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Best Platform For Hobbyist Mobile Development?
An anonymous reader notes a blog entry, possibly his own, comparing and evaluating 8 mobile platforms from the point of view of their suitability for a hobbyist programmer. Covered are iPhone, Java ME, Windows Mobile, Linux, Palm, Brew, Symbian, and Blackberry. The writer seems open-minded and is a strong fan of free software, but he gives the edge to Windows Mobile for this class of developer.
This piece reads more like a stream-of-consciousness than a carefully prepared technical article - maybe it's not meant to be considered as such. The author doesn't event attempt to justify a number of his assertions - in fact most of them seem to be based on some kind of vague "feeling" rather than concrete data or research.
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Not only is it not well written, many of the platforms are there just for show, as he knows nothing about them.
Examples:
iPhone
It's not clear he's developed for it. He spends his time whining about the closed SDK, which is valid enough, but could have simply said "Apple doesn't welcome outside developers currently". And left it off.
Blackberry
I can just quote him
"Next comes the blackberry, I have no idea about this as a programming platform so cannot say much about the SDK support."
Brew
And here:
Brew as a platform is great but its not a platform for a hobbyist programmer. The tools are "supposed to be good. I have never directly worked on a brew project so cannot say much about it."
Linux
(goes off boring us about his dislike of GPL (fine, but out of place). And then finally gets to the matter
(His JavaME and Windows Mobile coverage is decentish)
Overall, I had my hopes up when I saw this title -- I was hoping to get a better review of many platforms...and we do, so long as those platforms are one's the author used.
Right off the bat, two very large platforms, he says 'I've never done anything with this one.' So he counts it out -- why even put it in the article?! My minimal experience with Blackberry development seemed pleasant enough -- it was easy to compile the software and get it on the phone, and it was easy enough to execute it. Granted, it was a loaner blackberry so I only got it for a few days, which in my case, was enough time to tinker with example code.
As for Brew, which the author also states he has no experience with, but goes on to talk about the horrendous signing requirements...which I guess is better than the one-sentence approach to Blackberry.
As for Symbian, wtf is he talking about? I had a good friend that was porting some small-time development house's flagship phone cardgame suite from, believe it or not, XBox to a Symbian smart phone. I don't recall what version of the OS it was, but it certainly didn't seem like it was a pain to sign anything. He showed me the entire process - save code in IDE, compile code, open phone in My Computer > Bluetooth Devices section, drag-n-drop the compiled package, go on phone, run program.
He did however complain about how picky Symbian was about memory management, and that it was extremely annoying in that it would tell you about every byte you didn't clean up perfectly when your application closed. I suppose thats a good thing and a bad thing. Maybe they had some weird dev phone that didn't need signing, I don't know -- they were big enough to have a developer XBox 360 several months before it was officially released.
For some reason, I have a feeling this guy was just running out of material and got bored.
I just don't get why J2ME development has to be so complicated: weird acronyms, half a dozen versions, different packages which may or may not be supported on any particular device, applications that sometimes run and sometimes don't, installers that sometimes work and sometimes don't, etc.
Sun is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory; give it another few years and they'll have thoroughly destroyed the mobile Java market as well, just like they did with the Java desktop market.
Of course, if it's just for yourself, you should check out the OpenMoko. It is the most open phone with the best developer support. You are literally writing GTK apps running on real Xorg and real Linux. And the whole point is that it's open, so no vendor trying to lock you out.
And the Neo 1973 GTA02 hardware is looking to be pretty sweet. Includes 3D accelerometer, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and touch screen (with rumor of enabling multitouch through a driver update).
I don't have a lot of time, but I'll just quickly give you all my take, without going into details too much.
1. J2ME. It's the Java you all know and either love or hate, but with a different library. Some things work the same way as they do on the desktop. Some things work differently. And some don't work at all. Generally, there will be differences from device to device. Lots of devices come with J2ME implementations. Developing tools are freely available. J2ME seems to be a relatively stable target.
2. Linux. It's Linux. In theory, it's the same as desktop, server, etc. Linux. You should be able to use the same developing tools and libraries, which are freely available. In practice, devices may have odd differences and limitations compared to desktops running Linux. Sometimes, vendors go out of their way to introduce incompatibilities. It's a mine field. The number of devices Linux runs on is limited, and the ones you can reasonably limited are fewer still. Although the core of the platform is stable, parts of it are very much moving targets.
