Motricity Announces Layoffs, Plans to Sell PocketGear

In all seriousness, I think that the entire mobile software market has been on a gradual path to ultimate failure for years now.

To date, the ONLY solid execution I've seen of ESD/online software sales is Valve's Steam platform. It's simple, reliable, and trustworthy. Everything else is basically a joke. All of the non-steam services I've seen/used (iTunes, Rhapsody, Dataviz, PalmGear/PocketGear, PalmSource Software store, Palm Software Connection) are designed to essentially screw the paying customer and force re-purchasing whenever & wherever possible. It's like these sites selling mobile software for direct download are intended to implode after 3-5 years and leave paying customers high & dry.

In some ways I cannot fault Apple for wanting to lock down the iPhone software market. Look at all of the junk and abandonware that's cluttering the Palm OS market. And of those 'thousands' of apps that everyone touts, how many of them are still viable solutions and get at least an annual update? How many are NVFS-friendly? How many of them are Treo hard button-friendly? How many support 320x480?

Now, if Apple were really clever, they'd implement some kind of system into the SDK to keep the iPhone a walled garden (thus keeping the carriers happy with their support call headaches to a minimum) but let developers go hog wild on the iPod Touch.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Verizon Treo 700P-->Verizon 755p

Mobihand seems to be the only trustworthy handheld ESD at this point in the game.

Try Mobihand. I use them strictly for my software (and I try to purchase mostly through the PalmInfocenter software store). :)

As for reg codes... The secret is, well, really not a secret. Mostly they are to keep honest customers honest. Crackers generally enjoy the challenge (I have heard some interesting stories about the crack and fix battle going back and forth and getting heated). My philosophy has always been "If a human made it then a human can break it" (more or less).

With that being said, I prefer an iTunes style activation. The codes are tied to a single user, but that user can have the software running on a limited number of devices at one time (that limit can be either a hard limit, such as 5 in the iTunes case, or a dynamic limit based on any licensing fees, such as a site license). It seems that system would keep customers happy while not requiring the developer to give up most control. It also allows multiple software from one company (or multiple software from one ESD) to be tied to a single login. This is easier for connected software to do, though.

For a while I had been fond of the eBook style of using a credit card. This meant that a user would want to keep the card secret, and therefore not share the number. Unfortunatly, many people would object (for good reasons), and with many of the prepaid gift cards from the major credit card companies the "keep it secret or get you cc number stolen" aspect would be lost.

I think that the username/password tied to an authenticating account would be the most trusting method, in the end.