Don Babcock's Blog

I'm a J2ME developer. From my perspective, Java has always been 'hampered' by the degree of difficulty in building robust and intuitive UIs. Steve Jobs has wonderfully liberated us with the advent of the iPhone SDK. I'm a Java/Windows developer moving to the Apple development world and while I'm intrigued by the idea of Java on my favorite mobile device, I'm not sure folks really realize the genius of the iPhone UI paradigm.

I'd go so far as to say that the iPhone is THE platform for the future of mobile computing.

I loved the combo of Netbeans and SDK's until I ran into the "brick wall" fortifications that the telcos have erected to deny the ability to develop for their platforms for all but the most well heeled "partners." Steve Jobs has wonderfully liberated us with the advent of the iPhone SDK.

From my perspective, Java has always been "hampered" by the degree of difficulty in building robust and intuitive UI's. You can easily invest the MAJORITY of your development time in the UI as opposed to the actual application code proposition. Any of the J2ME emulators/debuggers that I've looked at and used don't hold a candle to the ones built into the iPhone SDK.

From my perspective, it will be MUCH better to just learn Cocoa and the SDK rather than try to use Java. Java on the iPhone would be interesting for the underlying coding but the UI elements available to any of the J2ME distributions are woefully inadequate in comparison to those that are built into the iPhone. Understand, I'm a Java/Windows developer moving to the Apple development world and while I'm intrigued by the idea of Java on my favorite mobile device, I'm not sure folks really realize the genius of the iPhone UI paradigm.

I initially chafed at the idea of "safari only" development until I did my first iPhone app and had it in the web apps catalog in about ONE WEEK! Ther is no way that I could have repeated even that simple app and gotten it to market in SIX months, let alone one week given all of the NSTL/Code Signing/ etc. etc. barriers that all of the other folks put in your way. If you don't believe me, read the whole sorry saga at my blog where I chronicle the sorry state of the J2ME "real" world.

Thankfully, Jobs has stood up to the telco tyranny and we at last may see them "crack" under the huge competitive pressures brought to bear by the liberation of all of the frustrated mobile development talent out there. By the end of the year, I predict that iPhones will have eclipsed RIM and the BlackBerry, if not in total market share, then certainly in applications and developer mindshare. The latter, if you recall, is why Windows "won" over the likes of OS/2. More developers in the game means more apps.

As big a fan as I am of Java and J2ME, I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a "step down" compromise for the iPhone. Unless the J2ME can fully integrate with the emulator and be fully enfranchised in terms of the UI components so that you can't tell the difference, I'd be against it. I'm a Java fan but having experienced the richness and ease of use of the device for a few weeks now, I'd be very unhappy with a "plain jane" SWT Java app compared to the rich and visually appealing UI that you get with the Apple SDK. I think most customers would as well and the last thing they'll tolerate is something that brings their iPhone "down" to the level of all the others out there. I doubt that Sun has anywhere near the quality of SDK required to play in the iPhone world.

Lest you think me an Apple "fan boy", for the record I don't yet own a Mac. However, after watching the video of how the iPhone SDK works and since that SDK only plays on Macs, I'm going to drop a thousand on a Mac Book. It's well worth the investment just to play in the iPhone world.

The apparent quality of the SDK is so superior to anything out there in the ME world that I'll easily recoup the investment in development time alone and that includes learning from scratch Cocoa and Objective C (not that big a challenge for a Java jock.) Yes. I'd like to be able to code in Java to save myself a bit of learning curve but when you consider how much time is spent in UI coding vs the rest of the app, my gut tells me that being able to leverage all of the built in iPhone widgets and built in APIs (which is unlikely in Java) will more than make up for the little bit of Cocoa that I'll have to learn to do the things that are the unique value add of my code.

If you haven't watched the Apple iPhone SDK tutorials, give them a look and then compare them to what you know in the J2ME space. If you are like me, you'll want the full package and not some "slap a JVM into the iPhone so we can do SWT apps" solution.