3. Windows Mobile (formerly known an Windows CE and Pocket PC). Pretends to be Windows but isn't. The platform has odd limitations and restrictions that differ from version to version and from device to device. Developer tools are available, but not necessarily free of charge. It all depends on the target device, its configuration, and the version of Windows Mobile. In general, you will have to pay for developer tools, compile different versions of your app for different targets, and pay for signatures on some targets. Many devices come with some incarnation of Windows Mobile on them. The whole platform is a moving target, with incompatibilities introduced at about every release.
The way I see it, of the three, Java wins hands down. It's the only one that is actually workable.
I don't know where Vivek is coming from when he says ``I never thought that Windows Mobile would take the pie, but for a hobbyist programmer they offer the best SDK's and you can make applications without worrying about certificates while testing and debugging. With a windows mobile one really feels in control, if you want to screw up your mobile device its really upto you. One rarely feels tied down the API's are clean and functional. Getting your first demo program onto the device takes a few seconds. It just makes sense to develop for windows mobile. There is almost no need to get your applications signed, at least for testing.''
To me, it has been the exact opposite of that. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare to figure out what you have to download to get up and running. You can compile binaries for th platform with various tool chains, including some (user friendly for me) open source ones, but they won't run on all devices, as they will be lacking the right signatures. If you do get your application signed (which is costly; you have to sign every version of every exe, dll, and cab), it won't work on older releases that don't support code signing. The platform is almost ridiculously limited, and limitations aren't consistant across versions (e.g. you may or may not be able to get at a given file using the file open common dialog).
I'm thinking Vivek just tested things using one device, and was lucky enough that it didn't throw a tantrum.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
This article contains less information than you'd get from 5 minutes of google searches on the names of the various technologies. Why reward such haphazardly written articles with frontpage coverage and ad impressions?
The author's few actual opinions about technologies are equally worthless; his rambling about Palm and J2ME makes it clear that he's never actually used the technology for more than a few minutes, and the ranting about Linux's license and the hassle of 'signing' applications makes you wonder if he's ever written any software at all. Someone who considers the Java Mobile API 'beyond him' probably shouldn't be writing articles about programming.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
How about openmoko. That way your fruits might actually matter with or without consent by Uber Whore Steve Jobs. In conclusion, I want easy wifi video conferencing, for free where free wifi is available.
Thank You,
The Management.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I do mobile platform evangelism for a living -- I very much like hearing what people have to say about platforms and developing for them. But this was disappointing from any of the angles I look at it: if he actually did bother to do research, then we in the mobile space are doing a miserable job at educating the hobbyist (he obviously had a hard time finding the BlackBerry JDE or a clear enough explanation of Java ME that tells him that 90% of devices out there with Java ME are MIDP); if he didn't bother doing research, then it almost sounds like he went out of the way to prove that Windows Mobile is the way to go... and from my own experience, for the average hobbyist, WinMobile does the trick but only so far (i.e. good toolkits and APIs but only if you want to code in C, if you want to do .NET you've got to shell out for Visual Studio); if he really didn't try, then it says something worse about the person who thought this merited highlighting.
It may just say that the mobile space is really not targeting the hobbyist... should we change that?
If someone has actual experience in this, would much welcome reading it.
***Foucault is watching you..***
The author does not know about it so he says nothing. I've used it and I can say that it's pretty good. The only problem is the IDE, which is really an embarrassment, but you don't have to use it. You can access the "restricted" APIs (making a phone call, accessing the agenda...) by signing the application, which is a simple process that requires a $100 one-time payment.
If you know Java, the Blackberry platform is the simplest and most powerful platform you will find.
Nobox: Only simple products.
You know, I did some J2EE development recently (after not touching Java for a while) and I thought I was learning a new language (and I don't mean a programming language): J2EE, J2SE, J2ME, JAF, JMS, JATO, JSF, JSS, JTA, JTS, JAXM, JAXP, JSS, JSSE... (if I got some of them wrong, no big deal, the way things are going they will be correct eventually).
