Went to the conference last night, basically it was all about (free beers & foods,) presentation & debates from developer's perspective between 3 major mobile platform + cross platform.
It was present in a more friendly way than what I thought to be, here are a little summary from it:
Android is catching up iOS in terms of Apps have developed per month:
pro:
- Developer-friendly with those who had wrote JAVA Swing before;
- The learning curve is starting with easy but will encounter hump at later stage;
- Free install on any android phone;
con:
- Pirate problem - free install on any android phone (yes, both pro & con).
- Compatible problem - inconsistency version of android OS with different handset (CPU speed, memory and resolution etc.)
iOS is still holding the crown, but I feel people is getting a bit of aesthetic fatigue with it.
pro:
- Apple controls the version update and handset standard (only Apple products running iOS);
- Rich documentation and examples from Apple;
- No pirate problem, money guaranteed;
con:
- Approval process of Apps required to go through Apple, and need to pay money before putting on shelf.
- Object-C and iOS dev kit require a bit more time to get familiar with, hump at begging of the learning curve.
Windows Phone 7 was all re-designed, they learnt a lot of experience from previous two platform. Plus that Microsoft is putting huge amount of money into it, it looks promising.
The demo was directly projected from the prototype phone (previous two were through slides), which was pretty cool.
Its new clean & slice Zune style UI gave me some impression on over those iPhone style touch-phone UI (although android does provide some different things, such as widget/gadget on dashboard)
pro:
- Backed by the powerful Visual Studio & .net, this isn't something like iOS devkit or Eclipse can compete with.
- Instant wealth feedback with Microsoft's money support even before you start list your apps.
- Microsoft chose some middle way between Android & iOS:
a. Controlling with approval, but also allow you to invite people for free install.
b. Still have different manufactures but they mentioned they will control the version updates and standardisation.
con:
- Still need to wait for market reaction after a real phone on shelf.
- The conference was sponsored by Microsoft, and they present in a more user experience way rather than from developer's perspective.
Cross-Platform basically means you write apps as web app, good for writing small scale apps.
pro:
- With a local platform wrap you can write core codes once and able to run on all kind of OS.
- Easily hop on for those web developers - cross languages.
con:
- Compatible problem, different resolutions etc.
- Performance problem because app is not running in native code.
- Development curve might be hump after humps.
Overall I felt that if Apple is not going to do any change in future years, they might fall behind with the fierce growing of Android and menacing return of the Windows Phone.
However consumers will be happy to see the competition in smartphone world is going into a new stage soon.
