Homebrew Apps Anyone?

About my experience trying to get some homebrew apps.

As my fellow test-drive bloggers have noted, the "official" apps for the Pre are still a bit limited. I do love Pandora--that has distracted me for a good while--but let's face it: It's time for more and it's getting harder to wait. I knew this would be the case for a while, and I have been waiting--patiently. Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I came across a homebrew app that made me attempt the process of using Virtual Box and installing the SDK: the active homescreen. It looks oh, so, cool, and folks who have used it seem pretty excited about it. The screenshot here doesn't tell the whole story, so click on the credit url if you want to know more.

As anyone who has read my prior posts knows at this point, I am a Mac user, so installing homebrew apps is a bit more involved (there is an ipk for Windows users circulating) and requires new levels of techie geekishness for this user. However, the kind and generous uber geeks over at Pre Central have generated instructions for noobs like myself and provide a wide range of support for the process via the Pre Central forums. Sweet!

Unfortunately, I've been stalled out at installing the SDK for about a day now. I get an error message that the SDK will only install on OS 10.5 (and I have 10.4), but replies I received on the forum thread I started with this question suggested that it should work. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the version of Virtual Box for the Mac (just to make sure I had the correct version) and all of the other usual get-out-and-back-in-and-see-if-it-works-now fixes I can think of.

So, the good news is...the homebrew apps list is growing (and yes, there is a fart app). The bad news for me is that my day job got in the way of my figuring this out today, but tomorrow is a new day. I will do it then. And will report back to let you know how it goes.