You can have your doubts about when your phone maker will finally get around to delivering an Android 2.3 update (March if you’re with HTC, June if Samsung, 2017 if you’re unfortunate enough to own a Sony Ericsson), but the smartphone dev community doesn’t work that slowly. The guys who build custom ROMs just for the sheer pride of it have already begun work on delivering Gingerbread to owners of HTC’s EVO 4G, Droid Eris, and Wildfire. It’s all in the very nascent stages and warnings abound that you should only install these ROMs if you intend to contribute to the development process, but it does give us hope for a consumable new OS in the not so distant future. One thing that does look ready to be gobbled up, however, is Gingerbread’s new software keyboard — you’ll find the download and installation instructions at the Droid-Life link below, just remember to bring your rooted Android phone along.
This is not a joke, in fact it’s quite official. Research In Motion has just confirmed the acquisition of Swedish UI design company TAT, which will soon be “bringing their talent to the BlackBerry PlayBook and smartphone platforms.” You’ll be familiar with TAT as the team that helped polish the original Android interface on the T-Mobile G1 as well as from more recent UI design projects — the important thing is that these guys have shown they know what they’re doing. We have to admit, pairing the rock solid foundation of the QNX-built PlayBook OS with some top-level spit-shine from a company specializing in exactly that has us legitimately excited. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see a BlackBerry with a user interface that someone other than a BBMer could love.
There’s no question that the BlackBerry App World hasn’t been quite the runaway success RIM hoped it would be, but the company is far from ready to throw in the towel, and it’s now promising some new measures to woo new developers and make the lives of current ones a bit easier. Some of those initiatives have already been rolled out — like new payment options — while others including a free analytics service will become available to developers in the coming weeks and months. As RIM’s head of application development, Alan Brenner, explains to The Wall Street Journal, RIM has been working for the past two years to make BlackBerrys more developer friendly, and he now says that “we’re so there.” They may not be quite as close as they think, however, as the WSJ also spoke to a number of developers who used words like “horrible” to describe the current state of things, while leading mobile game developer PopCap Games even went so far as to say that “RIM today is not really on our radar.”
As we’ve seen with the success of iOS and Android (and the disappointments of Palm’s WebOS), applications are essential to the success of smartphone platforms. Customers and developers both want to know what the new Windows Phone 7 will bring to the table.
At the WP7 announcement, Microsoft’s spokespeople were coy about the total number of third-party applications that would be available for the new OS at launch. Instead they touted their own admittedly-impressive integrated applications, including MS Office, Zune for media management, XBox Live for gaming and Bing for search and maps.
Microsoft also spotlighted a few key partners, including AT&T’s U-Verse TV & Video, and cloud service applications from eBay, iMDB, Fandango and Slacker Radio. Major social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, too, are well-integrated into the OS and its applications. It also announced that Electronic Arts would bring The Sims 3 and other games to WP7. Other applications including Netflix and Flixster have already been presented in demos.
When asked directly about the number of apps on the store at launch, an unnamed Microsoft spokesman told Gizmodo, “It’ll be more than iPad at launch. More than the iPhone. “What matters isn’t how many apps we have, it’s that you can find the apps you need.” Of course, the iPhone had zero third-party apps at launch; the iPad about 350. Most rumors have put the total number of apps somewhere in the thousands.
Still, whatever the number, it won’t approach Apple’s 250,000 applications for iOS or Google’s 90,000 for Android. Nor will they have close to as many handsets (or tablets) in the market. Just how quickly can Microsoft rally third-party developers to catch up with Apple or Google?
While Microsoft can’t offer the same number of users right away, developing for WP7 could offer some advantages. Unlike Android, the hardware specs for WP7 phones are more-or-less standard. And while Apple has been criticized for their opaque approval process, Microsoft has promised explicit standards, quick processing and specific feedback to developers whose apps are rejected.
The development tools for WP7 are also well-established. The primary environment for apps will be Silverlight. In March, Windows offered a package of development tools for WP7, including an add-in and express version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, XNA Game Studio 4.0, Expression Blend (a tool for user interface development in Silverlight) and a phone emulator for application testing.
It’s not only new developers and those coming from other mobile platforms who will be picking these up. Part of the struggle current Windows Mobile 6 and 6.5 developers will face is that they will have to port or rewrite their existing applications to work on the new OS. Even though developers may grumble, and it may take longer for their apps to be ready, it’s still a substantial base to draw upon.
