[OT] mobile rising

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Wednesday, 8 November 2017 at 09:34:39 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Wednesday, 8 November 2017 at 00:09:51 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
> Grøstad wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 7 November 2017 at 19:46:04 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>> Not at all, it makes things easier certainly, but there's a 
>>> reason why mobile devs always test on the actual devices, 
>>> because there are real differences.
>>
>> Mostly with low level stuff in my experience.
>
> And what experience would that be?  I've admitted I've never 
> developed for Apple platforms, but my understanding is that 
> even leaving aside the completely different touch-first UI, 
> there are significant differences.  I wonder what Mac apps you 
> simply ported the UI over to iPhone and they just worked.

Writing code from scratch for both. No, of course you cannot port 
it without a little bit of work as the base UI class is slightly 
different. However it is overall the same Objective-C framework 
design.

Quoting apple:

«If you've developed an iOS app, many of the frameworks available 
in OS X should already seem familiar to you. The basic technology 
stack in iOS and OSX are identical in many respects. But, despite 
the similarities, not all of the frameworks in OS X are exactly 
the same as their iOS counterparts»

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/OSX_Technology_Overview/MigratingFromCocoaTouch/MigratingFromCocoaTouch.html

> I just said they're not going to dump it, so I don't know why 
> you're going on about that.  If you mean their current lessened 
> investment is not a good idea, it's because the old desktop OS 
> doesn't matter as much, which is the whole point of this thread.

That would be an overall mistake as they would loose mindshare 
among programmers, but nevertheless the desktop is a much more 
mature environment.

>>> You are thinking too much short term here IMHO. The mobile
>> sector is rather volatile.
>
> I have no idea what this refers to: you have a bad habit of 
> adding asides without any explation or non sequiturs, so that 
> we're left stumped as to what you're talking about.

Over-quoting is spammy. So I don't, but here you go: The mobile 
sector is more volatile than the desktop/laptop sector, hence it 
would be a risky move to dump it. I think that was quite clear 
from what I wrote though…

> I see, so your claim is that MS, Nokia, HP, Sony, all much 
> larger companies than Apple or google at the time, could not 
> have countered them even on a lucky day.  I wonder why this is, 
> as they certainly had more money, you don't believe they're 
> that bright? :)

No, it is because they didn't have the resources internally. 
Money alone does not build teams or knowledge. Apple had worked 
on similar technology for decades and could recycle the 
frameworks for their desktop OS.

> Yet the businesses that did build Android, ie google, HTC, and 
> so on, were much smaller than the corporate behemoths like HP 
> or Sony that you claimed above couldn't do it.  Your claims 
> about who could or couldn't do it make absolutely no sense.

Of course it does. They were not into operating systems and 
frameworks. Sony a little bit by having the Playstation, but that 
was very narrow and for a very narrow low level segment of 
programmers.


> Their problem was likely that they got in too early and got 
> discouraged, not that they were "getting in late."

Apple was also in too early and got discouraged, but they 
reentered when the touch screen tech got better.