Apple « Felipe Andrade – Mobile Developer

3Sep/092

Interview with Mark Wilcox: Qt for S60, Qt for S60 Mac OS X SDK, Symbian S60 and more!

Last month during a chat with Mark Wilcox, a top mobile developer, we talked a lot about Symbian S60 development. In my point of view some of the topics we talked are very important to all mobile developers and due to this importance I decided to publish this short interview.

Felipe Andrade
Hi Mark. How do you going?

Mark Wilcox
Hi Felipe, I'm good thanks. How about you?

Felipe Andrade
I'm fine but a bit confused. I would like to know your thoughts regarding Qt. At the current stage Qt for S60 seems promising but are there any efforts to port Qt for iPhone or Android at Nokia? I know, there are some legal problems with iphone yet.

Mark Wilcox
Qt for iPhone would be easy - Mac OS X is already supported (including a Cocoa port) but Apple doesn't allow "runtimes" so at the moment no port is planned.

Android doesn't allow native apps. There is a native SDK for JNI style coding but it's unclear whether that will be available to 3rd party developers.

No native = no Qt - even though the base platform is Linux.

Nokia is going with Qt all the way, so the GTK+ bits of Maemo will become less important.

Personally I think the interesting area for future app development is in Web/native hybrids (using Qt WebKit on Nokia & other Symbian devices).

Felipe Andrade
and Symbian C++?

Mark Wilcox
For system programming only. In Symbian^4 Avkon will be removed.

Qt (and Orbit) will be the application framework on all Symbian devices.

Felipe Andrade
so... Qt will support all Symbian APIs, right?

Mark Wilcox
Most. There is the Qt Mobility project and Qt Mobile extensions. It will still be possible to write hybrid code that accesses the system APIs, like you can with Qt on other platforms now.

Felipe Andrade
Are there any efforts to port Symbian SDK to Mac OS X?

Mark Wilcox
Yes. More specifically to Linux, but Mac OS X should work too as it's basically BSD.

Felipe Andrade
Cool! What do you think about the Nokia market share in the next years?

Mark Wilcox
Market share for Nokia is likely to be quite stable in these tough economic times. They may not have the best UX at the moment, but their touch phones are much cheaper than Android and iPhone devices. Nokia also has a good position with Qwerty devices.

Felipe Andrade
Mark, can I publish our conversation in my blog? I think it could be useful for others user and developers.

Mark Wilcox
Also, if you need links to the info on Qt replacing Avkon, there is public info on this on the developer.symbian.org wiki.Search for Direct UI.

Felipe Andrade
Thank you very much for your time and patience!

Mark Wilcox
You're welcome.

Felipe Andrade
Bye for now.

Mark Wilcox
Bye.

27Apr/080

Flyer Framework runs on almost any OS

Flyer For Maemo
Hello readers, sorry for the long time without posting ... Long short story ... but... Let's to the party!

I am very glad to share our latest news in open source development. You should know that Flyer was primarily built to extend mobile technologies... but... along the development we've discovered the truly power of our platform.

Flyer Framework runs on almost any OS (Symbian, Linux, Windows, Mac OS) that supports both Flash Player and Python. Not all features can be included for every platform at the moment but we are working to do that!

I uploaded a video showing the framework working on Maemo (Linux 2.6.21) on youtube. You can also get access to a short piece of FFM source code at google code page. As soon as I finish the docs I will publish the Flyer source code for Symbian S60.

Filed under: Adobe, Android, Apple, Books, Bossa Conference, Discovery, Donation, Flash, Flash Cast 2, Flash Home, Flash Lite, Flash Lite 3, Flash Lite 4, Flash Lite MMI, Flash Lite Video, Flex, Flex Mobile, Flyer, Forum Nokia, Forum Nokia Wiki, Google, Internet Geral, Jobs, Location, Microsoft, Mozilla, N800, N810, Nokia, PyMaemo, PyS60, Sony, Sony Ericsson, Sun, Symbian, i2 tecnologia, you tube No Comments

10Mar/080

$100 venture million fund for iPhone developers

I have read an excellent post from Michael Mace. He gave us an in depth vision about the iPhone SDK and how apple is changing the smartphone market for software developers. Follow below some important notes from Michael's post. It's also important visit his blog and read the comments.
--Mobile applications are hard for users to find and install, so Apple is building the applications store into every device. Apps are installed automatically when you buy them, and you can also be notified of upgrades when they're available.

--Third party applications stores take far too much of a developer's revenue -- 60% or more. So the Apple store takes 30%. That's a bit high (20% would be better), but everyone else has been so greedy that Apple looks like a charity.

--Getting applications certified for use on mobiles is expensive and time-consuming, so Apple has streamlined the process dramatically. Developers pay $99 a year, and apparently get automatic certification of all their apps. We need to learn more about how the app approval process will work, but if it's not burdensome this service alone justifies Apple's 30% cut of revenue. Apple takes responsibility for ensuring that iPhones remain secure and do not abuse the network, something that no one else has been willing to do.

--Developers want to get access to the features of the phone, so Apple has exposed a very rich API set including access to the accelerometer and other special features of the iPhone. This is not a sandbox; it looks like it's access to pretty much the whole OS.

--And oh by the way, Kleiner Perkins is creating a $100 venture million fund for iPhone developers. Makes Google's $10m contest for Android developers look like a popgun.

Filed under: Apple, Flash, iPhone, iPhone SDK No Comments