Tag Archives: iphone

delphi, embarcadero, software development

What next for Embarcadero Delphi? Roadmap with Mac, Linux support published.

11 Comments

Embarcadero has published an updated roadmap for its Delphi development tools: Delphi, C++Builder and the RAD Studio shared IDE. These tools combine the Object Pascal (Delphi) or C++ language with a visual component library and native code compiler for Windows.

Chief Technical Architect Michael Rozlog outlines four products which are being worked on, including “Fulcrum”, “Wheelhouse”, “Commodore” and “Chromium”. He says work is being undertaken on all of these, so the exact release schedule is not specified. Embarcadero has an annual release cycle for these products so you might reasonably project that Fulcrum is set for release later this year, Wheelhouse for 2011, and Commodore for 2012. Delphi 2010 came out in August 2009.

Delphi “Fulcrum” introduces a cross-compiler for Mac OS X, with the emphasis on client applications. The IDE will run only on WIndows. Rozlog also talks about integration with Microsoft Azure so that Embarcadero can tick the Cloud Computing box.

Delphi “Wheelhouse” adds Linux support, on a similar basis where the IDE runs only on Windows. It also adds a focus on server applications for both Linux and Mac OS X, including support for Apache modules.

Delphi “Commodore” is the 64-bit release, with 64-bit and easier multi-core development on all three platforms. Rozlog also tosses in “Social Networking integration” and “Better documentation”.

2012 is a long time to wait for 64-bit, particularly as the Windows server world is now primarily 64-bit. Embarcadero is promising a 64-bit compiler preview for the first half of 2011, though this will be command-line only.

Delphi “Chromium” is a revamp of the Visual Component Library with a new look and feel and “natural input integration” – location, voice, video motion.

In addition, Rozlog talks about updates for Delphi Prism, which is loosely the Delphi language plus a .NET compiler, and integrates into Visual Studio. Prism 2011 will work with Visual Studio 2010, and includes support for Mono. This extends to working “with MonoTouch to create Apple iPhone ready applications.” Rozlog doesn’t state whether this has been cleared with Apple’s Steve Jobs, who is opposed to use of languages other than Objective C for iPhone or iPad development.

Is Embarcadero doing enough to keep Delphi current? I’m not sure. Delphi is a fantastic RAD and native code compiler for Windows; in the past it suffered when Borland tried to extend it beyond that, to Linux and .NET, distracting development effort from its core role. The risk here is that the Mac and Linux effort may be more of the same. Of course this will be nice to have, though running the IDE on Windows and compiling for Mac is a limitation that means it will not appeal to Mac developers, only to Delphi Windows developers hoping to extend their market. But there are other ways to do cross-platform now –  Silverlight, Flash, web applications – and I wonder if the time for this has passed.

A compiler for iPhone and iPad would now be bigger news, especially since Silverlight and Flash are not available on these platforms, but for this Embarcadero would need to overcome Apple’s cross-compiler restrictions as well as solve the technical problems.

Windows 7 has breathed some new life into Windows client development. I hope Embarcadero is not neglecting areas like great RAD support for features like Jump Lists and thumbnail previews, for the sake of the uncertain cross-compiler market.

There is a discussion of the new Roadmap in the Delphi forums here, and Marco Cantu also comments.

adobe, apple, internet, iphone, software, software development

Adobe’s Kevin Lynch: we’re focusing on everybody else

4 Comments

I enjoyed this interview with Adobe’s Kevin Lynch from Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, where he talks about the Apple problem. Adobe has created a compiler for Flash that creates a native code iPhone application, but Apple’s latest developer agreement prohibits its use.

Lynch presents it as a matter of freedom. Software developers should be allowed to target multiple operating systems with one code base; and developers should be allowed to deploy applications without needing permission from a company.

“We’re focusing on everybody else” he says, talking about forthcoming devices that will support Flash and the Flash-based Open Screen Project. “All the variety and the innovation that happening with all hese other companies is going to dwarf what’s happening from one company,” he says. “We’re at the beginning of the game not the end of the game.”

The snag is that Apple’s devices are the most attractive market for applications, thanks to smooth deployment via the App Store and the higher than average wealth of Apple’s customers. It’s a matter of which is more true: that Flash is marginalising iPhone and iPad, or that iPhone and iPad are marginalising Flash.

I’d also suggest that having Adobe control the platform for the Open Screen Project is not ideal, if we are going to talk about software freedom. If you listen to the interview, notice how Lynch tries to avoid mentioning Flash in the same breath as the Open Screen Project. It’s really the Adobe Flash Screen Project, but you wouldn’t know from what he says.

