Funcoder Technology Blog

I say unto you this festive season, “Look upon the Steve Jobs and see the Light of the Angel of Geek”.

Once again the news has spread about the Apple Store rejecting this time the Opera Web browser. I have said this before, Apple are becoming what Microsoft was years ago and that concerns me.

Last week we purchased an HTC Touch Pro for some in house development and I had forgotten how much fun it is to develop on Windows Mobile.

I know the UI is not slick like the iPhone, but I have control over all the phones features and can develop any application I like without getting the Phone manufacturers approval.

Who would want to spend months developing an application, only to be rejected by the App Store and no other way to distribute it.

The close door approach that Apple is taking will inevitably be their downfall. I have seen it so many times that it’s incredible they still do it.

We live in a growing world of openness and collaboration. If a company wants to succeed they need to embrace this.

I never thought I would see Microsoft do this, but they have and developers are flocking back to the giant.

It’s not to late for Apple to see the light but I would say the current bureaucracy within the company will defend any attempt to become more open and trust the community.

For me, I am foregoing the iPhone for now and once again enjoying the open window from Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Blackberry and many more.

Just to let you folks know that if you open www.funcoder.com on your iPhone then you will get a nice clear iPhone interface to read the posts.

Thanks goes to http://iwphone.contentrobot.com/

One of the great usage of an iPhone is reading emails on the go, both POP, IMAP and Exchange push.

One feature I would really like to see on the device is a View All Emails. I have a number of email accounts I check on the iPhone and it is a pain when I get an alert as I have to search around for the new email when there are a number of unread mails in the accounts.

I have to admit that I am an Apple fan but I am also torn between OSX and Windows for development. You see all my clients are Windows based and would not consider moving to Mac for a number of reasons.

It’s not just the fact that PC’s are cheaper than their Apple equivalent, it’s also down to the fact that there are no good enterprise development tools for the Mac. XCode is a great tool, but it just does not have the capabilities to be used in the enterprise like Visual Studio.

Now this may be from my lack of real experience with XCode but I feel it is more down to it’s available features.

If you take the current project I am working on as an example. This project encompasses business rules, data objects, services, UI elements for both desktop and mobile. The client has a specific requirement for it to be non-web based, so the UI elements are desktop and mobile applications. The added complexity is the integration with a Windows based accounting system. There are no good accounting packages (UK) for the Mac.

To build such a thing in Visual Studio is relatively easy, but XCode needs to match this functionality if it is to be recognised as a true contender in the enterprise.

There is Java (no comments about Leopard and Java 6), but combining Java server components and XCode would be a nightmare to maintain.

There are other development environments in the Mac Space, like RealBASIC, but once again they lack the feature set required.

So the life of an enterprise developer becomes rather complicated. Just looking at my desk I have a MacBook on my left and my WindowsXP machine in front of me. I crave working on my Mac, but I always have to resort to the Windows PC.

I just can’t see the future businesses developing there internal systems for Mac now and in the near future. To me this is always going to be for the home consumer or a web shop. I just wish it was different or we could see a glimmer of this changing.

The Scoop: http://www.apple.com/pr/libbrary/2007/06/14safari.html

I was very surprised to read that the browser has been downloaded this many times. My cynical self is telling me that these are Mac users downloading at the Windows centric offices.

We will see…

Just been listening to an interesting webcast from NASA where people submitted questions to one of the STS-117 Astronaut’s.

One question was about what they use to relax and listen on during missions. They can’t use a standard iPOD as there is no way to charge the device on the shuttle. NASA have created a mod to the iPOD so that the Astronauts can use standard batteries to power it.

Cool!