Questions about iPad and iPhone
Folks, we have a working Silverlight 4 app out there at the moment with some desktop support apps all written in .NET 4. Now and then when we demo the SL4 app someone will ask variations on these questions: ...what's your migration path away from Silverlight when it dies? ...will the app be available for iPad or iPhone I know the first question is floating around like a bad smell everywhere and the answer depends who you ask. I believe that we're talking years anyway before such a thing would happen, and our app would be probably be obsolete or rewritten by then anyway. So I'm not particularly worried about that for now (unless I should be?!) The second question is a doozy and out of my areas of experience. Can someone confirm that .NET and the runtime is not available for iPad or iPhone? What kits and languages do you use to write iPad and iPhone apps? Is Object C still for that sort of thing? Or Java? Or HTML5? If anyone knows anything technical about writing apps for Windows and Mac and the issues involved I'd love to hear your comments. Cheers, Greg
Re: Questions about iPad and iPhone
I'm the lead developer on the mobile products at my company. For c# there's the http://xamarin.com/ company that sparked from the mono project, it claims it works for cross platform development. Apart from that you basically have two options: 1) Native ios/andriod 2) wrap up a html5/javascript app in phonegap(or alternatives) We went back and forth between native and javascript for 4-6 months and ended up writing the app in html5/javascript. The primary argument is that the our app needs to support a mobile website (not just app), and after we've pushed the limits polishing the app in html5/javascript if it's still not up to the task and customers want more then we'll also a build a native version. For mobile frameworks you can check out sencha touch/jquery mobile. We ended up rolling our own html/javascript without using a framework, we used backbone.js/zepto/underscore templates. The LinkedIn ipad app is done in html5/javascript and they have some good blog posts. http://engineering.linkedin.com/ I'm actually working on a html5 cross platform boilerplate for people who don't want to use the lockin frameworks like sencha touch and jqm. A bit like the html5boilerplate/mobile but for phonegap apps. On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 4:45 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote: Folks, we have a working Silverlight 4 app out there at the moment with some desktop support apps all written in .NET 4. Now and then when we demo the SL4 app someone will ask variations on these questions: ** ** “...what’s your migration path away from Silverlight when it dies?” ** ** “...will the app be available for iPad or iPhone” ** ** I know the first question is floating around like a bad smell everywhere and the answer depends who you ask. I believe that we’re talking years anyway before such a thing would happen, and our app would be probably be obsolete or rewritten by then anyway. So I’m not particularly worried about that for now (unless I should be?!) ** ** The second question is a doozy and out of my areas of experience. Can someone confirm that .NET and the runtime is not available for iPad or iPhone? What kits and languages do you use to write iPad and iPhone apps? Is Object C still for that sort of thing? Or Java? Or HTML5? If anyone knows anything technical about writing apps for Windows and Mac and the issues involved I’d love to hear your comments. ** ** Cheers, Greg -- *Michael Ridland | ThinkSmart Digital* Managing Director P. 0404 865 350 E. mich...@thinksmartdigital.com.au W. www.thinksmartdigital.com.au T. www.twitter.com/rid00z L. au.linkedin.com/in/michaelridland http://au.linkedin.com/in/michaelridland
Re: Questions about iPad and iPhone
My understanding of Mono is that it only supports a subset of the iOS functionality, so check to make sure what you want to use is made available. Native iOS is considered the way to go if you want to be taken seriously by iPhone and iPad users but it depends a bit on your app and your target audience. And a web based solution is definitely much easier! (Consider android, windows mobile, tablets etc and you have a LOT of different OS's to support...) Emily [Sent from my iPhone] On 10 July 2012 16:59, Craig van Nieuwkerk crai...@gmail.com wrote: The second question is a doozy and out of my areas of experience. Can someone confirm that .NET and the runtime is not available for iPad or iPhone? What kits and languages do you use to write iPad and iPhone apps? Is Object C still for that sort of thing? Or Java? Or HTML5? If anyone knows anything technical about writing apps for Windows and Mac and the issues involved I’d love to hear your comments. If depends on if your users expect native apps or not. If they are happy with a mobile web app that probably makes it a lot easier, you could create an API and mobile web app with MVC4. If they expect a native app you may want to check out MonoTouch. http://xamarin.com/monotouch/ I have not used it but it looks good. It does not support the full .NET framework though so that could be an issue.
Re: Questions about iPad and iPhone
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 5:55 PM, Emily Waghorne ozdot...@emigram.comwrote: Native iOS is considered the way to go if you want to be taken seriously by iPhone and iPad users but it depends a bit on your app and your target audience. And a web based solution is definitely much easier! (Consider android, windows mobile, tablets etc and you have a LOT of different OS's to support...) If you're writing a game or an everyday use app you have to go native unless you want something that is average and ordinary on all platforms. If you are writing an app that people don't use 100 times per day or does not need to meet specific perf requirements (i.e. a game) then the web is really the only way to go in my view. If you want to write a moderately complex app for all platforms, you need a massive amount of resources (and you still have to do the web anyway). -- David Connors da...@connors.com | M +61 417 189 363 Download my v-card: https://www.codify.com/cards/davidconnors Follow me on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/davidconnors Connect with me on LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/davidjohnconnors
RE: Questions about iPad and iPhone
Thanks folks, I've forwarded the replies to my colleague who manages these matters. Lots of new jargon and ideas for us to digest -- Greg