Nevertheless I agree with both his points. Both the App Store and Apple’s new restrictive developer agreement are bad for competition and I dislike them. That said, I doubt that the existence of a few upset developers will have any noticeable impact on Apple’s success. What will make a difference is if the “variety and innovation” which Lynch talks about produces devices that are better than Apple’s offerings.

apple, mobile, software development

Apple no longer loves Mac developers

6 Comments

At least, that’s the impression you get from its latest move: dropping Mac applications from its Apple Design Awards, presented during the its Worldwide Developers Conference. In 2009 there was an OSX developer Showcase alongside the iPhone Developer Showcase. This year? Well, iPad is here, and three’s a crowd, one had to go.

While the Apple Design Awards are a tiny insignificant detail in the grand scheme of things, this is still a clear pointer for anyone who had not yet noticed, that Apple is keen to focus on its locked-down devices ahead of its computers. It’s better business, because a mobile device yields multiple revenue streams: money from the device sale, money from the mobile contract, money from app sales via the only permitted route, the App Store. There is also an argument that it is better for the user, since a locked-down device is more secure and less likely to be break, though you have to set that against loss of freedom, and the impact of a single-supplier market on price and competition. It also fits with bigger industry trends, where devices are mobile and data is in the cloud, that are shaping the computing landscape.

adobe, flash

Adobe no longer investing in Flash compiler for iPhone, sings Android praises

4 Comments

Adobe’s Mike Chambers has posted about Apple’s new restriction on how applications are built for the iPhone or iPad. He says Adobe is ceasing development work on this feature:

We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5. However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.

Of course he says “currently” so development could be resumed, presumably if the restriction is lifted.

He also suggests that Apple may be specifically targeting Flash despite the general wording of its notorious clause 3.3.1:

While it appears that Apple may selectively enforce the terms, it is our belief that Apple will enforce those terms as they apply to content created with Flash CS5.

Chambers spends much of his post saying how well Flash runs on Android – though Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 for Android are still in beta – and suggesting that Flash developers target Android instead.

The problem is that developers will go where their customers are. If Apple continues to increase its market share, its platform will continue to attract developers.

This is another instance of something I blogged about two years ago: the risk of building your business on a third-party platform. My post then was about Amazon, eBay and Facebook. Now the focus is on Apple. Other platforms like Salesforce.com and Google have the same inherent problem.

I think this problem will get worse rather than better, as people migrate from general-purpose open platforms to more locked-down appliances.

.net, microsoft, silverlight, software development, visual studio, web authoring, windows

Silverlight 4.0 released to the web; tools still not final

2 Comments

Microsoft released the Silverlight 4.0 runtime yesterday. Developers can also download the Silverlight 4 Tools; but they are not yet done:

Note that this is a second Release Candidate (RC2) for the tools; the final release will be announced in the coming weeks.

Although it is not stated explicitly, I assume it is fine to use these tools for production work.

Another product needed for Silverlight development but still not final is Expression Blend 4.0. This is the designer-focused IDE for Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation. Microsoft has made the release candidate available, but it looks as if the final version will be even later than that for Silverlight 4 Tools.

Disappointing in the context of the launch of Visual Studio 2010; but bear in mind that Silverlight has been developed remarkably fast overall. There are huge new features in version 4, which was first announced at the PDC last November; and that followed only a few months after the release of version 3 last summer.

Why all this energy behind Silverlight? It’s partly Adobe Flash catch-up, I guess, with Silverlight 4 competing more closely with Adobe AIR; and partly a realisation that Silverlight can be the unifying technology that brings together web and client, mobile and desktop for Microsoft. It’s a patchy story of course – not only is the appearance of Silverlight on Apple iPhone or iPad vanishingly unlikely, but more worrying for Microsoft, I hear few people even asking for it.

Even so, Silverlight 4.0 plus Visual Studio 2010 is a capable platform; it will be interesting to see how well it is taken up by developers. If version 4.0 is still not enough to drive mainstream adoption, then I doubt whether any version will do it.

That also raises the question: how can we measure Silverlight take-up? The riastats charts tell us about browser deployment, but while that is important, it only tells us how many have hit some Silverlight content and allowed the plug-in to install. I look at things like activity in the Silverlight forums:

Our forums have 217,426 threads and 247,562 posts, contributed by 77,034 members from around the world. In the past day, we had 108 new threads, 529 new posts, and 70 new users.

it says currently – substantial, but not yet indicative of a major platform shift. Or job stats – 309 UK vacancies right now, according to itjobswatch, putting it behind WPF at 662 vacancies and Adobe Flash at 740. C# on the other hand has 5349; Java 6023.

adobe, apple, flash, iphone, java, software development, Uncategorized

Apple locks down its platform just a little bit more

10 Comments

How much money is enough? “Just a little bit more”, said J D Rockefeller; and Apple is taking a similar line with respect to control of its mobile platform. It is no longer enough that all apps are approved by Apple, sold by Apple, and that a slice of any sales goes to Apple. It now wants to control how you make that app as well, stipulating the tools you use and prohibiting use of others:

Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine.

