Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

GoogleGear posts

Filed under: Developer, Windows, Macintosh, Web services, Adobe, Apple, Google, Microsoft

Dev Chair : Why is Safari on Windows?

So Apple went and released Safari for Windows. It is interesting why Apple did this. Safari may be faster, as the Royal Steveness claimed, and provides a number of nice features that are not in IE7 or Firefox by default (e.g. Forms auto-fill and resizable text fields) but I am not sure it would get much traction in the long term once the novelty factor has worn off.

Steve Jobs also announced that 3rd party developers will get access to the iPhone via web apps. Traditionally, cell phone application development is 'hard'. Hard in the sense that, by nature, cell phone manufactures are not software companies, so either the software development kit (SDK) use lower level languages (C++, etc.), an unsupported developer community (compare with web or desktop development), or antiquated OS (Palm OS 5.x). Whereas web development has a much lower learning curve as well as much bigger pool of developers to pull from.

It is obvious, at least to me, that releasing Safari for Windows is primarily a move to open up the iPhone's development environment to the largest audience possible. If Apple were to actually make a proper SDK for the iPhone, it would mean the SDK would have to support the Cocoa framework on OS X, and either port Cocoa to Windows (possible), or use 3rd party framework for Windows (not likely, given how much Apple likes to be in control). Either way, I doubt this hypothetical SDK would be OS X only, and asking 3rd party developers to purchase a Mac just to develop for the iPhone would be the death keel that many have been predicting.

Read more →

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chromium Pre-Alpha on CrunchBang Linux
Safari 4 Beta
10 Firefox themes that don't suck
IE8 RC1
Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party
Download Squad at the Crunchies
WordPress 2.7
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Windows 7 Hands On
Comodo Internet Security
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

More Tech Coverage

AOL Radio