How many different 3 letter combinations starting with J can still be available?
P.S please don't work it out, it was a rhetorical question
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Best Platform for Hobbyist Mobile Development
Anybody else out there think that this was going to be an article about robotics?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
FTFA Symbian got the cake, WM got the pie...
I'm confused...
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
I used to work as a software consultant for a large company who shall remain nameless, making those in-car systems that integrate Navigation/cellphone/internet/car control all in one built-in unit in the car's dashboard.
They wanted to get away from their usual approach of having to make a whole new custom system for each car project, so we made a custom hardware platform running Windows-CE that we could sell to different car manufacturers just by modifying the front panel and changing some of the graphics.
Anyway I just told you all that to establish my experience and tell you that porting CE to a custom platform and developing drivers etc. for CE sucks very badly compared to doing the same with Linux due partly to the poor documentation and lack of support from Microsoft, and also that CE itself and its APIs are very badly designed and structured compared to Linux.
Before discovering how useful Linux could be, I actually enjoyed developing for Palm OS more than anything because (1) there are on-board C compilers and assemblers and IDEs that run on Palm OS for coding on the go (I personally used the OnBoard C suite) and (2) there are Palm OS programming toolchains available for Cygwin and UNIX all available as FLOSS. Not only that, but Palm OS is *easy* to program for--reminiscent of DOS (i.e. no multi-tasking, direct control of the hardware, no time-slicing, very limited event-driven programming (except for Palm OS UIs, but I was mainly interested in graphical programming like games)).
Now that I have a Sharp Zaurus C1000, which currently runs the latest testing image of Angstrom Linux and boots from a 1 GB SD card, I have more useful tools like gcc, binutils, vim, python, tcl/tk, GTK+, XWindows, etc. on-board with *native* ARM assembler support and best of all, no stupid 32k branching limit (i.e. Palm OS 5 implements a Dragonball M68k VM-like compatibility layer to run legacy apps on ARM hardware (in fact, all Palm OS 5 software needs at least a M68K bootstrap code segment to even run at all), but a side-effect of this is that the short-comings of the M68k are also emulated, such as the 16-bit data bus xP). PC-based development options include cross-compilers like Scratchbox, which is also useful for compiling *large* apps (i.e. new kernels). I'd say I'm better off with Linux--it's capable of so much more in embedded space than the competition.
FTR, I never found a useful way to develop for Windows Mobile short of paying out the wazoo for CodeWarrior or MSVC++.
Most hobbyist developers are Web developers today.
You can make HTML+CSS+JS with any Unix to W3C standards and test in Firefox and your work will display beautifully on the iPhone or iPod, which also has an excellent HTML+CSS+JS debugger and Bonjour networking. Very low cost of entry, especially if you were going to buy an iPod or iPhone anyway, and the stuff you make also works on every Web 2.0 system. You can also include ISO MPEG-4 H.264/AAC media and you're compatible with everything, even Flash as of v10.
There is very little you can do natively on mobiles anyway, the ones with native apps all have no memory and bad operating system software, that's why there is so much interest in native iPhone apps, because it's the first phone with the resources. Put that aside for now and you notice that many iPhone Web apps are better than native apps for other phones.
FTFA: Blackberry Next comes the blackberry, I have no idea about this as a programming platform so cannot say much about the SDK support Um, thanks for throwing that in, then...
Too bad they got out of the game. Just when it was starting to become fun.
Before that... well, it was probably the C-64.
Not as a hobbyist but as a professional developer i have little experiences of both.
:(.
Whenever i need to do something on windows mobile/wince i never commit on a deadline because you don't know where will you get stuck with so many libs (without source code) around. Microsoft is not going to support you until you really mean something to them and windows mobile documents sucks.
Some point of time, I had to demo VoIP on wince. I plan to use wince messenger but it was returning 421(IIRC). I was using M$ SIP stack so code was not available to me. There was no way to find out the root cause until I get M$ support. Luckily i thought little differently and figured out that there could be some problem in Wi-Fi driver(it was developed by me again). NDIS API for maximum data rate was not correct. I don't understand how can someone think of development on M$ platform as a HOBBY with such a bad documentation and no support.
