iPadding around?

[Bernard Devlin]

Hi Sarah

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:33 AM, Sarah Reichelt
<sarah.reichelt at gmail.com> wrote:
>> As for Rev, far more important to get the basics working properly on all
>> three platforms than move into trying to support yet another, and one whose
>> market significance is doubtful.
>
> While I have no idea of the market for Rev and how it is divided among
> the platforms, I would suggest that there is far more commercial sense
> in expanding Rev to the iPhone/iPad market, perhaps at the expense of
> the Linux market.

I seem to remember an article in the RunRev newsletter around the
release of v2.9 where 41% of Rev developers rated Linux as an
important platform for Revolution.

AFAIK On-Rev runs on Linux.  Why is that I wonder?  It could run on
the "insanely great" OS X.  But I suspect the reason it doesn't is
that OS X hosted servers are just far too expensive (or far too slow)
for the service to be economical.  One plank of RunRev's strategy
could well be entirely dependent on Linux.

> So long as your app uses standard APIs (which would
> be RunRev's responsibility) and doesn't try to do anything too
> obviously against Apple's guide lines (which are agreed to in advance
> by all registered iPhone developers), then Apple gives you a fantastic
> marketing tool in the App store, as well as a standard platform where
> your apps run in their own sandbox and cannot be accused of
> interfering with other apps.

AFAIK that means no revbrowser in your app.  No loading of external
scripts (so no libraries unless they were built-in to a standalone as
custom properties and pulled out to be put in use), probably no
externals, maybe QT wouldn't even work inside an iPhone app.  Probably
no sqlite (as someone who recently had Rev screw itself royally trying
to work with a few thousand cards, it starts to look like any Rev app
running on an iPhone is going to be little more than a presentation
layer, in which case I have to wonder why not just go with a web app?
I'm sure you know far more about what will and will not be possible,
so look forward to learning more.

As someone with only a tangential interest in the iPhone, I have seen
that there are various developers who have had apps accepted by Apple,
then subsequently pulled.  It seems that removal can even be done
because another developer objects to your app being in the app store.
Whilst the world has been moving towards software freedom for more
than a decade, Apple is trying to go in reverse.  The irony is of
course that OS X would have been dead in the water without the freedom
provided by FreeBSD and so many userland tools that Apple also bundled
along with OS X.  Personally I think it's immoral to encourage Apple
in this direction.  It's because of what I saw happening with the
iPhone that I won't own an iPhone, and I won't buy another Mac.

> Talking in purely commercial terms, I think this would be a much more
> logical direction for RunRev than continuing to try to support Linux
> with all it's multiple varieties and it's general ethos for open
> source and mainly free software.

Those of use who have been waiting for (and paying for) parity between
Linux and OS X thank you for your support :-)

It seems odd to me that on the day after the iPad is announced you
would suggest that RunRev ditch further development of the Linux
version, when RunRev have already announced RevMobile which would
supports the iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Maemo.  It sounds like you
are not confident that RunRev can manage to produce a cross-platform
tool for more than two platforms.  Hey, the vast majority of people
use windows (which has much greater backwards compatibility than
Apple's OS), so why not just ditch OS X and concentrate on Windows?
Then you'd perhaps get an idea of how frustrated those of use wanting
feature parity in Linux feel.

> There are already 75 million iPhone
> users and that number will only increase with the iPad.

That is (trivially) true - some people will buy the iPad, but you're
implying it will be a success.  I was surprised that there was so much
negative reaction to the iPad.  Before it was announced there was a
lot of optimism.  Whether it was misplaced or not, the reaction I've
observed doesn't convince me that the iPad is going to be anything
like the success of the iPod or iPhone.  Maybe I've misunderstood your
remark :-)  Are you suggesting that the number of iPhone users will
increase because the iPad is such an obvious disappointment?

Quite frankly, the whole movement of RunRev into the plugin, on-rev,
revMobile areas fills me with dread.  There are long-standing admitted
bugs with Rev on all three current platforms.  Instead of fixing those
bugs, they are just branching out into more platforms, and inevitably
more bugs.  For deities' sake, there are admitted bugs with "visual
effect", exactly the kind of thing that would prove useful on a small
screen like a phone
(http://quality.runrev.com/qacenter/show_bug.cgi?id=7358).  That bug
hasn't even moved on to the pending pile in the 15 months since I
initially reported it.

We still don't even have a web plugin for Linux, and when I asked
there was no schedule for it to be released.

There are currently 1997 outstanding bugs (i.e. excluding
enhancements).  This time last year there were 1577 outstanding bugs.

Regards

Bernard