Playbook version ?

[johnnyv_nl]

Hello,

Seems rim has Native C/C++ development support added.

http://www.playbookdaily.com/2011/03/24 ... #more-1693

Looks like handbase can now be ported? (please!!!!)

Still didn't find anything like handbase for the platform so it will be appriciated


Grtx, John

[Brian_Houghton]

Hi John,

Thanks for sharing the link that you did. I will forward it to Dave. In reading through it, I am not sure that this adds support for porting Android apps that utilize C/NDK structure or not but we'll see!

[dhaupert]

Hi John,

Thanks for your post and the link. Indeed they have announced a few ways to get apps developed for PlayBook. The Android player will let Java-only based Android apps run on the Playbook with slight modifications. The Native C/C++ will let you write native code for the playbook but you still have to redevelop a UI for it. If only they'd allow NDK/C++ Android apps run on the player we could get a Playbook solution in a month or two rather than 6-12 months of coding. At this point in time, the market on playbook is too small for us to invest 6-12 months of programming time to develop HanDBase for it. There are ways this situation can change (eg, they gain a bunch of marketshare, they allow NDK based Android apps to run in the player on playbook, etc), so I continue to watch closely!

[johnnyv_nl]

Hi Dave,

Thats fine, you must make a living also so i understand your reasons.

I also got a android version from handbase so i will continue to use that and who knows...one day....

Thanks, John

[Ajacorn]

Does this mean hanbase will work on the playbook

[pjk]

Re: porting from Android, I believe RIM has made quite a few improvements in their development environment these days, and is among other things offering developers who do not make $10,000 in the first year of their app's availability in the Blackberry App World (soon being rebranded Blackberry World) to make up the difference.

Here's a page I found that refers to porting from Android NDK:

http://developer.blackberry.com/native/ ... d_ndk.html

Details on the $10,000 challenge:

https://developer.blackberry.com/builtf ... ommitment/

[dhaupert]

Hi there,

Thanks for sending those links, I hadn't seen them before and it was good information. Unfortunately, while these open up Android Java only apps to run on BB10 (phones and playbook eventually) it still is the same situation described above for our app. They offer 4 different methods for development:

1. HTML5 - web apps.
2. Adobe AIR - not native c/C++
3. Android Player - lets us recompile existing Android apps but not if they use the Android NDK which has the C/C++ code as libraries (which HanDBase does).
4. Native SDK - lets you write native C/C++ applications for Blackberry (at last) but doesn't include any sort of UI - this is designed for games and such that create their own UI within the game, and it supports the OpenGL languages game devs use to design the game and UI both. Not really meant for productivity apps.

What we need is a combination of 3 and 4- let us use the Android UI but make calls to the Native SDK to build our database libraries and call them from the Android player. I have emailed my contact at RIM and am seeing if there is some way this could be done- they are so close to being able to support this here but missing a key ingredient! I made a suggestion of a way they can do this without making it hard on themselves or less secure. I think it's a perfect workaround but it will need them to support/add one key thing. I will keep you posted on the response if I get one!

[pjk]

Really great to see you are still open to the next Blackberry platform, Dave.

As you may recall I was a PalmOS user, I still think there were things about that platform that are superior to what is available these days, but they shot themselves in the foot by letting its development languish. (And I still carry a Treo around with me every day because I never got around to migrating all my SplashID and Jfile databases to my Blackberry. Jfile is of course dead and the BBOS version of HanDbase never excited me due to the limitations on that platform version. Though I finally did buy a license during your FB promotion, anyway.

Now I'm really looking forward to BB10, and momentum has been building for it - ie RIMM stock is up to $12.66 today, highest it's been since May.

As far as alternatives, I tried WebOS almost the day it came out, decided it wasn't fully baked yet, returned that device shortly after, and now the platform's dead. I have an Android tablet which is fun to play around with but I can't see myself ever having any full-time Google-based device, especially a phone, because I really despise their incessant search for personal data to suck into their giant datawarehouse for the purpose of monetizing it. And never really wanted to jump on the iOS bandwagon for various reasons, despite having owned a couple of Macs.

So in short, I'm looking forward to the BB10 release and quite possibly may purchase one of the new devices shortly after it becomes available - would be great if I could finally move all my old databases off my Treo and stop having to carry that around with me every day.

Edit: In other news, the BB10 SDK goes gold today: http://allthingsd.com/20121211/rims-blackberry-10-sdk-goes-gold/

[dhaupert]

Hi there,

Thanks for your post! It is funny how different opinions are these days on the various platforms. For example, some people can't see syncing to the cloud for privacy reasons, while others think it should be a key feature in any app. Some people like that most apps on Google are free and open, while others can't stand all the privacy and vulnerabilities and the heavy use of ads. And while some iOS users are happy to pay for software, still others want it to be priced at 99 cents or less, and many dislike their heavy handedness of their store. In the case of RIM, they are coming from behind at this point and seem to be attacking many of these issues with their latest efforts. But people are already complaining about the disjunct ways of developing apps and how some apps will look like Android apps, some will look completely different, and none of the Java based existing BB apps will exist at all unless rewritten.

I love that there is a variety to choose from in the market right now, something for nearly every preference and opinion out there!

I will let you know when and if I hear back from my contact and if there is ever an option for me. My guess will be that we won't be there at launch but maybe they will add a compatibility layer like I proposed to make it possible for apps like ours to be ported easily!

[pjk]

As someone who has been doing IT consulting for over 20 years now, I certainly have a huge amount of skepticism for this "cloud" trend, not just for privacy reasons but also for data safety/reliability reasons. It's not like all these cloud providers are SAS70 certified or something. And even with the paid services, I really don't care if they have a fancy SLA that promises to rebate me $7.79 in service charges for a few hours of downtime when during that downtime they also lost (for example) intellectual property that could be worth millions in some cases.

The average selling price of a Blackberry app is significantly higher than the other major smartphone platforms because Blackberry users tend to use the devices to get things done, not as playthings, and also probably because there are not 20 or 200 competitors for every app. I have a variety of free Android apps (in fact, all my Android apps are free because up until now I've not wanted to link my purchasing data into the "Googleplex"), but I would gladly pay significant money for them in most cases, especially the non-game apps.

I understand RIM's predicament re: trying to compete in the "numbers race" with platforms that claim 400,000 or 800,000 apps - I think it was a very smart move on their part to build an Android VM/player into the platform to jumpstart that, but yep it's not a surprise that that also creates some inconsistencies in app presentation. I'm personally pretty excited about the underlying QNX foundation of BB10 - this gives RIM a huge potential advantage not only in a proven platform that is embedded in some of the most mission-critical devices in the world (Nuclear power plant control, Space Shuttle, International Space Station, medical equipment, military equipment, world's most powerful and sophisticated IP routers, automobile control systems, etc etc.) but also because this could potentially mean Blackberry integration with any of those product categories going forward.

Here's an example of a medical device built on QNX, which can use the BB Playbook as a remote display device:

http://onqpl.blogspot.com/2011/02/first ... rence.html

That's a very interesting blog by the way - try clicking on some of the category links like "Safety Critical" and "Mission Critical" - interesting examples of what QNX is built into these days.