Wow, I can do exactly that with XCode using the 'WebKit application' template, in just under 2 minutes. I'm sure it's equally trivial using the WP7 SDK.
Unless there's something missing from the article and you can actually do something halfway interesting with this "Application Wizard" thing, this is all pretty sad for Symbian.
Surely this will populate the Ovi store. Populate it with millions of crappy RSS readers for 1 specific website, exactly the kind of 'applications' Apple is now refusing in the App store because there's already ways to get to that content: a web browser or one of the many dedicated RSS reader applications.
How is this sad? People do not have to download these apps if they do not want to, and Ovi just needs to make them sortable easily. Like a "simple rss apps" category.
Why does this imply either or. The way I see it, this is just an additional category. It does not in any way mean that people will not write apps for Symbian, and that they have to do this to make the numbers look good.
@drange well that was a nice little twirl. But quite the contrary, ameego, the Ovi store doesn't need this and has plenty of quote-on-quote real developers making "real" apps. These are just for lazies who don't wanna code in Carbide/Python and just wanna get their little app to market. Also, Qt and ^3 are already available for the developers to work with. You should check them out if you still believe that the Ovi store is riding on this wizard.
@JFH Personally, I see this as an attempt to attract people to your development platform that don't know the first thing about programming, and have them click together millions of crap apps. Which inflates the number of applications in your store, deflates the average quality of them. If your platform has momentum and developers are willing to develop for it, you'd rather not need cut & paste apps at all.
But maybe I am wrong and the Ovi store is chock-full of great, high quality apps, I wouldn't know since I don't have a Symbian phone (I had one a few months ago, a Nokia 5800, and back then the Ovi store was beyond crap, millions of ringtones and wallpapers but no useful applications at all). But if that's the case I don't see how this is news.
Well I did take a look at the Android market, and it really is not that much better to be honest.
Look, I am not saying that there a million great games in Ovi yet. I am just pointing out that this is not the way they are trying to get developers interested, this is a service to get businesses onboard that otherwise would not have made an app. On any platform.
That does not detract at all from the fact that they are doing everything they can, to make it easier for developers (like you?) to create better apps. With the SDK & WRT they are putting real effort into it.
@JFH Fair enough. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Symbian, I've always quite liked it actually. Even went as far as taking a peek at the developer docs with an idea I had for an app. But to be honest, the development environment and API's didn't appear particularly attractive to me so I went for iPhone OS in the end. Which is one of the reasons the Ovi store doesn't get as much attention, even though there's so many phones running symbian.
Considering that the Apple AppStore's much bloated number comes from ranks of Fart applications and HDD crash simulators, I think RSS type apps is probably a much more useful category of "non-real apps" for bloating up one's AppStore app count. :-/
@drange What APIs didn't "attract" you? I'm interested to hear this one...
I also think you fail to realize you almost don't even need an SDK for a majority of Symbian development. Just use Qt, which binds to various APIs on various OSes. It takes out the hard work, yet still works with other native code.
@christexaport I don't have any particular examples, I was new to mobile development and it just occurred to me that I could do a lot more with iPhone OS with less hassle. For example I wanted to do some graphics effects and while iPhone OS had all I needed for that available along with sensible docs and examples. Browsing the Symbian SDK and docs made me go 'meh' while browsing the iPhone OS docs made me go 'hey that's nifty and easy'. I also didn't like the awkward rules for getting your app approved and signed if you wanted access to certain parts of the hardware. All in all a lot of things seemed out of place and a little messy even.
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Wow, I can do exactly that with XCode using the 'WebKit application' template, in just under 2 minutes. I'm sure it's equally trivial using the WP7 SDK.
Unless there's something missing from the article and you can actually do something halfway interesting with this "Application Wizard" thing, this is all pretty sad for Symbian.
Surely this will populate the Ovi store. Populate it with millions of crappy RSS readers for 1 specific website, exactly the kind of 'applications' Apple is now refusing in the App store because there's already ways to get to that content: a web browser or one of the many dedicated RSS reader applications.
@drange
How is this sad? People do not have to download these apps if they do not want to, and Ovi just needs to make them sortable easily. Like a "simple rss apps" category.
@JFH
It's sad that the Ovi store needs crap like this because there are no real developers wanting to write real applications for it.
@drange
Why does this imply either or. The way I see it, this is just an additional category. It does not in any way mean that people will not write apps for Symbian, and that they have to do this to make the numbers look good.
@drange well that was a nice little twirl. But quite the contrary, ameego, the Ovi store doesn't need this and has plenty of quote-on-quote real developers making "real" apps. These are just for lazies who don't wanna code in Carbide/Python and just wanna get their little app to market. Also, Qt and ^3 are already available for the developers to work with. You should check them out if you still believe that the Ovi store is riding on this wizard.
@JFH
Personally, I see this as an attempt to attract people to your development platform that don't know the first thing about programming, and have them click together millions of crap apps. Which inflates the number of applications in your store, deflates the average quality of them. If your platform has momentum and developers are willing to develop for it, you'd rather not need cut & paste apps at all.
But maybe I am wrong and the Ovi store is chock-full of great, high quality apps, I wouldn't know since I don't have a Symbian phone (I had one a few months ago, a Nokia 5800, and back then the Ovi store was beyond crap, millions of ringtones and wallpapers but no useful applications at all). But if that's the case I don't see how this is news.
@drange
Well I did take a look at the Android market, and it really is not that much better to be honest.
Look, I am not saying that there a million great games in Ovi yet. I am just pointing out that this is not the way they are trying to get developers interested, this is a service to get businesses onboard that otherwise would not have made an app. On any platform.
That does not detract at all from the fact that they are doing everything they can, to make it easier for developers (like you?) to create better apps. With the SDK & WRT they are putting real effort into it.
@JFH
Fair enough. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Symbian, I've always quite liked it actually. Even went as far as taking a peek at the developer docs with an idea I had for an app. But to be honest, the development environment and API's didn't appear particularly attractive to me so I went for iPhone OS in the end. Which is one of the reasons the Ovi store doesn't get as much attention, even though there's so many phones running symbian.
@drange
I see your point. Perhaps the newer tools would make your life easier there.
@drange
Considering that the Apple AppStore's much bloated number comes from ranks of Fart applications and HDD crash simulators, I think RSS type apps is probably a much more useful category of "non-real apps" for bloating up one's AppStore app count. :-/
@naashak
Well, personally, I'd think everyone would be better off if you had neither. No fart apps, and no glorified RSS readers.
@drange
What APIs didn't "attract" you? I'm interested to hear this one...
I also think you fail to realize you almost don't even need an SDK for a majority of Symbian development. Just use Qt, which binds to various APIs on various OSes. It takes out the hard work, yet still works with other native code.
@drange
Another tool, Flowella:
http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/7557c13f-0b43-4805-85ce-8414bfbade57/Flowella.html
Not for code, but again, Nokia goes out of their way to help development of apps. :)
@christexaport
I don't have any particular examples, I was new to mobile development and it just occurred to me that I could do a lot more with iPhone OS with less hassle. For example I wanted to do some graphics effects and while iPhone OS had all I needed for that available along with sensible docs and examples. Browsing the Symbian SDK and docs made me go 'meh' while browsing the iPhone OS docs made me go 'hey that's nifty and easy'. I also didn't like the awkward rules for getting your app approved and signed if you wanted access to certain parts of the hardware. All in all a lot of things seemed out of place and a little messy even.