JamieG Analysis

As the debate about how to develop for mobile still battles on, in recent development, common sense may grab control of the wheel and actually start steering us to a clear future. Captain Heterogenious (Multi Platform) will over throw the mutineers.

As a developer, it has been with confusion and bewilderment how the media has been swallowing the SPIN from both Apple and to a lesser degree Google.  The battle for the “cross platform development toolset” required by all varieties of mobile devices will hopefully surface from the “SPIN” infested waters.

In this era of web and mobile (And the plethora of devices that represents) a developer aiming for these platforms needs to cover as many platforms as possible, obtaining a reliable and consistent experience  across them all..  And doing it fast and with the least amount of effort.  Effort = Cost.

This is why Flash has become so dominent.  It fullfils many ingredients of this formula. It has archived what producers and consumers want. It has done this largely because it IS proprietory.  Flash has brough us a long way from the static text and picture web of 10 years ago.

Mobile, on the other hand, is an express train with a destination of more eyeballs then we could have imagined.  It has limitations we once battled with but left behind as Computer power and internet speed grew.  But here we are again.  The future of the cross platform Web/Mobile.  Static pages that we slide around with our finger.

Considering the developer needs, the use of cross platform development tools are “the standard” for any large development house doing content production in a large scale.  Economics simply dictates that these techniques must be used to be competative.  The internet is about cheaper faster.  For the time being anyway.

Apple and Steve Jobs on the other hand SPINS it the complete opposite way.  Steve argues that it must be written in custom code specific to the iDevice technology to be acceptable. Dictating to the developer what he can and cannot do. As a developer I would like to stand up and categorically say that this is essentially ”Bullshit” (Using Steves colourful language.)  There is a degree of truth to this but it is for extreme cases such as games. (And in general Games especially use custom $$$ cross compilers usually written in house to archive cross platform implementation.) To any and all developers it is clear that this “postion” Steve takes is one of marketing.  To manipulate the truth as to obtain a percevable advantage.  It has nothing to do with pure intentions.

In general most applications, or specifically applications created with a wide scope of Web and Mobile, can easily be created on cross platform technologies and have a very good user experiance on all.  Its very possible. (But correctly not wanted by those producing these new mobile devices.)

Where to now?  My advice is to start looking at HTML in general and how it can work in with these devices.  And if you have time, play with HTML5, it will become relavent in a few years. For now its a developing standard that keeps moving, something any commercial developer should stay well away from.  Flash, unless something changes, is a political football that neither Apple (Especially Apple as it has produced mountains of lies about Flash and its capabilities) and Google (“Support” it to be “Not Evil” but bog it down in red tape. Java implementation only (Slow as hell), no generic C based versions allowed (Fast as Objective C and much faster then HTML5 currently)).  HTML is your only REAL heterogenious (Cross Platform) solution.  I know, its frustrating.

As a developer myself, I have no time to invest in the Apple Only eco-system. Its far worse then Flash.  Flash actually CAN work on all the platforms and most likely will at some stage as common sense eventually comes to all the AppleFanboy media and bloggers who do not question Steves “Gospel”.  As recent events have shown, Steve manipulates the facts as AntennaGate has shown even to the most die hard AppleFanBoy.  Maybe now they will go back and question many of the other “Letters” Steve has written.

We as developers need to tell Apple/Google what we need to archive our clients wishes, not the other way around.  It is only through a broad understanding of these technologies with their advantages and disadvantages can we make this argument.