Later,i had to port Linux kernel on a alien platform with some minimal applications (e.g ftp, ssh ) within a month. I am basically a network engineer with no embedded experience at all but have some user level Linux experience. With the help of community(IRC) i successfuly completed the task within the specified time. I was amazed the way linux kernel is written. You dont have to do anything to port on a new device. Error handling is great. Error reporting is excellent and tools really rocks. No OS give support over IM as Linux has. I feel, Linux is best for developing applications for mobile devices(at least for command line applications, haven't tried GUI ever). You don't have fear to get locked in with issues in some alien binary.
Windows mobile looks good at beginning but once you go inside it, its all muddy and you find yourself helpless. Still trying to figure out what is equivalent of kernel magic number in windows mobile
PS: Sorry for broken English. I am not a native speaker.
Seriously, It's a kickass developer machine, with a gcc toolchain, Wifi, 3d Acceleration, and *tons* of really good quality games for u$s 180, you can't beat it.
And it's very cool. Something that anything with Windows Mobile in it isn't.
Kind of surprised not to see that in the linux section. I've never used it past trolltech's vmware demo, but I've looked at it with a lot of envy in the past. It's the main draw of the neo for me at the moment. Qtopia's always seemed like one of the most friendly environments out there, especially if someone's a fan of QT development.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Since I've worked pretty hard on it, I'll take a moment or two to promote my own 'platform': Hecl, at http://www.hecl.org./ It's a scripting language built on top of J2ME, which means that no, you probably shouldn't write games with it, but on the other hand, it should make it far easier for the 'average Joe' to actually be able to successfully create an application, and for a good developer to do things much faster than with J2ME.
Also, for fun, I created a prediction market about which platform will dominate, but since it's not played with real money, it's not worth all that much:
http://home.inklingmarkets.com/market/show/6481
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
This article sucks. First, he's evidently ignorant about some platforms and yet he still dares to judge one best. Second, he missed what's probably the best option - a PSP, which is cheap, has lots of tools, a good piece of hardware, and high-level languages such as Python available. Third, he goes with Windows Mobile. What the heck. Windows can never be good for development, because its APIs are insane. Or rather, GetWindowsAPIInsaneRatioForMultipleObjectsEx(&dwIRatio, &saSecurityAttributes, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL).
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
He damns all platforms except the one he's pushing with faint praise, with every one having a show stopper problem. The one he's pushing is perfect, with no problems at all, which in the real world is bullshit.
And that's ignoring the fact that the entire premise is nonsense. Without knowing where the hobbyist programmer is coming from and what they're trying to achieve to claim one mobile platform is better than another is vacuous, the sort of content free nonsense that marketers push every day.
Another clue is where he has a problem with the GNU/Linux license but has no problem at all with the far more restrictive M$ license, while pushing the BSD license as an alternative. It's standard M$ marketing tactics to push the BSD license instead of GNU. Unfortunately for M$, for most users both the GNU and BSD licenses are streets ahead of the average M$ license.
And the icing on the cake? The word "Live" in blog heading.
---
Integrated software = marketing buzzword for "we own all the pieces" = we own you.
Sun is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory; give it another few years and they'll have thoroughly destroyed the mobile Java market as well, just like they did with the Java desktop market. You should try NetBeans 6, the developers have implemented great support for developing J2ME applications. There is even a GUI/Flow designer for Mobile devices included. It's true that before I had to spend a week configuring just to get Hello World up and running, but with a clean NetBeans 6 install I(and probably all of you) can do it within seconds. Also an emulator is included so you can test/debug on your computer, still if you want to test your application on your mobile device you just have to copy the compiled jar file over.
There are several samples included: like sounds, graphics, basic networking, games. I recommend everyone who is interested in developing application for mobile devices to check it out
But if you already hate Java, then just stick to the Windows platform. It's also very good.
Creating a new device using WinCE or Linux. Advantage Linux
I've been to all the MS "Training" Tech seminars on WINCE and Mobile .NET. I've asked alot of questions. I usually bring a stack of questions with me because MS trots out "experts" at these things. I have only once received an answer to what I saw as a common question. I've seen countless Demos. I even tried it on two different devices. At first it all looks great but I quickly ran into problems that only peeking at the source can root out, which in many cases is not allowed.
