I'd argue 256 mb is more than plenty to run a VM. I recall running much slower and memory-hogging VMs (earlier versions of Flash, Bochs, Blackdown JDK 1.3 under

I'd argue 256 mb is more than plenty to run a VM. I recall running much slower and memory-hogging VMs (earlier versions of Flash, Bochs, Blackdown JDK 1.3 under Linux emulation in FreeBSD, how's that for layering?), running much heavier applications (Netbeans, Tomcat under Blackdown) in 256 mb of ram on a machine with a slow PATA disk and a Pentium-III processor. It wasn't pretty (this experience is what turned me away from JVM until recently), but it was tolerable. I am not saying the JVM (at least HotSpot) is actually best for the iPhone/iPad, there are better VMs out there. Erlang's VM is better (and again, runs in a much more restricted space), there are also register based VMs (e.g., Dalvik and -- best example -- how Apple themselves emulated m68k on PowerPC based Macs). I'll definitely trust you in regards to UI programming: last UI programming I did for a salary was GTK+- in C, having played a bit with OS X SDKs / IB -- even prior to iPhone -- I found that to be a much better experience. The only Java desktop apps I use extensively are the IDEs (and both Eclipse with SWT and IntelliJ IDEA with its JNA/JNI libraries make heavy use of native APIs).