Cracking Berries, Windows, and Necks

by Jack

February 23, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Tagged: ,

I’m ramping up on both Android and Berry development for SIN. It’s pretty horrible.

First, the Android emulator takes effing forever to start. At first I thought my Spotlight hangs were back. But, no, Usenet sez, no — the pithiest answer:

continue waiting !

Apparently it’s faster on Linux and faster still if you tell it to emulate a smaller memory card. It’s taken a half-hour so far. WTF is Google doing!?

So, that’s pretty terrible. Also, Berries don’t have an OSX development environment — just Windows — so I’m forced to work through the Linux hacks for doing Berry dev on unix-like systems.

If you’re not keeping track, that means I, and other mobile developers, need three machines:

  1. MacBook for iPhone/iPad
  2. Windows for Windows Mobile/Blackberry
  3. Linux for Android/Blackberry

Even with the new tax credit that’s a lot of hardware. I can get around lots of this with some virtual machines, but what if I want to hire a designer or artist? Are they just out of luck until I can load them up with software, laptops, or rent physical office space? Gross.

All-in, I’d almost rather stay an Apple-only shop because of this, but I’m pushing through because I am on the scent of a Berry contract, and it would be nice to be able to pitch Android as well.

Windows Mobile can burn in the fires of Hades. Do any phones actually use that platform?

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  1. Jared

    on February 23, 2010 at 6:30 pm

    At least Apple has a good business reason for preventing development on Windows and Linux – although personally I think it’s evil. What’s RIM and Google’s excuse? Incompetence? Laziness?

    I read somewhere that “Windows Phone 7″ was probably Microsoft’s last charge in the mobile OS market.

  2. Jack

    on February 23, 2010 at 7:33 pm

    I’m discontinuing Android development during SIN’s work day because the emu is fux0red — a totally ridiculous waste of time. I’m very disappointed in Google.

    I’m happy to hack berries for a while, because I’m on the trail of some cash and because of the huge number of installed devices. The developer I’m working with would like RIM to open source the whole tool-chain (which Android has, I think, done — make of that what you will).

    @Jared: You’re very crotchety these days. :)