Under Linux I get all the source I need (and then some) to understand the problem. I can turn to the community for help. And by community I usually mean the author of the code I'm having trouble with. I can reuse a ton of code. Hell, sometimes I only have to write a surprisingly small amount of code to accomplish what I need.
The hardest part I've found in developing Embedded Linux Applications/Devices is getting the boss to open the code (Not always necessary but I insist on it every chance I get).
Yeah VS integration is nice, but then I have to use Visual Studio, not something I like to be forced into. I have no problem using a variety of different tools and toolkits to get the job done on Linux.
I am quite fond of QT, and nothing beats the customization of the kernel. I can test on the desktop, cross compile and test on the device.
I've done Brew and a few of the others, I have no real interest in Cell Phone development though, so I can give no real opinion on how they stack up against the penguin.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
While mobile phone companies may not care much for garage tinkerers, some of these "hobbyists" might actually turn into market opportunities. Imagine a company writing software normally targetted at PCs or embedded platforms. They could see an opportunity to port their stuff to mobile phones, but only if someone within that company has experience with this from tinkering at home or if entering into this field of programming is easy and painless, e.g. a linux based SDK which looks and feels like programming for linux/embedded. At least that's how a lot of things were done in my work environment.
Don't forget, tinkering in a garage doesn't have to mean a pure hobbyist, it may well be a bunch of PhD students with a funny idea and no money ... think of HP and google.
A new, multi-platform alternative is MoSync. You write your programs in C/C++ and it outputs J2ME packages.
Support for Symbian and Windows Mobile, which allows you to use the same C/C++ codebase as for J2ME, is in the works.
There are also plans to show, at the Symbian Smartphone show in London support for the Ruby language, as well as a graph-based visual programming tool called Mobile Author.
after purchasing my T-mobile Wing. The iPhone may be sleeker and faster, but because developers don't have to waste time hacking their way into the OS, and because the OS is not limited to one device, there are several times more applications available for Windows Mobile out there. I'm sure many developers will be discouraged by Apple's bricking, too. I think someone hacked together a NES emulator and skype for the iPhone, but I still haven't seen unique applications like the music making software Syntrax, GPS tracking software like Tracky, or games as complex as Riven and Myst for the iPhone like I have on my pocket pc. Cnet has an amazing collection of pocket PC games and they all actually work for the phone; I used to use Getjar all the time for my last java phone but it was amazing even with a cross-platform language like Java how many of the applications just didn't work as expected (or at all) with my previous phone. It was always a gamble. I agree with the author's stance that you can expect the same results the most with Windows Mobile, as much as I'd like to root for Apple, Linux or Java.
Some of the things, and mindsets, he/she was talking about were just plain wrong. A hobbyist programmer does not have a problem with JAVA ME/Python/[Insert language here] if that is the language that is required. Even if there is something peculiar with the language, a hobbyist easily overcomes it and moves on with, well, playing.
I think this kid, and I hope that he is a young padwan, knows one mobile development platform moderately well, knows some syntax of another which happens to be similar to the first and wants to write some be-all, end-all document.
Bah!! Wasted more time.
.
Its almost impossible to test the application without signing it.
Not true for s60 python scripts. You just copy them over and run them from the interpreter. Done.
Developing native applications is only for people who plan to develop free applications or for big organizations, getting a certificate for a free application can take weeks if not months. Its no longer seems like a platform for hobbyist programmers.
So, em, why this big imperative to develop "native" applications then? I thought python, perl, ruby, tcl/tk did away with the "native application" bigotry along time ago...
The python implementation for s60v3 is actually pretty clean. I seem to recall an article from one of the id guys (was it Carmack or Romero?) on the nightmare of developing Java ME apps, what with differences in implementation from one device to another.
The Banjo Players Must Die!
Hello.
At an amateur level, J2ME is the best because is well documented, reasonable IDEs and free. It is not very powerful or fast, but it is simple and will do a lot of things.
At a professional level, Symbian and Windows CE/Mobile are the viable options. If you want to build a decent UI, get good performance and use decent IDEs and get lots of resources, that's the way.
