This may sounds like heresy, but would it really matter if Java
apps could run on the iPhone? It's not like a swing/swt/awt
application would be able to transparently integrate with the multi-
touch screen. I'd love to get that kind of smooth scrolling in my
desktop swing application, never-mind on a wafer thin handheld
device! I think Steve J's head would explode if he saw the average
swing app running on this beautiful device.
The average swing app maybe. But did you have a look at aerith? It's
just a demo, but it shows what you can do with good Swing programming.
I assume the iPhone demands a specialized GUI library that would
have to be native in order to get the kind of performance and
graphics quality that we saw on Tuesday. Not to mention that a
desktop java app can suck up large amounts of memory and you never
know it because the VM takes care of it, but on a phone with java
running a VM context switch would be downright painful.
Maybe, it depends on the real specs of the iPhone, that we don't
know. If J2SE is still to heavy, J2ME would be ok (BTW, in the latest
Swing the components are native). For instance, Google Maps for
mobile is made in J2ME and runs fine on my Treo, which is not a
monster of CPU power - I expect the iPhone is much more powerful.
Maybe we should focus on lobbying for *any* kind of development kit
for the iPhone. Java would be nice, but unless Apple also comes up
with an API for the multi-touch smooth scrolling graphics (thus
making it very platform specific and negating the primary benefit
of java) then we might as well all polish up our Cocoa skills (not
such a bad thing).
I asked for both things (openness in general would interest me as a
user, Java as developer).
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