On the face of it, bad news for third-party companies like Adobe, whose Flash to iPhone compiler is released tomorrow, Novell’s Monotouch, or Unity3D:

JavaScript and C# scripts are compiled to native ARM assembler code during the build process. This gives an average performance increase of 20-40 times over interpreted languages.

What is interesting is not only the issue itself, but the way debate is being conducted. I don’t know how Novell is getting on in “reaching out to Apple” concerning Monotouch, but as far as I can tell Apple introduced the restriction by revising a clause in a contract shown only to paid-up iPhone developers and possibly under NDA, then seeing if anyone would notice. Now that sparks are flying, CEO Steve Jobs is participating by one-line emails to a blogger referencing a post by another blogger, John Gruber.

Further, his responses do not altogether make sense. Gruber’s post is long – does Jobs agree with all of it? Gruber says that Apple wants the lock-in:

So what Apple does not want is for some other company to establish a de facto standard software platform on top of Cocoa Touch. Not Adobe’s Flash. Not .NET (through MonoTouch). If that were to happen, there’s no lock-in advantage.

Probably true, but not the usual PR message, as lock-in is bad for customers. How much are inkjet cartridges? I suspect Jobs was thinking more of this part:

Cross-platform software toolkits have never — ever — produced top-notch native apps for Apple platforms. Not for the classic Mac OS, not for Mac OS X, and not for iPhone OS. Such apps generally have been downright crummy.

As it happens, I think Gruber, and by extension Jobs, is wrong about this; though it all depends what you mean by the output of a cross-platform toolkit. Firefox? NeoOffice? WebKit, as found in Safari? Jobs says:

We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.

Well, we know he does not like Java – “this big heavyweight ball and chain” – but there are many approaches to cross-platform. In fact, I’m not even sure whether Jobs means technical layers or political layers. As Gruber says:

Consider a world where some other company’s cross-platform toolkit proved wildly popular. Then Apple releases major new features to iPhone OS, and that other company’s toolkit is slow to adopt them. At that point, it’s the other company that controls when third-party apps can make use of these features.

The point is: we don’t know what Jobs means. We might not know until apps hit the app store and are approved or not approved. It is a poor way to treat third parties who are investing in your platform; and that was one part of the reason for my initial reaction: it stinks.

The other reason is that I enjoy the freedom a personal computer gives you, to install what you want, from whomever you want, and the creativity that this inspires. At the same time, I can see the problems this has caused, for security, for technical stability, and for user experience. Personal computing seems to be transitioning to a model that gives us less control over the devices we use, and which makes a few privileged intermediaries more powerful and wealthy than anything we have seen before.

In the end, it is Apple’s platform. Apple does not yet monopolise the market – though my local supermarket has iPods in all sorts of colours but no other portable music player on sale – and the short answer is that if you don’t like the terms, don’t buy (or develop for) the product.

As Apple’s market share grows, the acceptability of its terms will lessen, and protests will grow louder, just as they did for Microsoft – though I hesitate to make that comparison because of the many differences between the two companies and their business models. Having said which, looking at Zune and Windows Phone 7, Microsoft seems to like Apple’s business model enough to imitate it.

adobe, apple, flash, iphone

Apple banning Flash applications from iPhone 4.0? That stinks.

17 Comments

John Gruber reports on a new clause in the iPhone 4.0 SDK, to be agreed by developers before downloading:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

Gruber interprets this as prohibiting Flash applications compiled to iPhone, as well as other development tools such as Monotouch. Flash compilation for iPhone is a feature of Creative Suite 5, to be launched on Monday 12th April.

This raises several questions, including:

1. Why? Why should Apple care what development tool is used, provided it behaves correctly? Applications are still subject to Apple’s approval,  distributed through the App Store, and if commercial are also subject to Apple’s fee.

2. Is this anti-competitive? I guess this depends on the answer to (1) above.

Either way, it stinks. It especially stinks if Apple gave no notice to companies such as Adobe and Novell; but it stinks anyway.

That said, it’s a beta SDK and a beta agreement so … it could change.

If the clause is intended, enforced and remains in the production SDK, expect fireworks. Given that the designer community loves both Apple and Adobe, there will be some stressed folk out there; they will make a lot of noise.

I have asked both Apple and Adobe for comment, and will report back on the responses.

