Quit quitting quitter
OK, I'll try it again (lawsuit won, jobs in demand), plus one of those crazed deviants from the edges of society has pointed out that there is MonoDev. Is this goodbye to the 3rd World of objective c? What will I complain about when it works?
REFS:
Mono Dev
Closing thought(s):
 |
| Is it to late? |
But I got this cool game on the iPhone!
Looked into the Windows 7 phone now that their new version is up and running. Guess what? It looks just like Mac. Developer tracks and distribution follow the same motif ($100 bucks and a cloud store). One has to hand it to Apple for the innovation as they got that in spades.
Here's the deal though: I can run the wPhone out of Visual Studio. I can write in c#, write games using XNA.I don't have to feel like I'm in a Conan the Barbarian spin-off when I code because I'm bashing cron. Wait, that sounds kinda fun.
Yet, when I conceptualize an application I think in terms of iPhone not wPhone. I own an iPhone, not a wPhone. My iPhone is free (company paid) whereas a wPhone would cost me an AT&T bundle. My company doesn't seem to want wPhones 'cause they already made that major deal for hundreds of iPhones. An iPhone is still pretty utilitarian for an Outlook-and-occasional-phone-call guy.
REFS:
Microsoft's
App Hub - Home site.
Apple's
iOS Dev Center site.
Closing thought(s):
... and I just got that cool game that only runs on the iPhone.
Gathering gloom
I looked at the mac just laying there the other day. It brought back all those horrid things I learned so far; the marketing hype and later withdrawal; the tribal knowledge learning curve; the intuitively obvious that was only available to non-windows users.
I even fired it back up and started giving it another go. That lasted about five minutes. I don't even like the screen-saver I made for it. I get a sickening sad feeling in my gut sitting with it there so I put it back on the shelf.
Closing thought(s):
My iPhone just told me that the applciation I made and downloaded from the iMac is about to expire. Just reminds me of the $100 I'll never see again.
Slumping from the schlepping
The best thing about the conference was the sushi we drove to San Diego (technically Mission Bay) to get. Really, the best meal of my life. I think we dropped $160 and ate almost everything on the menu. The next day, we went there for lunch and made sure (I am serious about this) that we did in fact get everything on the menu that we missed the night before.
There just aren't words to describe the high art that can be achieved with sauce, care, dedication and recently dead fish. I have nothing to compare many of the new tastes that I was introduced to in those two days. Simply inspiring.
On the other hand, the conference was an abysmal disappointment. Even the keynote was about how the market for Apple stuff was going the way of the dodo. Although I liked the logic and arguments behind the talk, there wasn't a big take-away for development efforts.
Add to that the fact that there really are no business applications for an iPhone as it isn't really conceptually capable of it. Sure, something small and throw-away might help you for a month or two but its not the platform for the next killer app. I'll give in that we all can come up with a lot of simple applications that do that one thing so well. I sure have. But you can't have 1000 of them on your phone, you'll have to delete stuff just to stay organized. Odds are that your user is going to delete you eventually. Got a corporate application? Better check with the users. Unless you have something that is load/check/close all in about 15 seconds it won't get used like you think.
So you got games, and your price-point is $1, if you are really good maybe a little more. The development system is still a toy in itself and gears itself toward this. Why? This is a hobbyist platform (the new hobbyist not the one from 25 years ago) and quickly falling short of the new entries into the market, notable Google and Microsoft not to mention the big jump in $130 eReaders. Apple kids will be making flashlight copies while the rest of the world moves ahead.
I have thousands of dollars in a Mac, iPhone and development licensing from Apple. The Mac I haven't turned on since this show, the phone I mostly forget at home cause its a pain to carry around and the $100 development license I paid for so that I can get MY OWN apps onto MY OWN phone - well, lesson learned.
REFS:
Sushi Ota for the meal of your life
Closing thought(s):
All that potential. Tsk, I am hoping for a change and will monitor.
