Category Archives: development

apple, development, professional, software development

Apple iPad ascendant in business computing

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Think Apple’s iPad is a consumer platform? Think again. I’m at the Cloudforce conference in London; and the level of iPad visibility has been striking. I’m not talking about attendees clutching the devices, though there are some. Rather, it’s the number of mentions and actual usage examples that are in the presentations. Before the keynote, Peter Coffee from Salesforce.com was using an iPad for interview notes, using it like a pad of paper. Next, we had demos of Salesforce.com’s new Chatter for mobile running on the iPad. Next, a representative from case study Bausch+Lomb mentioned that his company has just deployed 700 iPads to its sales force.

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All business use cases, and all the more impressive given that they are incidental to the theme of the event.

Personally I have mixed feelings about this development. I’ve been a fan of the tablet format for years; here’s an article from 2003 (with apologies for the dated layout) in which I enthuse about an early Acer tablet. Some of the features for which the iPad is praised, like the ease of sharing what’s on the screen with others, are things I’ve long taken advantage of with Windows tablets.

The iPad is succeeding where Windows tablets mostly failed, thanks to its better design, lighter weight, longer battery life, and lower price. That’s welcome to me since I like the format, but the locked-in nature of the platform alarms me. Apple to be the single pipe for all public software deployments? No Flash, Silverlight, Java, or any runtime or other enabling software which Apple chooses not to approve?

This is merely an observation though – what counts is that users are adopting the device and enjoying what it offers them, in business as well as for personal use.

Now that Apple has shown how to make the tablet concept work, others are climbing on board, mostly with Android devices. The next point of interest is whether these also succeed; and even whether Microsoft can clamber back into the market either with a new wave of Windows devices, or more plausibly with the Windows Phone 7 OS (though the company claims not to be contemplating this).

For the moment though, broad reach deployment must include either an HTML version of your app, or native iOS.

.net, adobe, development, flash, internet, microsoft, professional, silverlight, software development, visual studio, web authoring, windows, windows 7

Silverlight versus HTML, Flash – Microsoft defends its role

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Microsoft’s Brad Becker, Director of Product Management for Developer Platforms, has defended the role of Silverlight in the HTML 5 era. Arguing that it is natural for HTML to acquire some of the features previously provided by plug-ins – “because some of these features are so pervasive on the web that they are seen by users as fundamentally expected capabilities” – he goes on to identify three areas where Silverlight remains necessary. These are “premium” multimedia which merges video with application elements such as conferencing, picture in picture, DRM, analytics; consumers apps and games; and finally business/enterprise apps.

It is the last of these which interests me most. Becker’s statements come soon after the preview of Visual Studio LightSwitch, which is solely designed for data-driven business applications. Taking the two together, and bearing in mind that apps may run on the desktop as well as in browser, Silverlight is now encroaching on the territory which used to belong to Windows applications. With LightSwitch in particular, Microsoft is encouraging developers who might previously have built an app in Access or Visual Basic to consider Silverlight instead.

Why? Isn’t Microsoft better off if developers stick to Windows-only applications?

In one sense it is, as it gets the Windows lock-in – and yes, this is effective. I’m aware of businesses who are tied to Windows because of apps that they use, who might otherwise consider Macs for all or some of their business desktops. On the other hand, even Microsoft can see the direction in which we are travelling – cloud, mobile, diverse clients – and that Silverlight fits better with this model than Windows-only desktop clients.

Another consideration is that setup and deployment issues remain a pain-point for Windows apps. One issue is when it goes wrong, and Windows requires skilled surgery to get some app installed and working. Another issue is the constant energy drain of getting new computers and having to provision them with the apps you need. Microsoft has improved this no end for larger organisations, with standard system images and centralised application deployment, but Silverlight is still a welcome simplification; provided that the runtime is installed, it is pretty much the web model – just navigate to the URL and the app is there, right-click if you want to run on the desktop.

If Microsoft can also establish Windows Phone 7, which uses Silverlight as the runtime for custom apps, the platform then extends to mobile as well as desktop and browser.

The downside is that Silverlight apps have fewer capabilities than native Windows apps. Printing is tricky, for example, though Becker refers to “Virtualized printing” and I am not sure what exactly he means. He also highlights COM automation and group policy management, features that only work on Windows and which undermine Silverlight’s cross-platform promise. That said, via COM automation Silverlight has full access to the local machine giving developers a way of overcoming any limitations if they are willing to abandon cross-platform and browser-hosted deployment.

A winning strategy? Well, at least it is one that makes sense in the cloud era. On the other hand, Microsoft faces substantial difficulties in establishing Silverlight as a mainstream development platform. One is that Adobe was there first with Flash, which has a more widely deployed runtime, works on Android and soon other mobile devices, and is supported by the advanced design tools in Creative Suite. Another is the Apple factor, the popular iPhone and iPad devices which are a spear through the heart of cross-platform runtimes like Silverlight and Flash.

Finally, even within the Microsoft development community Silverlight is a hard sell for many developers. Some us recall how hard the company had to work to persuade Visual Basic 6 developers to move to .NET. The reason was not just stubborn individuals who dislike change – though there was certainly some of that – but also existing investment in code that could not easily be migrated. Both factors also apply to Silverlight. Further, it is a constrained platform, which means developers have to live with certain limitations. It is also managed code only, whereas some of the best developers for both desktop and mobile apps work in C/C++.

