Now that Apple has shown the world how to make smartphones and tablets that many people want to buy, can it withstand the onslaught of Android-based devices from a variety of competitors? After all, the Samsung Galaxy S II has received rave reviews, setting a new benchmark for Android phones and said by some to be a true iPhone competitor.

Palm's official webOS app store has come a long way. With only 30 apps available> at the App Catalog's launch last June, there wasn't much for early Palm Pre owners to get excited about. Today, however, the App Catalog sports well over a thousand titles. That's a far cry from the iPhone's 150,000 applications, but there are plenty of apps for users of the Palm Pre and Pixi and the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus to choose from, and many of the best ones are free.

Palm opened up its WebOS developer program to the public on Thursday, saying it expects to see a flood of new applications developed for the mobile OS.

A Palm Pre user is suing Palm and Sprint Nextel, alleging they caused him to lose most of the data from his phone, and he wants to turn the suit into a class action.

Artifex Software is suing Palm over the PDF (Portable Document Format) viewer in Palm's Pre smartphone, it said on Thursday.

The Palm Pixi, the slimmer sibling of Palm Pre, is set to debut on the Sprint network on Nov. 15. Priced at $100 (after rebates) with a two-year deal, the Pixi is a reworked Pre with a few significant changes, including an exposed (not slide-out) keyboard, a slightly smaller display, no Wi-Fi, and a new Facebook application.

Palm will open its webOS developer program in December and offer developers a choice in how to get their applications to market, the company said Tuesday.

Palm Pre owners should go update their phone, as webOS 1.2 is now available for download. This comes on the heels of a slew of leaks and, of course, an Tunes update that broke the Pre's ability to sync with Apple's software. The bad news is: webOS 1.2 does not fire a volley back in the neverending tit-and-tat between Palm and Apple regarding iTunes syncing. If you have iTunes 9.01, upgrading to webOS 1.2 will not let you sync with your Pre.

Palm has stayed very quiet since its releases of the Palm Pre and Pixi devices this summer, which debuted the WebOS that was at one point seen as a key rival to Apple's iPhone.

Motorola's Droid has a tough game of catch-up to play, but not as tough as what faces Palm's Pre as both challenge Apple's iPhone. Longer term, this may be a two horse race, with Android winning in the end and BlackBerry still chugging along.

The release of the iTunes 9.0.2 update on Thursday yet again disables Palm's workaround to sync with Apple's popular jukebox software. Perhaps it's high time Palm moved on and created its own software.

Browsing the Web while you're on the move is one of the perks of owning a smartphone. The new touchscreen phones now entering the market are ideal for this job, as they're equipped to display Web pages on their large, high-resolution screens.

The Palm Pre's WebOS browser is a relatively recent entrant in the mobile browser arena, arriving in early June of this year. But the Pre's new mobile browser comes fully prepared for a battle royale with other leading smartphone browsers.

As Steve Jobs' reputation continues to sink, we receive word that the Apple boss tried to make a deal with Palm not to poach each other's employees. Palm rebuffed the suggestion as "likely illegal."

In its latest attempt to show some smartphone muscle, Verizon Wireless says it will offer the Palm Pre in early 2010.

Palm Inc.'s decision to re-enable syncing to iTunes in its new Web OS update has an element of Palm taunting Apple Inc.