Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

So android and the iphone have been having a lot of bad news lately, what with the whole cyanogen mess and apples increasingly restrictive policies ("rejected in part because it was the product of a lone
developer.").

We should make a concerted effort to get some of these disgruntled developers over to the maemo world, as many of them are very talented and it would be excellent publicity.

Now would be the time to sell the n900 and maemo to the world as the saviour to their development woes :)


Just putting that out there.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

One of the best things we can do is to try to push Unity3D to port their engine from iPhone over to N900. Almost all the bigger game companies use it for their games allowing them to quickly port for N900.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

I'm up for taking on this task. How do you suppose we go about doing it, though?

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Unity is a commercial company, so they will go where the money is. If they see that the N900/Maemo platform is a big market, and/or if their customers (i.e. the developers that licence their engine) ask for them to support it, I expect they will.

As end-users, I guess we would have to ask developers of our favourite iPhone games if they can port to N900. I'm not sure if it's worth end-users contacting Unity directly, as we aren't their customers.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

The bad news about Android isn't justified. It is merely Google enforcing its EULA, that one is not allowed to distribute Google's proprietary applications without written consent.

Maemo developers enjoy an environment much more compatible with *NIX/X11 desktops. I'm looking forward to PulseAudio, for example.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Absolutely!

But first we should make sure that we can gruntle them with Maemo.

This probably sounds like a stupid thing to say, but do we even know absolutely for sure that the final hardware will allow the N900 to be re-flashed with unsigned binaries?

Regards,
Roger

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

There's already a long thread -- "How can we encourage iPhone developers to develop on Maemo?" -- specifically about this. (Well, about getting iPhone developers.)

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Don't forget Palm
http://jwz.livejournal.com/1096401.html

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

@overfloat: I think Palm is in somewhat a similar boat as us here (relatively speaking, compared to iphone and android). They have less than 100 apps in their appstore the last time I checked, and the native SDK was released just a few months ago. Wait, no, they're even behind us :D

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Yeah but....:

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

I think it's terrible for any OS to demand that the only way to get that application is through an app store. One of my gripes with both Palm and Apple (though yes there are unofficial ways that you can get them on).

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

@eiffel: yes. The first app in fremantle extras is rootsh.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

The Unity3D people have said they are working on porting their engine to other platforms but refuse to mention which. I guess we'll see what happens.

The best thing about this if it happens is that none of those fart app people use something like Unity... so we'll get more or less the best of the games and far less of the crap. ;)

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

@Zerojay: mobile platforms ? I was under the impression the new platforms were consoles (primarily xbox 360). Unity3D, as is, has near-zero support for any form of Linux (not counting server-side stuff and wine), so while they didn't downright refuse linux support I would not keep my hopes high. Their latest stance I'm aware of was

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

On their forums, they did mention other mobile platforms - again, not specifying which.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Bratag already got wooed over to the N900, even before the recent CyanogenMod mess. I know I'm seriously considering ditching Android for the N900 now, and others in the Android forums have been bringing up the N900 repeatedly.

The concern is that Maemo is no more open than Android, that the N900 still features proprietary Nokia drivers and apps.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

[sherlock holmes hat]

Let's take a look at the people page, which is actually quite revealing... quick scan... no linux folks or team. Now, let's take a look at their jobs page

• PSP Programmer

• PS3 Programmer

• XBox 360 Programmer

[/sherlock holmes hat]

That's why I say no high hopes...

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

True. But, there's never going to be a completly free driver and application community. Heck even Linux has that problem where some drivers aren't open (or the open ones aren't as good). And some codecs haven't been opened or created yet.

Though Nokia hasn't minded anybody hacking around with their apps and releasing modified versions. Granted, to install them you had to be running Maemo anyway, that is different than the custom ROM situation that CyanogenMod is running into where people may not be running the ROMs on phones that originally came with those applications.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

There is a possible workaround, if the n900's browser supports the Unity 3D plugin, that is. Anybody knows? Only problem is that developers couldnt sell their games, which would remove interest for a lot of people.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Definitely don't forget Palm. Not so much WebOS but Palm's original OS. FreewarePalm list 5,088 different applications. That's right, five Thousand. SourceForge shows 416 open source projects that are written for the PalmOS and have released files.

I have no idea how difficult it would be to port PalmOS code to Maemo but if anyone knows where Palm programmers hang out they should at least suggest it.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Too bad maemo apps have to be in python. If they could be in javascript we would have lots of apps.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

This is EXACTLY right. +1 to you sir. In fact, watch the Palm OS library explode as it is DEAD EASY to code an app in DOM/javascript, especially if you have useful APIs (prototype/jquery, scriptaculous, cappuccino, etc). Lower barrier to entry == more entry.

I know Nokia's working on a web-runtime, but I'm not up on the details... I'm also too lazy to look them up... I'm also hungry...

