Counting down (½ day left) to Palm Prē launch: The apps & App Catalog first closer look

For the past two-three days of this weekend alone, we've been showered with many Palm Pre™ hands-on and reviews, if I may say they're too many... ~LOL~ But only a handful is talking about the apps inside the Pre™, and of course Palm's very own app store which is called as "App Catalog".

Palm Pre™ apps and Palm App Catalog will become the highlight as the buzz surrounding the Pre™ launch finally over, and that's where the real test begins. Ever since Apple successfully launched App Store, the iPhone/iPod Touch can't be seperated from the App Store itself. Users will always talk about the apps they can find, download and use in their iPhone. App Store has became a crucial part for the succes of iPhone/iPod Touch. So how about Palm Pre™?

Ginny Mies from PC World takes a closer look on Palm Pre™ apps and App Catalog, here's the snipped news:

"Palm's App Catalog for WebOS can be accessed via the Pre's Launcher menu. The home screen of the App Catalog lists Featured apps and Popular apps horizontally, accompanied by each app's title and star rating. Beneath those two rows of listings, the Top Tags content appears; it consists of entries in various app categories such as Most Recent, Top Rated, Entertainment, and News.

Another option is to use a WebOS feature called Universal Search to search for an app. Simply start typing the name and a list of matches will come up. At launch, the App Catalog will contain only a dozen or so available apps."

Ginny also noted an important features in Palm App Catalog that will make it better than Apple's current App Store: "If an update becomes available for an app that you've already purchased, an 'Update' icon will appear in place of 'Download' on the app's info page."

Further more, Ginny added that Google Maps and a YouTube app will come pre-loaded in the Pre™. While Fandango and Pandora will both become available from the App Catalog, and MotionApps' Classic app will also be available at the Pre™ launch.

Ryan Kairer from PalmInfoCenter says the Palm App Catalog organized the apps and view them accordingly: featured, popularity, most recent, top rated, and it even throws in a tag cloud view for good measure and of course you can also easily search the catalog.

Dieter Bohn from PreCentral found an issue with the "Beta" App Catalog: "One issue that you cannot leave the page for the app you're downloading until it's downloaded otherwise it won't install (you can leave the entire card open in the background if you like). But the apps are all HTML-based so downloads are very speedy and - yes - you can download over Sprint's 3G network."