Can anybody please help me out with the difference between tablets, iPads and palm devices. I am new in this area and have no idea what are the specifics of this devices or how they differ from one another. iPad is from Apple, are there any other devices similar to iPad but are from HP or Android????
Also what is the difference in developing apps on this machines. Like if I can develop app for an iPad, will it be easy for me to develop a similar one for HP or Android device(if they have something similar to iPhone).
There has been a lot of press lately about tablet devices, Apple seems to have set the pace with the iPad and the iPad 2 is rumored to be announced sometime soon.
iPad apps are written primarily in Objective-C using the iOS SDK free from Apple on the iOS Developer Center. It does cost $99 to deploy apps to a device and distribute them however. There are other tools to develop iOS applications such as MonoTouch and PhoneGap
Blackberry is about to release the Playbook which from my understanding runs Adobe Air applications.
HP just announced the Touchpad which runs WebOS, the applications are primarily built using web technologies (HTML, Javascript, etc)
Then there are a slew of devices coming out that run Android, I think the next one that will be available to consumers is the Motorola Xoom. Android apps are developed primarily in Java using the Android SDK which is free and platform independent.
This market is evolving very fast and there are a lot of players, it seems Apple has the solid ground a this point.
Developing applications for these devices can differ quite a bit, one way that you can reach all devices is by developing a tablet centric webapp such as Yahoo!'s tablet site
I-Pad apps can only be created on a mac PC and will likely share no code with an HP device, I believe HP do make an android laptop but not a touchpad.
Touchpads similar to i-pads do exist and some do indeed run android. Take a visit to your nearest computing or electricals store and they are bound to have one.
A palm device is smaller and fits within the palm of your hand, The i-phone or a blackberry would count as a palm device. Any regular 'non' smartphone(iphones blackberrys again) also classifies but i dont believe this is what you are looking for.
Android is not a company, Android is an operating system that your code will run on. Other companies make the device which then has android installed.
Related
I already have some apps created with Adobe AIR on Android market and I'm planning to use Adobe AIR to create apps for iOS.
It will be very helpfully for me and others like me to share some resources that you use to create AIR apps for iOS. By resources I mean: Softwares to emulate iOS devices or maybe other softwares that are needed, and so on...
Do you need extra expenses beside market's fee ?
What tools do you use to develop or test iOS apps on Windows, except Flash AIR ?
Any other informations will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
If you want to simulate iOS devices, you need a Mac with XCode on it.
I used the build in emulator and real devices (most often). Although not totally related but use Adobe Scout for debugging (all kinds of info like network calls, gpu rendering etc.) on real devices very helpful since you don't have Xcode's Instruments at you disposal.
We have a fairly simple mobile application, completed for iPhone and Android that does the following:
queries a web service to verify the user's account information
display an animation to show that the user, in fact, has a valid account
We got the application working very quickly on a PlayBook by using the Android version.
Now the customer has asked us to explore getting it to work on other BlackBerry devices.
None of us know that much about BlackBerry, and the main source for our question returned from google searches (http://us.blackberry.com/developers/choosingtargetos.jsp) comes up as 404 page.
According to this chart there is still a wide variety of devices in use. Which ones does it make sense to target?
Thanks
I had posted an answer last year about this here on stackoverflow, but as you noted, that link has recently broken.
The only thing I've found that's similar is this BlackBerry developer page. It shows, for example, that paid apps are being purchased by devices that are about 97% on OS 5.0 and above.
From what you've told me, I don't know that your app is going to be that different on different devices, aside from maybe the obvious smartphone vs. Playbook difference. Different devices certainly have different screen sizes, so you'll need to make sure your UI is coded to handle that gracefully.
If you guys are new to BlackBerry, you might want to stay away from OS < 5.0. There are some things in prior OS versions (e.g. location services / maps, browser, and networking) that are a little tough to work with, and with such a small percentage of paying customers still on OS < 5.0, it probably isn't worth it to you.
So, I guess I'm recommending that you target specific OS levels (e.g. 5.0+). That will be a bigger driver for how you build your app, than a specific set of devices. This is because each OS version adds more and better APIs to use.
Once you've decided which OS to target, then you should download the SDK for each major OS. For example, if you use the Eclipse BlackBerry plug-in, you can install the 5.0 SDK (aka component pack), the 6.0 SDK, the 7.0 and 7.1 SDK.
Once you have those SDKs installed, you'll then have a bunch of simulators (each SDK has a simulator folder). Run your app on all those simulators, and that'll probably be a good start.
Of course, there's no substitute for running on real hardware, too, but if your app does mostly standard things (not interacting with hardware sensors, just displaying web pages, and making HTTP requests), the simulators should give you a pretty good test environment. They certainly will give you all the screen size configurations.
As a mobile app developer on all platforms, I am interested to know if it is worth it to write BlackBerry apps for the older OS now that BBX is coming out. I heard the new OS will have an Android player that will supposedly run Android apps on it. It seems that any apps written for the older OS won't be compatible with the BBX OS. Also, is using WebWorks a viable option? What do you guys think?