Linux is the most promising new platform, but I tried to get into openmoko, as a useful hobby, but the development tools are a lot different of what I'm used to... It is taking a lot more time than I expected to learn the thing.
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
It is a shame that he doesn't bother to even mention anything about the BlackBerry platform. First and foremost, it *is* J2ME. (well, for the most part) You can run standard J2ME stuff on the BlackBerry, but you can also run stuff written against the BlackBerry-specific API. RIM provides free development tools, and while their own IDE is pretty poor, integrating their tools with the NetBeans IDE is pretty easy.
The biggest advantage of BlackBerry Java development, IMHO, is that the OS itself is practically a JVM, and the built-in apps are also Java. On most phones, running a J2ME app requires waiting forever for the thing to start and never integrate well. On the BlackBerry, your own Java apps start instantly and can look just like all the other built-in apps. Finally, BlackBerry is a common platform across a wide range of popular devices, so you'll always have plenty of potential users even if you build BlackBerry-specific apps.
And now for the shameless plug...
Back when I got my BlackBerry, I found that there were no decent available E-Mail clients for them. (only the service-based E-Mail, which stinks if you're not hooked to a corporate BIS server.) So, I kicked off an open-source project to write my own:
LogicMail - http://www.logicprobe.org/proj/logicmail
My Experience:
Couldn't even get the people who run BREW to answer my email because I'm not a company.
Seems like a lot of potential though if they add VNC/Remote Desktop and (I sold my VX9800 for bus fare before) they released Flash for it.
J2ME looks great, but most phones can access very little of the phones memory. Too little.
My Sony Mylo is my favorite so far... but its closed to development! A shame because it runs Linux. (PLEASE HELP!) And its only a IP/Skype Phone and Opera Browser not a cellphone. Maybe they will release the root unlock code when they stop supporting it.
He seems to have omitted SCO ME. I wonder why ?
... FUNNY!!!
As a big fan of the potential of the Nintendo DS, I want to point out the possibilities of developing for handheld consoles. In terms of functionality, the current handheld generation, i.e. the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP aren't far behind, if not even ahead of, cellphones and PDAs. They both have nice big screens and WLAN, which opens up a broad range of possibilities for homebrew software. For example, for the DS there is an e-Mail program, web browsers, internet radio clients, ssh (in DSLinux) and much more. The PSP has a fast CPU and a powerful graphics chip, while the DS two screens one of which is a touchscreen, so it encourages experimentation with novel user interfaces. Both consoles can deal with removable media: The PSP uses the Memory Stick while for the DS there are adapters for Compact Flash and (mini|micro)SD cards. The SDKs are both unofficial, but freely available and actively maintained. Both homebrew scenes are worth checking out, since they have produced a lot of great software, which is not only games. I admit that getting into development is a bit hard at first, but the coolness factor of having your own apps and games running on a games console is just worth it :)
Some links:
Devkitpro (Compiler toolchains and SDKs for DS, PSP and others)
Dev-Scene (DS homebrew news and homebrew database)
DSLinux
Pictoblog (one of my projects)
My DS coding blog
Cheers!
Tob
What about OpenMoko (http://openmoko.com/)? Perhaps Java isn't as consistent as it should be, development-wise. But, developing mobile applications is a rather new phenomenon, compared to computing in general.
As an iPhone owner, I am really considering looking at this product. Running something like Processing (processing.org) on a device with a touch screen would be great. Windows/Microsoft has alway had a pretty decent perspective on developer support, even if their products aren't personally relevant.
Just want to throw a couple more into the mix.
/. before, but it is basically a completely open source platform. You can program with GTK+ or now that Qtopia has been released for the Neo1973 you can also try your hand at Qt. Very volatile project right now, but quickly stabilizing and progressing.
First, SuperWaba. It is by no means a fully feature platform, but if you are just doing some basic programming and want to be able to support multiple platforms (WinMo, Palm, and Blackberry) then it is fairly easy to get up and running. Also, it based on java, so 90% of java examples will "just work" when programming with SuperWaba. FWIW, that is what we are using for our deployment of a mobile solution for our company. Also, it is GPL for the community version and if you purchase support, you can have the LGPL version.
