#@ios

Hi, because a user on Pinterest has published my images on his profile, I have seen the need to publish the wallpaper that I have used for my blocking, which was done by my authority.

The context : Post PC Fragmentation is coming (@game of thrones) :

As I am saying since a long time, the post PC market is heading toward a big fragmentation this year. Indeed in my opinion (this is the short version), windows 8 is gonna to take a big chunk of this market by leveraging it's PC market already in place since many years, while android will continue to sell pushed by fans and carriers and finally iOS will keep it's 30% market share thanks to a customer satisfaction out of the roof.

It will be a nightmare for small business or indie developer to be able to be present on all those markets. Supporting three different language and three different source tree would be really bad and could slowdown your entire activity.

Choosing a language is probably the most important technical decision that a company can take. It's a matter of life and death.literally. Sadly lot of engineers just pick objectivec or java for android without even a second thought…. until they realize that they are stuck on only one OS ... 

Here come Mono!

At this point in time, there is only two alternative language/toolkit to create native app on iOS/Mac : mono (xamarin) and ruby-motion. For both alternative I went to meet-ups, participate on both forum and really study both language/toolkit.

and here my comparison analysis between mono and rubymotion :

■ Language : C# is java times 10! a real beauty. seriously. Simple and yet very powerful. On the other hand ruby for real development is poo-poo in my opinion (not really strong type, you guess variable type and so forth). While ruby is great for web development because you manipulate only few type, it do not have its place with a framework as complex as the iOS framework.

■ Framework : .net framework (FS,net,base framework …) on one side and no standard lib on the other. Rubymotion is not compatible with standard lib and GEM. Big plus for Mono.

■ Memory management : ARC (rubymotion) instead of GC (mono). Arc is a much better way to manage memory in my opinion.

■ ToolChains : MonoDevelop is really a great IDE and everything is flawless. For ruby it's third party and for now there is no contextual autocompletion, and I doubt it will come because the language is dynamic.

■ Interface builder : A slight advantage to mono because it's supported right out of the box, instead of a third party. 

■ Debugger and Instruments : No debugger in rubymotion, yet.With mono the debugger/instruments work insanely great so far.

■ Multi-platform between iOS and mac : Advantage to mono with a better sharing code between both.  

■ Multiplatform Android : Mono : Supported and many example in the google play. Ruby-motion from what I heard may support android one day.

■ Multiplatform WP7/8 : If Windows 8 is a success , you will be able to share 50% of your code and get to this market pretty fast.

■ Web : Ruby is slow but ruby on rails advantage make it good enough. But as ruby-motion is an incompatible fork of ruby, you will most likely not able to share your code. mono on the other hand work great with ASP. For example wikipedia.com run with mono.

■ using objectivec third party libs : Both can use a lib created in objectivec. A slight advantage for ruby-notion because there is less boilerplate code

■ mono third party lib used in objectivec : Ruby-motion shine there because it's not officially supported in mono. I hope that xamarin will work out a solution.

■ Exe size : MonoTouch/.net add 3.3 Mo to your app. that's mainly the size of the .net framework. it's not great, but once you see what it does you will welcome those 3.3 MO.

■ Exe performance : Both are compiled in assembly using LLVM like objectiveC. So you get more or less native speed.

■ Company future : Xamarin is a 40 people business and just got a VC funding. rubymotion is two persons.

■ Public Image and community : Mono is based on Microsoft technology and as a mac fan it could be disturbing … but as it's a pragmatic/business decision it should not interfere. What's reassuring is that lot of Xamarin employee come from the linux world and are mac fan. 

■ Sharing code between platform : Mono have many examples,tutorials,guide or real product that share more than 50% of the code between platform. Once you have a common language, the main difficulty is the underlying framework and culture in place for each OS. So this is a huge advantage and that's key in the upcoming fragmentation.

■ Native UI : Both use a bridge technology instead of creating their own UI framework ala java. So you do have to write specific UI code for each platform (iOS,mac,android …). that's the right way to go in multi-platform.

Conclusion :

if you plan to develop an app that include :

■  client-server communication ■  persistence layer (mysql) ■  Target multi-platform by sharing code (Logic,client-server, persistence)

The winner, in my opinion, is without any contest Mono from Xamarin! 

