Cupcake is on Again

Yahoo!!!

OFFICIAL: CUPCAKE IS GO!!!

From the Horse’s Mouth: Cupcake 1.5 Coming Out for Android

Finally T-Mobile, seriously:

http://forums.t-mobile.com/tmbl/board/message?board.id=Android_MR&thread.id=1

I Got The G1

Yesterday I got the T-Mobile G1. I’ll be putting it through its paces as I work to port Mides IDE to it. So far, so good, however ido have to say that I’m a little slower with the physical keyboard than I anticipated. I’ll be glad when the cupcake firmware comes out and I can use the virtual keyboard.

The apps so far are mostly good, the device is definitely quicker than the iPhone as far as raw hardware performance, but the navigation around the OS is a bit slower. Still, I’m excited to see what I can do with this SDK.

Overall I’d say that the philosophy of the device is different. The G1 and Android are definitely aiming to be a little computer in your pocket, while the iPhone is still an iPod first, which makes it more of an internet appliance than a computer. As such, it makes a direct comparison challenging at best.

The G1 is ugly, and Android is unpolished, but for a company that doesn’t make music players, it is pretty good. More importantly, it fits in better with my way of thinking, and I appreciate the freedom that Google and T-Mobile have given us. Hopefully it will continue to improve, but either way I am pretty happy with it. Hopefully Mides will turn out to be as good as it is in my head for the G1, and eventually the iPhone. Competition is a good thing.

Developing Mides for the G1

For the past few weeks I have been thinking about the limitations placed on my mobile ide Mides in the App store. I have been turning around and around the idea that I should write a version for Android that does some of the things that I really want for it to do, like have a real PHP parsing engine, have a ruby interpreter, etc…

I could put the time into doing it on the iPhone and then submit it to Apple to see what they say, but that could be a bunch of wasted effort, and even if they were to pass it one time, the next update may be rejected. My application is a niche application, so I am really not into it for the money, although it is nice. I think I could actually build a better version, a version that was more inline with what I had originally envisioned on Android.

I don’t think the G1 is better than the iPhone, or that the iPhone OS is inferior to Android in some way, it is just the policy of the AppStore keeps me afraid to try new things with my App, or that the effort could be wasted not because of a technical limitation, but because of a policy limitation, which I hate.

The biggest question now, since I have decided to port Mides to Android is whether to get a G1 developer unit or a straight up t-mobile G1. I think I’ll get the t-mobile unit since I am not rich, and since it is more inline with what my target audience is likely to use.

Boy, I’m not looking forward to having two phone bills, but I guess that is the cost of doing business.