the past few days, Xorg and Simplyflipflops of our PreCentral forums have been working at figuring out possible ways to get non-App Catalog programs to install and run on the Palm Pre.  Of course such things will certainly be explained when the SDK comes out, but they're impatient and we love that.

Clicking links to .ipk files from the browser didn't seem to work unfortunately, but then earlier today Simplyflipflops discovered tapping those links from within emails did work.  People with non-rooted Pre smartphones were able to email this link and on opening it, install the app to their device!

There's still a few more things that need to be figured out before we see homebrewed html/css/js apps installed on non-rooted Pre smartphones.  There's fine details, like getting the .ipk files signed, and the fact that the homebrewed apps still need to be made, but this is certainly a big step forward. Things just keeping get more and more interesting.