Second, OpenMoko. It has been discussed on
I know that neither of those have the numbers of the 8 that the article evaluated, but for certain cases they are very viable platforms. Also, both have a lot more freedom than most of those platforms as well.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
I always like PalmOS although it felt old and decrepit as it feels almost the same way that my limited Mac System 5 & 6 development experience from a kid felt, right down to the basic structure of programs and handling of various resources. THe bottom line though was that it worked, and it worked well if you were not sloppy, otherwise expect all sorts of random resets as your little beauty wanders through memory that it's not supposed to. The devices also had AWESOME battery life, tons of useful programs by others, etc. Unfortunatly ATM I'm down to a Clie as I temporarily bricked my IIIx with a TRG XTRA XTRA Pro memory expansion until I can track down a copy of Palm OS 3.3 that is JUST the ROM install. (The Palm version wants to backup the device before re-flashing, but that aint gonna be happening as the device is bricked ATM and I see no way of forcing it to skip that step.) The BIG problem with Palm OS ATM is that it appears to be a dead platform as last I heard Palm was going to be releasing linux based devices, and I suspect that they won't be like Palm's apparent original plan which was to have linux as a base with a Palm OS emulation(or similar) type of layer really running on top of it.
Windows mobile always felt like MS was trying to shoehorn windows(NTish) into something that wasn't really capable of running it to any efficieny until a) they could get devices with larger/more affordable memory footprints, b) larger secondary storage cards in the form of flash memory or micro-hds, and c)some graphics acceleration(nice, but mostly unnecessary for PDAs/phones unless playing movies maybe). SDKs are OK, but last time I looked they weren't as nice as Visual Studio, unless MS has gotten more serious, and the paucity of 3rd party useful apps is astounding for a platform of wince's(and I do) age.
JME PITA coding the UI unless ALOT has changed in the last 3 or 4 years. Still wouldn't be my choice for a lower powered mobile device as performance wouldn't be that great, and the tradeoff of more bulletproffedness really isn't worth it to me.
Symbian: AFAIK it only appears in phones now, which aren't my main area of interest. Palm OS was nice in that a PDA app would pretty much run on a phone unless UI geometry was radically different/proprietary.
Can't believe that this made the front page of Slashdot! Absolutely no content to see here. What a total waste of my time and bandwidth!
... thinks he knows everything, but in fact knows nothing.
Typical of most "developers" I have encountered in India
I guess now he will add "journalism" to his resumé!
Seems like we're all trying to figure out what is a good hobbyist platform. So here are my thoughts, but any additional suggestions welcome:
.NET is well known
1. Low cost of entry -- if the hardware is expensive or the toolkits are expensive, it's not a good hobby tool
2. Ubiquity -- if the hardware is hard to find or only three people have it (and two of them are in Zagreb) it probably won't build a good community of enthusiasts
3. Plentiful and understandable documentation -- if information on it is hard to find or understand, you wouldn't learn about it to start with
4. Uses languages I already know -- why learn something new?
5. Vibrant community -- you want to feel part of something interesting, most of the time
6. Easy tools to use -- good for the non-coder just-get-it-done-so-that-I-can-show-my-buddies
7. Good tools to use -- good for the uber coder who just-get-it-done-so-that-I-can-show-my-buddies
8. Simple distribution -- I want to be able to share my apps with my friends or the world.
9. Path from hobby to profession -- making a living out of it!
Under these criteria, I'd rank major mobile platforms this way:
1 - Java ME (Ubiquitous on even low-cost cellphones with low cost data plans, easy to learn, low cost if you already have the phone, tools are free and some are even good, documentation is available although mas-o-menos, distribution is reasonably easy in most cases, path to profession is clear although bumpy. Java is well known.)
2 - WinMobile (Ubiquitous -- getting a cheap PocketPC these days isn't difficult, easy to learn if you have the good tools -- thought a pain if you use the free tools, great tools although the best are expensive!, documentation is plentiful, distribution is generally easy as long as you're not trying to hit SmartPhone platform, easy path to profession), community exists but probably not passionate [I went to a winmobile developer conference and the folks there looked as excited as someone waiting for a colonoscopy].