}:^)~

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Where do you get the idea that Maemo apps HAVE to be writtin in Python.. or anything else, for that matter? There are and will be bindings for all sorts of languages.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

:eek:
Javascript easy? :eek: Specially, compared to python?

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

I don't mind Python... just making my first steps with PySide actually. But a web runtime would be a killer. I can do that with closed eyes and one hand behind the back :)

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

I think its the fact that the browser takes care of most of the heavy lifting for you already. In that way it's a great development environment. The most important part of the layout (the DOM) is handled by the browser. You simply need position elements with HTML, and then have the javascript manipulate that. It's VERY easy to make useful programs.

Javascript is a very flexible OO-langauge that shares similarity with Ruby. It's very easy to get into, even if you are just doing procedural programming.

}:^)

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Actually, it's not, Python isn't even remotely close to being the only language on Maemo. Hell, it's not even an officially supported one.

See the presentation listed in the Summit schedule.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

No, you don't mean HTML then. You position the elements using a GUI, and that's where the easiness comes from.

I code HTML and Javascript by hand and I can tell Python is waaaaaay easier (and nicer!). I'd even consider C to be easier.

So, wait for a proper PySide GUI instead.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

The 'exactly right' was referring to the javascript-programming-would-yeild-many-apps portion of the quote. I'll be clearer next time to avoid confusion.

Thanks!

}:^)~

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

IMO, a claim like this is evidence of the pernicious effect that locked-down phone OS's have on computing culture.

Thanks to the Maemo community for a truly open platform.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Anyone making further suggestions that ECMA script is a viable basis for apps (let alone a platform) and superior to (insert any language) will be subject to death by grue. :p

Regarding PalmOS: there are a number of emulators for Garnet OS around. I think the lack of killer app for Palm that doesn't exist on Maemo is why they aren't used more.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

JavaScript is well supported on the maemo browser, so you could code apps with HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

JavaScript is not an object-oriented language though. It's object-based, which is a little bit different. It has some weird concepts, too. It might be easy to learn but hard to comprehend the more advanced stuff. :)

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Umm, excuse me? It wasn't implied anywhere that I use a GUI to generate HTML.


'Easier' is a matter of experience and skill. They're all just languages that have the exact same control of flow statements, and roughly the same syntax. Generally the 'difficulty' comes not from the language, but the that you're trying to implement, and the tools available to you.

That said Javascript/DOM is not the best environment for all apps. But it's a great environment for *many* apps. It carries a number of advantages including easy development, easy testing, instant distribution, no installation, etc.

I believe the OP was referring to this when he mentioned Javascript, as its generally synonymous with browsers these days.

Uhhhh... Thanks for the tip, but no.

}:^/~

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Oh, like any other interpreted language... Surprising.

Only with a proper GUI toolkit you can actually easily code window layouts and not document layouts like HTML is supposed to do.

And then I'd disagree on the "easy testing" part, but hey, you can code in whatever language you want...

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Well, this is debatable. It's a prototyped language, is dynamic, and classless, so in that way it's different than traditional OOLs, but it retains the key characteristics necessary to receive the OOL designation .

The ECMA also considers ECMAScript an OOL (page 13 -- section 4); of which javascript is a dialect.

Yes, I agree, it's easy to jump into, but so incredibly dynamic, that advanced concepts can be a bit challenging to understand. But this can be said of any language, no? (consider C-pointers/objects/polymorphism/aspects/etc for the novice!)

It can also get very messy if the coder doesn't adhere to good design principles (much like C). This is where I've noticed Javascript gets a lot of slack. But it is possible to write beautiful, highly functional code.

}:^)~

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

This doesn't need to be Javascript vs Python war. There's room for them both to be easy to develop on.

Window-like layouts in a browser is a snap! Simply markup your elements in a DIV, you can even dress it up using CSS, then use Javascript to manipulate it (show/hide/rotate/opacity/width/height/position/destroy/duplicate/change contents/etc). Instant window. Honestly, it takes 1min max.

Easy in that all you have to do is hit refresh in the browser to quickly run your code. It's very forgiving for rapid prototyping/development. Again, I didn't say that python, by implication, is less easy.

I appreciate and respect your opinions. I think in this case, we've a clash of perspectives. Perhaps some day you'll get into DOM/Javascript development and grow to appreciate it. It's really quite fun and forgiving, and I'd highly recommend it!

}:^)~

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

Because that's what works when making apps. If you know how to get javascript apps to work on maemo 4 tell us all :D

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

I think he was implying that there are many other languages beyond Python for app devel on maemo. This is true, there are a whack, including command line scripting tools.

Of course, a Javascript app from the command line would be neat (if not a bit pointless given the many mature choices).

}:^)~

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

No need for a war. They can peacefully co-exist. I usually code my AJAX backend stuff in Python.

Re: Let's get those android and iphone developers
 

You mean, like that? http://puelocesar.wordpress.com/2009...ent-for-maemo/

:P