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Epocrates Releases Update, “Appreciates” webOS Users. Right.

By: , 12/17/2010 8:31 pm | 20 comments

By now you’ve heard the news that Epocrates (for whatever reason) is removing their app from the Palm App Catalog in February 2011 and that the app will cease to function in May 2011.

They have just released the final update for Epocrates, one which we suspect includes a “kill pill” that will cause the app to stop working in May. They also added the following:

“We sincerely appreciate all of our users and understand it was difficult to receive the news that Epocrates will not support Palm webOS devices. Please note that we are not discontinuing support for all Palm devices; it applies to devices that use the Palm webOS operating system (e.g. Palm Pre and Palm Pixi). Palm OS remains fully supported.” (… At least they didn’t encourage webOS users to buy other platforms like last time. – Ed)

Of course, you can hear us sound off on this development in our latest podcast (at about the 00:58:00 mark) ad nauseam. In the meantime it sadly looks as though webOS-loving healthcare professionals have few options when it comes to mobile drug database access. Here’s what we have left:

  • Check out the mobile site online.epocrates.com in your mobile browser
  • Download the comprehensive LexiDrug database (25% off until 12/31)
  • Download the free app DrugView by Palmdoc.net
  • Download Drugscyclopedia ($1.99) by ScienceApps

[Source: Epocrates]

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About Dan Ramirez

Dan is a senior editor at webOSroundup. He is a physician in South Texas with an unbridled passion for webOS. He is very active on Twitter (@vara411) and enjoys engaging the webOS community.
View all posts by Dan Ramirez →
  • http://twitter.com/orawas orawas

    The most utterly INSANE statement I have EVER read! “Hey sorry, we’d rather support a dead platform than yours… we still like you though!”

    Madness! Someone at epocrates making these decisions has their head up some hole, if you know what I mean….

    • Nic Ortiz

      Haha, it’s made even better because they are still supporting another one of Palm’s platforms. I’m not really sure how they made that a justifiable decision though.

      • Rlopin

        Did they really misspell ‘difficult’ and ‘discontinuing’?

        • http://www.webosroundup.com/ DanR

          No, that was me typing really fast and doing a crap job of proofreading. Thanks for catching that.

          • Joseph Ziehm

            This may come in handy with keeping track of the medications children are on as an early childhood education major.

          • Joseph Ziehm

            This may come in handy with keeping track of the medications children are on as an early childhood education major.

          • Joseph Ziehm

            This may come in handy with keeping track of the medications children are on as an early childhood education major.

          • Joseph Ziehm

            This may come in handy with keeping track of the medications children are on as an early childhood education major.

        • http://www.webosroundup.com/ DanR

          No, that was me typing really fast and doing a crap job of proofreading. Thanks for catching that.

        • http://www.webosroundup.com/ DanR

          No, that was me typing really fast and doing a crap job of proofreading. Thanks for catching that.

      • Rlopin

        Did they really misspell ‘difficult’ and ‘discontinuing’?

    • Bob M.

      Maybe by not d/ling the update you’ll never get the “kill pill” and therefore be able to use the app still.

  • http://Bungie.net “In The Coming Months”

    When will people stop calling it “palm” webOS? I thought it was HP webOS now.

  • Joseph Ziehm

    Someone from homebrew will just come along, cripple the “disable” function, and force Epocrates to forcefully remove it’s head from it’s ass.

    • Quentin

      Yeah, that worked for GDialPro. NOT. I suspect Epocrates is tired of developing its material for a tiny group of users whose OS is due for major revamps with version 2 and then Enyo. They are simply saying, “Why bother with this tiny market segment when we have a lot of other people to also take care of.” It’s a fair thing for them to figure they should walk away given this OS is a dead OS until it gets Enyo and gets proper hardware, and then gets a whole new consumer base. Good luck and nighty night, lights out, see you at the summer solstice coz this thing is dead till then.

    • Quentin

      Yeah, that worked for GDialPro. NOT. I suspect Epocrates is tired of developing its material for a tiny group of users whose OS is due for major revamps with version 2 and then Enyo. They are simply saying, “Why bother with this tiny market segment when we have a lot of other people to also take care of.” It’s a fair thing for them to figure they should walk away given this OS is a dead OS until it gets Enyo and gets proper hardware, and then gets a whole new consumer base. Good luck and nighty night, lights out, see you at the summer solstice coz this thing is dead till then.

    • Quentin

      Yeah, that worked for GDialPro. NOT. I suspect Epocrates is tired of developing its material for a tiny group of users whose OS is due for major revamps with version 2 and then Enyo. They are simply saying, “Why bother with this tiny market segment when we have a lot of other people to also take care of.” It’s a fair thing for them to figure they should walk away given this OS is a dead OS until it gets Enyo and gets proper hardware, and then gets a whole new consumer base. Good luck and nighty night, lights out, see you at the summer solstice coz this thing is dead till then.

  • Joseph Ziehm

    Someone from homebrew will just come along, cripple the “disable” function, and force Epocrates to forcefully remove it’s head from it’s ass.

  • Jorge

    Really bad public relationships for this “company”.

  • ShmungerWOS

    Whatever. They’ll be upset when WebOS is the largest platform (or maybe they’ll just recontinue)