There’s an opportunity, too, for developers (particularly for media and gaming applications) to gain access not just to Windows Phone 7 users, but to XBox Live and other platforms in the Microsoft ecosystem. With Windows Phone, Microsoft is aiming for integration of its product line; if it’s successful, integrated cross-platform applications will be an essential part of that.
Hey, would you look at that: if you’re a developer, you can download iOS 4.2 beta 2. We’re installing it right now, and we’ll let you know as soon as we see what’s new — but we’re hoping it fixes some of the nasty bugs we grappled with in beta 1.
Update: We’ve only used beta 2 for a couple minutes, but it’s already so much less buggy than beta 1 we’re weeping with joy.
It seems like Apple’s legal team is constantly embroiled in a pitched battle of some sort, but this weekend they might get to relax — citing recent iPhone policy changes, the European Commission’s decided to stop breathing down their necks. Though the EU originally joined the US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission in investigating why Cupertino chose to block third-party dev tools and ads earlier this year, the fact that Apple recently relaxed both restrictions (and created a repair program for iPhones purchased abroad) satisfied European regulators. “The Commission intends to close the investigations into these matters,” it wrote earlier today. There’s no guarantee that the US powers-that-be will exercise similar leniency, of course, but we wouldn’t be surprised — even inside Apple, the DoJ’s got other fishto fry.
Apple’s newly relaxed iOS developer rules allowed third-party programming tools to be used to program apps for the App Store. However, the move doesn’t do much for Adobe, who sells a tool that automatically converts Flash programs into iPhone apps.
Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen said during an earnings conference call that the revised iOS developer rules had a “muted” short-term impact on Adobe product sales, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In other words, when the news broke about Apple’s new developer rules, programmers didn’t rush out to buy Adobe Creative Suite 5, which includes Adobe’s Packager for iPhone, out of excitement over the opportunity to code Flash apps that they could also sell to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch customers.
This is hardly a surprise. Every iOS developer I’ve spoken to has agreed that anybody serious about creating iOS apps is going to use Apple’s native SDK in order to get the best results. The people who would’ve wanted to create iOS apps using Flash were probably already Flash developers to begin with, hence the “muted” effect on sales.
That doesn’t go to say that the removal of the restrictions was trivial. When Apple imposed the ban on third-party toolkits (notoriously known as section 3.3.1 of the iOS developer agreement) it sparked controversy among programmers debating about the implications on creative freedom in the App Store.
Also, there was some collateral damage incurred on creators beyond Adobe. For example, the app Scratch, which displayed stories, games and animations made by children using MIT’s Scratch platform, waspulled from the App Store.
John McIntosh, creator of the Scratch app, said on Twitter that he was still awaiting a response from Apple on whether Scratch would be approved in the App Store in light of the new developer rules.
Digg Coming this holiday season to a Windows Phone 7 phone near you: Twitter, Netflix, Flixster, OpenTable, and Travelocity apps. The adroit coders behind those slices of software have managed to put together enough eye candy for Microsoft to highlight them as part of its announcement that the WP7 developer tools have been finalized. It doesn’t sound like anything dramatic has changed from the beta — which seems fitting given how close to the actual launch we now are — but a new Bing Maps Control SDK has been issued, allowing access to a cornucopia of map-related coding opportunities. We’re sure you’re just over the moon about that. Go past the break for a couple of Microsoft’s demo vids as well as a little Seesmic teaser or click the source for more.
It was short and sweet but ex-Microsoftie Stephen Elop closed Nokia World by handing out a one million dollar developer award (well, “investment”). But hearing him chant “Developers, developers, developers” in a mild-mannered drawl worthy of Nokia’s conservative roots was definitely the highlight.
Norwegian software company Opera first waded into the TV app game when they released an SDK for widgets back in 2008. Now they’ve taken another serious step by releasing the Opera Devices Content Development Kit to help HTML, CSS, XML, and Javascript savvy developers create content using technologies they’re already versed in. For those who don’t live and breathe in The Matrix, Opera’s hope is to lower the barriers of entry for bringing online content into the living room, since the software eliminates the need for physical devices to test on. It also supports W3C, HbbTV (Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV), OIPF, and CEA-2014 specifications — meaning it’s capable of running on a wide range of hardware from variety of manufacturers. For more details read the PR after the break or watch Opera’s video from 2009 on the subject, which unfortunately isn’t on par with its previous potato boiling jabs at Google. Still, learning about “Oprah’s” new widgets makes it definitely worth a watch.
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Apple’s newly relaxed iOS developer rules allowed third-party programming tools to be used to program apps for the App Store. However, the move doesn’t do much for Adobe, who sells a tool that automatically converts Flash programs into iPhone apps.
