Archgrove

I’ve exchanged a few e-mails with Shawn Burke, who’s writing the “iPhone SDK vs. Windows Phone 7 Series SDK Challenge” series on his blog (which I highly recommend you read). Those reading my previous posts will know I’ve taken him to task for a few of his comments concerning the “number of lines” comparison between the iPhone and WP7. I just want to clarify a couple of my comments – not at his request, just to set the record straight.

I mentioned that Expression Blend is not a free product, but he’s mentions that “A basic version of the tooling for WP7 (including Blend) will always be free”, which is good news – the XAML designer in Visual Studio frankly sucks, and having to pay for a UI designer would be unwelcome. The main point of our brief exchange has been the (lack of) quality of Apple’s documentation, which I entirely agree with. The Interface Builder techniques I used in my implementations are not widely known, being documented in an obscure corner of the IB Manual, and it’s understandable that someone just arriving on the platform would think they didn’t exist. It’s also undeniably true that the iPhone tutorials are more complex than they need be to achieve the target application.

To clarify my opinion on this, I believe the tutorials are not going for the “ideal” MoveMe application – they’re covering a gamut of techniques people will need whilst developing for iPhone. Is the pacing of the tutorials quite right? Would a more “drag and drop” IB approach in the first few be preferable? I don’t know. Given the number of applications in the App Store, it certainly seems most people are getting to grips with iPhone development. Though given the quality of most of them, it’s fair to say there’s scope for improvement.