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It's incredible just how naive the author is. If you've ever worked on j2me or even Symbian vs Android or iOS you never want to go back. There's a reason why th

It's incredible just how naive the author is. If you've ever worked on j2me or even Symbian vs Android or iOS you never want to go back. There's a reason why the apps have blown up thanks to Apple: making apps in the j2me era was a nightmare with each handset having a different implementation of j2me and same functions returning different behaviours. I do not ever want to go back to that time and any developer romanticising horrible tech needs to develop an actual real world app or two on a number of handsets before going all gooey eyed.

zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
> There's a reason why the apps have blown up thanks to Apple It makes me sad to read this. The first iPhone had no third party applications, no API, no SDK, nothing. It was impossible to write apps for the iPhone then, Steve Jobs thought that HTML 5 should be good enough. He changed his mind only after Android shipped with a full SDK.
- tzs 12y ago
  > He changed his mind only after Android shipped with a full SDK There may have been an Android SDK before there was an iPhone SDK, but iPhone was the first whose apps actually ended up in the hands of the general public. Apple had their App Store up and open to developers and the public by July 2008. The first shipping Android phone was still three months away.
  - zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
    What does this have to do with the (incorrect) claim that Apple kickstarted the "App on a phone" market? I was just debunking this claim. Android 1.0 went to market with a full blown SDK and the vision that the future belongs to third party apps. Steve Jobs completely disagreed with this vision and he only changed his mind after Android shipped.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - tzs 12y ago
      Android 1.0 went to market in September 2008, two months AFTER Apple's App Store opened to the public, so it is clear Android 1.0 going to market did not have anything to do with Jobs changing his mind. Jobs changed his mind sometime before October 17, 2007. We know this because it was on that date that Apple published a note in his name announcing that they were going to allow third party apps and that the SDK would be available by February 2008 [1]. At that date in the Android world, Android only existed as an alpha within Google, and had not yet even been officially announced. It wasn't announced until the first beta, November 5, 2007. The first Android SDK was released November 12, 2007. By the end of the first weekend that the Apple App Store was available, they had 10 million downloads from real customers. By that weekend in the Android world, there were 0 apps in the hands of real customers. So yeah, it was indeed the Apple App Store that kickstarted the "App on a phone" market. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20071020040652/http://www.apple.com/hotnews http://web.archive.org/web/20071020040652/http://www.apple.c...
- nashadelic 12y ago
  I don't mean apple was the first. Getjar.com was an App Store long before any. Facebook opened their platform for 3rd party apps before apple as well. But Apple, like with most things it does, popularised the idea of apps for your phone. Nobody quite got the power of apps or understood just what a stranglehold mobile carriers had on app distribution and monetization. Apple with its credit card integration, singular SDK, single point of deployment changed all of that.
fallat 12y ago
Hehehe. I'm thinking of writing "The non-practicality of J2ME applications" after, since so far it has even been difficult even setting up the development environment. I've written android applications so it'll be something to compare this experience to. Yes I am naive in J2ME development X) But everyone's stories have been interesting to read!
- zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
  Yes, I predict you're about to discover a lot of hard truths about J2ME but in this process, you'll understand better why Android appeared and how much better it is than J2ME. I predict that in a few months from now, you'll be coding on Android exclusively and you'll never try J2ME ever again.

zak_mc_kracken 12y ago

> There's a reason why the apps have blown up thanks to Apple It makes me sad to read this. The first iPhone had no third party applications, no API, no SDK, nothing. It was impossible to write apps for the iPhone then, Steve Jobs thought that HTML 5 should be good enough. He changed his mind only after Android shipped with a full SDK.

tzs 12y ago
> He changed his mind only after Android shipped with a full SDK There may have been an Android SDK before there was an iPhone SDK, but iPhone was the first whose apps actually ended up in the hands of the general public. Apple had their App Store up and open to developers and the public by July 2008. The first shipping Android phone was still three months away.
- zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
  What does this have to do with the (incorrect) claim that Apple kickstarted the "App on a phone" market? I was just debunking this claim. Android 1.0 went to market with a full blown SDK and the vision that the future belongs to third party apps. Steve Jobs completely disagreed with this vision and he only changed his mind after Android shipped.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - tzs 12y ago
    Android 1.0 went to market in September 2008, two months AFTER Apple's App Store opened to the public, so it is clear Android 1.0 going to market did not have anything to do with Jobs changing his mind. Jobs changed his mind sometime before October 17, 2007. We know this because it was on that date that Apple published a note in his name announcing that they were going to allow third party apps and that the SDK would be available by February 2008 [1]. At that date in the Android world, Android only existed as an alpha within Google, and had not yet even been officially announced. It wasn't announced until the first beta, November 5, 2007. The first Android SDK was released November 12, 2007. By the end of the first weekend that the Apple App Store was available, they had 10 million downloads from real customers. By that weekend in the Android world, there were 0 apps in the hands of real customers. So yeah, it was indeed the Apple App Store that kickstarted the "App on a phone" market. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20071020040652/http://www.apple.com/hotnews http://web.archive.org/web/20071020040652/http://www.apple.c...
nashadelic 12y ago
I don't mean apple was the first. Getjar.com was an App Store long before any. Facebook opened their platform for 3rd party apps before apple as well. But Apple, like with most things it does, popularised the idea of apps for your phone. Nobody quite got the power of apps or understood just what a stranglehold mobile carriers had on app distribution and monetization. Apple with its credit card integration, singular SDK, single point of deployment changed all of that.

fallat 12y ago

Hehehe. I'm thinking of writing "The non-practicality of J2ME applications" after, since so far it has even been difficult even setting up the development environment. I've written android applications so it'll be something to compare this experience to. Yes I am naive in J2ME development X) But everyone's stories have been interesting to read!

zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
Yes, I predict you're about to discover a lot of hard truths about J2ME but in this process, you'll understand better why Android appeared and how much better it is than J2ME. I predict that in a few months from now, you'll be coding on Android exclusively and you'll never try J2ME ever again.