No matter what, considering the beauty of C# (never though that I will said about a Microsoft invention!), if you are like me and think that objectivec is the boilerplate master, you should give it a shot.

Also i am hoping that xamarin will move more toward multi-platform library (write once, work everywhere) for some key core technology (not the UI!) like : localization, CSS UI, core graphics API and so forth ... as it will continue to strengthen the mono leadership in multi-platform solution.

Yesterday morning (6:30 am) I went to the Los gatos Apple Store. As usual a lame counting entry but this year there was quite a good organization : they gave us  umbrellas and the staff was there to give some info. Cool and good experience.

I really thought that I was a about to buy a nice new iPad with great screen and mostly better. An incremental release, to wrap this up. Not a game changer. One hour and half later I started this new iPAD ….

I was blind now I see.

Obviously my prior opinion was based on severals reviews and the apple keynote, seen on my ... PC screen … well I do not blame them as they cannot make a great job at describing how great this screen is… And now that I am trying to write this blog post I feel the pain and frustration that most reviewer probably felt … how to make you understand how good it is without being able to show you ? 

Let's try by analogy : To me the new iPad 3 Retina Display is like :

- the first time I saw a HDTV compared to my tube TV. Yeah that impressive. - the first time I put on my contact lens, everything look bigger and more sharp. - Like a good bread compared to a Safeway bread. 

Bah I certainly didn't convince you ... Let's try something else ... By comparison :

My apple cinema display 27 inch at a standard distance look blurry and fuzzy compared to the iPad 3 screen. Seriously. I clean it, just to be sure!

ok I failed to convince you … well, stop reading this stupid blog on your crappy screen and Go in an applestore. you upset me now ;)

So I did some research in order to fully understand what was going on :

Actually PC monitors of a certain size tend to block around 100 ppi. By comparison The iPad 3 have 264 ppi and a resolution of 2048*1536. 

Side by side with an iPad 2, I am Really asking myself if I was not blind before. That big. You cannot go back ... Unless you still have to use a PC to develop for example.The only tradeoff that Apple had to make in order to support this screen is the weight :/

There is not a single screen in the world to my knowledge, that can match the resolution/PPI couple of the iPAD 3.

here some data that I gathered :

Screen/Resolution / PPI 

• iPad 3 9.7" 2048*1536 264 PPI • Thunderbolt Cinema Display 27" 2560*1440 109 PPI • iPad 2 9.7" 1024*768 132 • iMac 27" 2560*1440 109 PPI • Asus Transformer prime 10.1" 1280*800 149.5 PPI • Motorola XYBoard 10.1" 1280*800 160 PPI • HDTV 1080p 45" 52 PPI • PC LCD Screen 27" 1920*1200 87 PPI

FOLLOW UP : An independent Analysis Confirms iPad Display Really Is One Of The Best Ever Made

Despite that I still need some time to wrap my head around that, I already envision few consequences due to this amazing screen :

- Beforehand it was already great and more personal to surf/read on an iPAD than with a mouse on a PC. Now it's simply way better despite that some graph are not crisp. 

- iPad Apps have to support the retina display otherwise the apps look fuzzy and blurry. It will therefor increase the size of all apps even if you have an iPad 2. Size is limited on an iPAD and I envision that the iPAD 32GO is gonna to be the default choice for most people. increasing Apple revenue.

- I suspect that lot of websites will not support the retina display, increasing even more the native advantage over web-app and the app frenzy. 

- It will take time before all your iPad apps are retina display. Actually almost all developers, didn't know that you had to compile it with the new SDK. This is why since yesterday you are seeing lot of last minutes update of lot of your apps. Apple is doing the best it can and expediate all reviews but still …. Mine are not enabled yet and they look horrible :/ As I am close to a big version of my games, I am gonna to "double down" on this version and try to ship it as soon as I can. Submitting a version now could slower my next version ...

- OSX is gonna to be Retina Display (as the rumors suggest) and they will ship some new Cinema Display (and why not TV ? ) with huge resolution and PPI. - If Apple goes for a bigger screen in the iPhone 5 ala galaxy nexus (gorgeous screen) we could really have the best phone screen in the world. Yeah size matters ;)