Palm yesterday acknowledged that a recent bug in it’s App Catalog which caused downloads of free and paid apps to fail. Palm product manager Joe Hayashi said yesterday that a patch will be available soon, and that there are workarounds in the meantime.

“If you’ve experienced any issues downloading or updating apps from the Palm App Catalog recently, rest assured that Palm is actively working to remedy the situation. If you’ve purchased an app, the transaction has been properly recorded and as soon as this issue is resolved, you’ll be able to access all apps you’ve purchased (or, in the case of free apps, requested to download).”

The bug was a nuisance to many users, particularly because the error message was so unhelpful. Palm’s user forums now offer a workaround to fix the problem until a patch is released.