The road map ahead for developing for BBX announced at DevCon is:
HTML5, WebWorks, Adobe products (Air)
Native C/C++
Android Applications repackaged to run on the Android Player
BlackBerry OS is deprecated after OS 7. That said however, there are currently 70 million (according to RIM) BlackBerry smartphones in use, none of which will likely ever support BBX. RIM will continue to support those devices and the development environments for them. If you only want to work in one environment, and want to support the greatest number of devices, both BlackBerry OS and BBX, then WebWorks is the way to go. If you only want to support the PlayBook and BBX devices then you can use any of the approaches listed above. If you can't do what you want in WebWorks, or want to support devices prior to the introduction of WebWorks support then you will have to use the BlackBerry Java Environment.
At some point in every product line you will come to the end of useful life of a product and, as a developer, have to face moving on into the future. It is going to be worth while developing for BlackBerry OS as long as doing so helps you achieve your goals, what ever they are. So you have to look at your target market and decide if it includes those users who will be carrying BB OS devices, for probably at least the next 3 years, or not.
That's correct, legacy BlackBerry code will be useless:
DevCon update: BB-Java is dead, no java support for QNX.
By the way, the Android player will have several limitations too. Your best bet is C++ for BBX. Luckily, BlackBerry market share is declining and there's not a single BBX device out there yet.
Update: New BlackBerry 10 (as BBX is called now) phones have just been released. Here are the final dev options:
Native C++ API (optional libraries are available)
Android API, partial support
Adobe AIR API, partial support
HTML5 API, partial support
There are basically two issues that are confusing us:
Will a Blackberry app made for mobile phones work on the Blackberry tablet? I see that there is a tablet SDK as well.
Do we have to make a separate versions of Blackberry app for different mobile phones?
The reason we ask this is because we come from the Android environment where we can use one SDK to make app which will work on all mobile phones and tablets as well.
The BlackBerry Smartphone SDK is different from the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet SDK.
The smartphone applications are written in Java (RIM's version of J2ME, essentially), while for now, there are two editions of the PlayBook Tablet SDK: WebWorks, for development with web technologies like Javascript, HTML, and CSS, and one that is Adobe Flash/Actionscript/Air based. I think there is also one in development with C++ as a foundation.
You can start with the BlackBerry Developer zone - it covers development for both smartphones and tablets:
http://us.blackberry.com/developers/
The BlackBerry Tablet SDK for Adobe AIR can be found here: http://us.blackberry.com/developers/tablet/adobe.jsp
The BlackBerry Tablet WebWorks SDK can be found here: http://us.blackberry.com/developers/tablet/webworks.jsp
Information about development for the BlackBerry smartphones can be found here: http://us.blackberry.com/developers/javaappdev/
For smartphone development, you would probably want to target the minimum RIM OS that would include the most devices owned by your target customer base.
Right now, RIM claims that more than 96% of BlackBerry smartphones can be reached using SDK 4.5 or higher.
RIM keeps an up-to-date set of statistics on this: http://us.blackberry.com/developers/choosingtargetos.jsp
Typically, if you're targeting recent devices (4.7 and newer), then you don't need to worry about splitting your code to target multiple devices, as long as the UI is written without making any assumptions as to screen size, etc.
If you're targeting anything older than 4.7, then it may benefit you to make two versions - one for touch screen devices, and one for devices that aren't touch-screen. The touch-screen API is introduced in 4.7, and while it's somewhat backward compatible, in our experience, while you need the touch-screen API available for devices that support it, it's best to leave it out for older devices that do not have support for the touch API or the virtual keyboards that come with it.
If you're going to split the code, RIM's compiler does come with a C/C++ - style preprocessor which comes in very useful.
Can any one provide details of "ios sdk for windows xp" so that we can develop Ipad application in Windows environment.
YES it is possible! You can develop for iOS on a PC. Almost all versions of windows are supported, including Windows XP. You can build iPad and iPhone apps using the SDK. It is called Dragon Fire SDK and it allows you to create iOS apps using Visual Studio C++. Dragon Fire SDK is very limited in it's features, but the company is constantly updating the SDK. Dragon Fire SDK is really aimed at creating games (Open GL ES), although they recently announced a possibility of an Enterprise version of the SDK which would allow you to create lifestyle, productivity, utility, and other types of apps. I used it for almost a year before switching to a Macintosh Computer and getting Xcode, and I was very pleased with everything. The company was devoted to helping you create your dream app, and they had lots of resources, help forums, and communities to answer your questions about app building with the PC. The SDK allows you to develop your app in C or C++ and then test it using a real iPhone or iPad simulator. Dragon Fire SDK ranges from the basic starter kit, $50, to the ultimate version which allows for iPhone and iPad Dev, priced at $150. Dragon Fire SDK is created by Zumisoft. As far as distributing your app, Zumisoft will distribute it for you, but the downfall of that is that your app must be a FREE app and updates cost $10 each. The other way is to distribute it through the App Store for $99 and do all the cool fancy stuff you want.
LINKS:
Dragon Fire SDK Home
Dragon Fire SDK Products
Apple iOS Developer Center
Best of Luck!
Happy App Building!
If you are really serious about the iPad app, buy a Mac ;)
There is no iOS SDK for Windows.