3 - Linux (if you can find a Zaurus on the cheap, and are already a Linux coder or can pick up *nix thinking, it's a good platform for making some very complete applications. Development tools are ubiquitous but can be hard to figure out for the beginner, but the community will help you out through building makefiles. path to profession on mobile linux limited given small range of devices, unless you're a consultant). C is well known. Other platforms (Python, Perl, ROR) are available, though not sure about the mobile side.
4- Symbian (devices are ubiquitous in europe, coding for it can suck, distribution can be tricky at best, but there's enough community support that it may be worthwhile, although if I were a hobbyist I'd try different things. C is well known but the API set I've heard is miserable.
5 - BlackBerry (Easy to find devices although service can be expensive, tools are great if you don't need a visual IDE (visual IDE costs more overall because you need a Blackberry enterprise server + MDS), documentation is very good, community is animated though smaller, path to profession is clear. Java, XHTML, ECMA script are well known.
6- Palm OS (easy to find cheap devices, no services required, tools are adequate, documentation is solid, not exactly great for quick throwaway apps though. C and Java ME available
7 - BREW: BREW is designed to discourage hobbyists. The point is to make it so that mobile operators only have to deal with pros or companies that put money into the bucket.
Any other thoughts?
***Foucault is watching you..***
... but a MMORG with a subscription service is probably a bit too ambitious an undertaking for a solo hobbyist. I was thinking more in terms of little shareware type utility programs that are pretty ubiquitous in the Mac and Windows world but are nearly non-existent on Linux.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Although I haven't used Symbian, I read a lot of discussion on the Nokia forums about this topic. Most of the API can be accessed from a self signed application.
You got me again. Touche and my apologies. Linux started out as a hobby. Best of luck with your MMORG.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I've worked with Palm OS = 5 and Windows Mobile and while Palm OS is superior, I think someone just wanting to churn out quick apps could get up to speed faster with a WM SDK. Firstly, you likely already have a familiarity with Win32 or MFC and the development tools. Secondly, there are tons of resources out there while other OSs are by nature esoteric development communities.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I like the attempt in trying to evaluate the developer aspect of each technology. I dont agree with the writer's thoughts on J2ME as I think it is very very good and easy to deploy. Most handset browsers support MIDP2.0 download like OMA download and allow easy deployment. I develop on my T42p and use bluetooth to deploy my J2ME midlet onto my handset(Motorola A768i) and have done it with ease. BREW SDK is decent but Qualcomm is a monopolizing company that allows only MShop to download. They should consider opening up. I heard that they recently hit the $1-billion mark with their BREW Applet Brokering and download. Yet it is a pain to get the binary on a handset. Yet to play with Palm, Symbian and Windows Mobile SDKs. Does anyone have the market break up as to what persentage of handsets use BREW, how many use Symbian, how many are Windows mobile and how many have J2ME ? I bet that J2ME is the heighest. I worked on a WCDMA BREW phone which had the J2ME BREW extension pre provided. I know a few Symbian phones also have J2ME. For Sheer Ubiquity, choose J2ME. I have a midlet to compute the Monthly Mortgage.
I can talk about what I know... TFA is a joke. All major gaming companies makes hundreds of millions $ selling Java games for cellphones (yup, hundreds): EA, Sony, bla bla bla you name it. Why Java? Because it just works and is present on > 95% of all mobiles sold.
So where's the catch? Why is development such a nightmare? Bogus JVM (BlackBerry being a terrible offender here: one of the buggiest JVM out there) and different configurations. Think a huge makefile to compile a Linux kernel for different architecture is complex? Try to compile a cellphone app targetting hundreds (if not thousands) of differents cellphones...
There's no easy solution to this and companies making (usually commercial, the open source offerings being, at this point, a pathetical joke) this kind of compilation possible are making millions. EA bought such a company in 2005: a company that had one poney trick: porting games to hundreds of cellphones. The price that EA paid? 700 million $. Re-read that price a hundred times. If you think developing an app targetting hundreds of cellphones is "easy" or "is going to be easy" anytime soon, you need a reality check for you're seriously unwell.
Btw severall of these companies now have completely automated Java --> Brew (C++) converter that simply works too.
Makefiles or ant tasks are a joke compared to what the tools allowing to automate porting to hundreds of applications (and various different languages, like automated Java to Brew conversion) are doing.