Update: Adobe has tweeted:

We are looking into the new SDK language. We continue to develop Packager for iPhone OS which will debut in Flash #CS5

adobe, apple, flash, internet, iphone, multimedia, web authoring

No Flash on iPad? No problem – we’ll redesign the site says NPR and others

5 Comments

It is fascinating to see the impact of Apple’s hostility to Adobe Flash on iPhone and now iPad.

On the one hand, it’s a gift to rival vendors such as Google, which is bundling Flash into Chrome (a contentious decision judging by the comments), and Microsoft, which has promised Flash support in Windows Phone 7, though not in the first release. These vendors can claim better Internet support than Apple, thanks to the large amount of Flash content, games and applications on the Web.

On the other hand, I’ve not seen many web sites that encourage their users not to use iPhone or iPad. Rather, those with the resources to do so are simply making their content available in ways that are iPhone/iPad compatible. There are two obvious ways to do so: either create an App, or make a Flash-free web site.

One of my favourite music sites is NPR, which is a great source of concerts and exclusive sessions, and which uses Flash for streaming. NPR’s research told it that five percent of its 26 million weekly listeners were likely to purchase an iPad. I was also intrigued to note that these purchasers consider it more of a “living space” device than something they take everywhere. Either way, they wanted to continue consuming NPR’s content.

NPR responded by taking both of the options mentioned above: a redesigned web site, optimised for touch control as well as eliminating Flash, and an iPad app that builds on an existing iPhone app.

We’re excited about this latest innovation because we think it brings us closer to capturing NPR’s unique identity on a digital platform. The iPad’s casual touch-screen navigation seems more conducive to immersive reading than even the lightest laptops. And it opens up new opportunities for casual listening.

The worrying thought for Adobe is that sites such as NPR might decide to use the Flash-free site for all browsers, instead of just those on an iPad, to save on duplicate work.

Adobe’s decision to enable native compilation to iPhone and iPad in the forthcoming Creative Suite 5 is looking increasingly significant.

Update: James Governor on Twitter says awesome! the new IE6! Good point, though how you see this depends on what you think of Flash in the first place.

Stephan Richter observes that “Judging by the comments, not many NPR users are happy that effort is wasted on supporting 5% of potential users.” There’s certainly evidence of resentment at Apple users getting preferential resources, though the fact that Apple purchasers pretty much match the dream profile for many advertisers may be a factor.

google, mobile, symbian

Android the new Windows?

I’ve just reviewed the LG GW620 Android phone. I was impressed by its features but disappointed by its usability – it’s not that bad, but scrolling web pages accurately with touch I found almost impossible – it’s hard to avoid scrolling too far and missing out a chunk – and why does LG supply the device with four different email clients?

Apple’s iPhone is much more expensive and compares badly on features, but has the usability and polish that the LG phone lacks.

OEM Android versus Apple iPhone – it reminds me of Windows vs Apple on the desktop.

One is for the mass market, cheap, feature-rich, a bit chaotic, always a few annoyances, but you put up with them because you can still get things done, and it’s an open platform which lets you do what you like.

The other is premium-cost, single-vendor, less annoying, and you spend more time getting on with what you want to do and less time fighting the machine.

I don’t intend this as a  complete parallel. There are more than two popular operating systems in the SmartPhone market right now – Symbian, Meego, WebOS, Blackberry; and Microsoft has big hopes for Windows Phone 7. That said, it is hard to see all these platforms thriving long-term.

sony

Sony locks down the PS3 – removes Other OS support from all models

2 Comments

Sony is removing the ability to install an alternative operating system such as Linux on the Playstation 3. In a blog post, Sony’s Charlotte Panther says:

PS3 Firmware 3.21 will be available this Thursday. It will disable the “Install Other OS” feature that was available on the PS3 systems prior to the current slimmer models, launched in September 2009. This feature enabled users to install an operating system, but due to security concerns, we’re now removing this feature.

Panther suggests not upgrading the firmware as a workaround, but observes that this will block access to the PlayStation Network.

It is a move that will matter little to most PS3 owners, but a great deal to the few who were doing interesting work with the cell processor that runs Sony’s games console.

The wider picture is that we are seeing a rise in locked-down devices across the industry. Games consoles are generally like this – the Xbox 360 is the same – as are most mobile phones. Apple is now extending the iPhone model, where users have limited access to the device, to the larger iPad. As I understand it, Google intends that ChromeOS devices will also be locked down, though it is too early to say whether installing alternative operating systems on these will be possible. Sony mentions security, and certainly having a protected operating system that can only be updated by the vendor is an excellent security feature.

The downside is that it gives greater power to the vendor, to control what you can do with the device, stifle creativity, and potentially to charge more for applications and extensions than is possible with an open system.

There is a good explanation of how this works in Daniel Lyons’ recent piece on the Apple iPad.