http://code.google.com/android.....droid.html

From the above URL.

“Every Android application runs in its own process, with its own instance of the Dalvik virtual machine. Dalvik has been written so that a device can run multiple VMs efficiently. The Dalvik VM executes files in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format which is optimized for minimal memory footprint. The VM is register-based, and runs classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been transformed into the .dex format by the included “dx” tool.”

And finally intelligent state saving does not satisfy event based requirements, or allow for providing audio while a user views something else.

I’ll finish by saying this. Get off the “look at me I’m a smarty pants” band wagon and stop thinking your cool by finding every little imperfection. Bottom line, it’s much more interesting to read articles about what you can do not what you can’t do.

Oh, btw. Your are breaking the developers agreement by posting the UI guidelines. And here you are bagging on apple, you can’t even follow the agreement you made. Amazing!

Just sayin’.

Now that you can, there are *still* complaints.

Make up your frikkin minds!

The “jailbreak” community has already developed and distributed apps that have background execution functionality, so it’s clearly not a design flaw, or an inherent limitation. It is simply a way for Apple to guarantee it’s reputation of stability for the iphone.

But my apps are released on Nokia / BlackBerry / Windows Mobile with no carrier approval, and those are the iPhone competitors.

This whole thing about no background apps and one app at a time is a HUGE limitation for any sort of alert based or LBS app.

This is not good news to me or my users who have been waiting for an iPhone version of Trapter. I’ll still make an app, but will have to re-think it. So much for the radar detector model that beeps the iPhone automatically when you approach speed traps (that is how all the other platforms work with Trapster - now not possible with iPhone).

Pete
Trapster.com

This is nothing surprising, unless you are expecting to be able to port any random application to the iphone and expect it to function the same as it did on ‘x’ platform before.

It’s a celphone, albeit a fancy looking one that can do some cool stuff. But when you get down to it, it’s a celphone, and as such expect the normal celphone restrictions to be in place.

The major difference, which apple really needs to be congratulated on, is the fact that it is an OPEN celphone platform - meaning that anyone will be able to put apps onto the iphone without going through the very rigorous and expensive ‘certification’ process that normal mobile development requires. Not to mention the process of simply getting permission to roll out your application on ‘x’ providers mobile network.

This ability for anyone to make mobile applications should be a HUGE boon to the mobile developer market - and add in the fact that the iPhone is a single hardware device, very similar to the Nintendo DS (which is basically a fancy celphone as well) or the Ngage - simplifies what is currently a nightmare development process.

Current mobile development market:
1) try to get permission to launch on ‘x’ providers network (typically such a convoluted process you MUST go through a major publisher or partner to even get the time of day from the providers)
2) create mobile game (say in j2me). J2me is probably the most broken ’standard’ ever. Every single mobile device implements the standard slightly differently and not only that, but different firmware versions can completely break your application, so you have to test and patch applications for specific firmware versions
3) once you have the game created, you need to test it for ALL of the potential configurations of phones / j2me runtimes / firmware versions that the provider / publisher wants you to support - this can literally run into hundreds of UNIQUE handsets that need to be supported - each with a custom build of your game.
4) all of this has to be done on ridiculously small budgets because the business model for actually getting paid for your application is remote, and the pricing model forces you to sell the app for a pittance. In order to make any kind of money on an app you have to sell tens of thousands of copies - a questionable prospect for all but the most successful applications.

The iPhone SDK changes almost all of these barriers to mobile development and should be welcomed as the paradigm shift that it has the potential to become.

ps. no i don’t currently own an iphone or have anything to do with apple, just thoughts based on our own prior experience developing mobile games.

For the Java/Android fans, Java may be solid, and Android has potential, but the argument comes up everytime anyone talks about Flash/Flex, PHP, and now Objective C for the iphone. Java is not the only capable programming language. It is bloated and slow in a lot of applications, and there is not one programming language for everything. Why does it have to be Java or nothing? Plenty other languages are very capable for what they do, and they are hardly inferior to your beloved bloated Java.