I suspect there is division even within Microsoft with regard to Silverlight. Clearly it has wide support and is considered a strategic area of development. At the same time, it is not helpful to the Windows team who will want to see apps that take advantage of new features in Windows 7 and beyond.

Yesterday Windows Phone 7 was released to manufacturing, which means the software is done. Another piece of the Silverlight platform is in place; and I guess over the next year or two we will see the extent to which Microsoft can make it a success.

.net, development, microsoft, professional, silverlight, software development, visual studio, web authoring

Visual Studio LightSwitch – model-driven architecture for the mainstream?

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I had a chat with Jay Schmelzer and  Doug Seven from the Visual Studio LightSwitch team. I asked about the release date – no news yet.

What else? Well, Schmelzer and Seven had read my earlier blog post so we discussed some of the things I speculated about. Windows Phone 7? Won’t be in the first release, they said, but maybe later.

What about generating other application types from the same model? Doug Seven comments:

The way we’ve architected LightSwitch does not preclude us from making changes .. it’s not currently on the plan to have different output formats, but if demand were high it’s feasible in the future.

I find this interesting, particularly given that the future of the business client is not clear right now. The popularity of Apple’s iPad and iPhone is a real and increasing deployment problem, for example. No Flash, no Silverlight, no Java, only HTML or native apps. The idea of simply selecting a different output format is compelling, especially when you put it together with the fast JIT-compiled JavaScript in modern web browsers. Of course support for multiple targets has long been the goal of model-driven architecture (remember PIM,PSM and PDM?) ; but in practice the concept of a cross-platform runtime has proved more workable.

There’s no sign of this in the product yet though, so it is idle speculation. There is another possible approach though, which is to build a LightSwitch application, and then build an alternative client, say in ASP.NET, that uses the same WCF RIA Services. Since Visual Studio is extensible, it will be fun to see if add-ins appear that exploit these possibilities.

I also asked about Mac support. It was as I expected – the team is firmly Windows-centric, despite Silverlight’s cross-platform capability. Schmelzer was under the impression that Silverlight on a Mac only works within the browser, though he added “I could be wrong”.

In fact, Silverlight out of browser already works on a Mac; the piece that doesn’t work is COM interop, which is not essential to LightSwitch other than for export to Excel. It should not be difficult to run a LightSwitch app out-of-browser on a Mac, just right-click a browser-hosted app and choose Install onto this computer, but Microsoft is marketing it as a tool for Windows desktop apps, or Web apps for any other client where Silverlight runs.

Finally I asked whether the making of LightSwitch had influenced the features of Silverlight or WCF RIA Services themselves. Apparently it did:

There are quite a few aspects of both Silveright 4 and RIA services that are in those products because we were building on them. We uncovered things that we needed to make it easier to build a business application with those technologies. We put quite a few changes into the Silverlight data grid.

said Schmelzer, who also mentioned performance optimizations for WCF RIA Services, especially with larger data sets, some of which will come in a future service pack. I think this is encouraging for those intending to use Silverlight for business applications.

There are many facets to LightSwitch. As a new low-end edition of Visual Studio it is not that interesting. As an effort to establish Silverlight as a business application platform, it may be significant. As an attempt to bring model-driven architecture to the mainstream, it is fascinating.

The caveat (and it is a big one) is that Microsoft’s track-record on modelling in Visual Studio is to embrace in one release and extinguish in the next. The company’s track-record on cross-platform is even worse. On balance it is unlikely that LightSwitch will fulfil its potential; but you never know.

adobe, apple, development, professional, software development

Enterprise app development on Apple iPhone and iPad

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Apple’s iPhone is still perceived as primarily marketed to individuals rather than corporates. However, I was interested to see how much Apple is doing to attract corporate developers. First, Apple now supports some basic enterprise-friendly features, such as Microsoft Exchange (with a few caveats), VPN, remote wipe, and the ability to lock down iTunes to some extent. Without these capabilities, the devices would not be acceptable in many environments, making it pointless to consider them for custom applications.

Unfortunately iTunes is still needed for activation, deploying software updates, and installing applications. It is silly that Apple requires business users to install a music library to use its phone, I guess reflecting the device’s history as a music player. It is also a somewhat intrusive application especially on Windows.

If you then want to develop internal applications, you sign up for the iPhone Developer Enterprise Program. At $299 per year this is more expensive than the more general equivalent, but no big deal. Then you have to get a digital certificate from Apple. Next, create one or more “provisioning profiles” that install onto the device and authorize it to run your applications. Applications you create must be signed with your digital certificate. Finally, you can add the signed applications to an iTunes library, and users can then drag them to their iPhone or iPad. It will only run on devices that have the matching provisioning profile installed. Organisations can also revoke applications by revoking the identity used to sign the provisioning profile.

As Adobe pointed out to me, since these apps do not go through Apple’s approval process, there is nothing to stop corporate developers using the Flash Packager for iPhone that is available in Creative Suite 5.

There is more detail on Apple’s iPhone in Business page.

development, professional, software development

Don Syme on F#

I’ve posted a lengthy interview with Don Syme, designer of Microsoft’s functional programming language F#. It covers:

  • The genesis of F#
  • Why it is in Visual Studio 2010
  • How it differs from other ML languages
  • Who should use it
  • What it brings to parallel and asynchronous programming
  • Unit testing F#
  • Future plans for F#
  • Book recommendations

One of the questions is: if I’m a C# or C++ developer, what practical, business-benefit reason is there to look at F#? Worth a read if you’ve wondered about that.