Friday, February 24, 2012

Developing for mobiles - short summary

Here are some links about the present mobile operating systems:

A. iOS - Apple - http://developer.apple.com - full sdk is available only for apple developers - (to become a developer one must pay 99$ per year, and then have full access to resources), and you'll need a Mac osx hardware, in order to compile the iOS code on.. Development by default is done with Objective-c (variation of c), yet there are other possible programing for iOS such as in Delphi XE2 (objective pascal). Delphi XE2 uses FPC in order to build the iOS based apps (using a technology called FireMonkey - FMX). The iOS is evolution of the standard MacOS -- and got many of its known MacOS interface to build apps with. Programming Applications for the iOS is being reviewed by Apple development tool, and being published on a www site, called AppStore it can be accessed as well from the Apple iTunes application., currently there is a huge amount of free and commercial applications on the AppStore, for a couple of years the AppStore was a very successful and well known site.

B. Android - Google - http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html - there are about 4~5 versions (each version is nicknamed for example, ICS - ice cream sandwich - version 4), development is being done using java. According to present date Delphi XE2 doesn't support compilation for android. Yet there are possible ways to compile FPC with a wrapper for that OS. In the coming month Embarcadero will add this compilation support for that OS on Delphi XE2. Android was produced by Google a couple of years ago, and got a very tight and big customer base. It is based on the Linux architecture, and got a well published API for use. Programing Applications for the Android can be sold from a www site, called MarketStore - currently there is a huge amount of free and commercial applications on the MarketStore.

C. WebOs - Palm - HP - https://developer.palm.com/ - HP, Palm mobile os - requires a Virtual Box, which is an oracle visualization tool. This mobile os, had its switch of hands a couple of times, yet still has some tablet, and mobile based OSes on the market.

D. Windows 8 - Microsoft - http://www.buildwindows.com/ - next generation of Microsoft windows - for pc & tablets (both intel and arm based CPU) - beta for developers include the latest visual studio 11 - to build win8 based metro apps. Delphi will add support for Metro based apps for win8 later this year. On 29th of feb 2012, microsoft will release a second more enhanced beta containing many sample apps (such as email reader, picture presentation, etc). Microsfot has announced that it will have its www site, for selling and buying Win8 Metro based applications. It wasn't yet revealed for the wide public. According to current news Nokia has signed a contract with Micrsoft to distribute the windows 8 OS in its next generation of tablets and mobile devices.

E. Blackberry os - https://bdsc.webapps.blackberry.com/air/ - as far as I could gather the programming for this type of Operating System, is being done with Adobe AIR tools.

This is the list of known OSes for mobile that I know that are still valid widely in the current market - As an enthusiast of operating systems, since the desktop OSes, and a  collector of the different variations - If you have any other OSes that you would like to introduce for the world post a comment on that post. I'd love to learn more about possibilities of mobile OSes.

Wikipedia got a nice features table  of the current OSes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_operating_system#Mobile_OS_comparison - You can find many more resources of each one of the Mobile OS on different www sites.