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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>More chocolate bars are sold than desktop PCs and energy drinks
are a massively growing market.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>Perhaps Embarcadero should produce a version of Delphi that
supports chocolate bars and energy drinks?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>Seriously – sales figures of those devices you mention surely
reflect an increase in the use of devices as casual technology by consumers and
<i>supplemental</i> devices within businesses (with a higher churn because
desktop PC’s can be upgraded to stay current, where those other devices
become obsolete more quickly and can only be *<b>replaced</b>* in order to
remain current – that’s why the manufacturers love them so!).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>Now certainly it would be nice if Delphi could be used to deliver
applications into that supplemental space, except that the money that consumers
in particular are then prepared to pay for applications on those devices is
such that Delphi would have to be a LOT cheaper, if not FREE for it to be
viable to target that market. Don’t make the “even 1% of
billions is worth it” mistake. My understanding is that it’s
a myth in practice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>And I don’t see how this affects the use of computers in
business and the demand for the types of applications that Delphi has
successfully delivered to date, but which now need to evolve to the next (or
should I say *<b>current</b>*) generation of technology that is relevant to *<b>those</b>*
types of applications.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>And the danger is that if Delphi ceases to be relevant in that space
that it previously thrived in, I don’t think it will have long enough to
establish itself in those new spaces in order to survive the transition (especially
since there are already cheaper alternatives).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>Are you seriously suggesting that an iPod or similar is ever
going to replace the desktop PC in the accounts department? CAD?
Chem-informatics? Data processing? DTP?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>These technologies will supplement that technology, not replace
it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>Microsoft left an open goal in the WINDOWS native code
development market. It looked like Embarcadero were finally going to capitalize
on that opportunity missed by Borland except now it seems they were heading
toward their OWN goal the whole time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
<div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0cm 0cm 0cm'>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>
delphi-bounces@delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces@delphi.org.nz] <b>On Behalf
Of </b>John Bird<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, 15 October 2009 4:46 p.m.<br>
<b>To:</b> NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [DUG] Cross platform musings<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>The reason I see a decreasing use of desktops (and
Windows) is multiple:</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>1 - Most pcs are getting smaller. The fastest growing areas
of sales are in laptops and netbooks these days. As these get smaller and
more powerful more and more users find they do not need anything more, and they
are now comparable in price.</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>2 - Even faster growing is mobiles. The highest customer
satisfactions ratings I read recently are from those with (1) iPhones and (2)
Android phones.</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>Once serious computers become portable then there are a whole new
world of issues to solve to do with screen layout, mutlitasking or single
tasking, input devices, battery life, memory size etc. Windows and
other desktop OS are not really well suited for that transition, especially
Windows as it is for current state of the art desktops and laptops, not really
suited to netbooks and low ppwer devices - it needs mainly Mains power or heavy
batteries for hot processors and large amounts of memory. However
with the iPhone SDK (which must have a lot of OSX ancestry in it as it
runs on a flavour of OSX) and Android (which must have a good ancestry in linux
which it is a version of) - these are environments to target from the beginning.
not sure about Windows mobile, but it does not seem to get the best press as it
is not really from Windows ancestry, it seems to be a specially tailored
and highly limited OS of its own designed to look like Windows although it
is not. iPhone and Android are at least built on the unix or linux
kernels for which there are very lean and efficient versions out there
(eg running in a few MB of memory) - such as the Carnegie-Mellon version
kernel. I read on one recent linux firmware device that was able to
boot into full running in about 0.5 seconds by optimising various things - eg
no compressed boot image and special drivers. I don't see much
chance of Windows being able to achieve that kind of performance although I
would like to be proved wrong.</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>3 - reliable internet connectivity means that many
grunty services can be off-loaded to heavy iron servers which could be Windows
or Unix or Sun or IBM or whatever - think of gmail, Google search, Google
maps, iTunes store, You-Tube, Hotmail, Yahoo and all online services
etc. This is the strong point of phones like the iPhone and Android
which do just this, and not through a phone company interface (read expensive)
but direct to the Internet (read cheap). A phone with a
reasonable OS that can do a RDC or VNC connection to a server has all the
advantages of the server while portable. It is in a sense a
return to thin client (but portable).</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>Embarcadero here is a prediction and I suggest you consider these
as a direction:</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>(a) an easy to learn language (pascal is that) with a cross
platform VCL that is reasonably able to write applications (with various
framework flavours and considerations) for Windows, OSX, linux but
more importantly into iPhone and Android would absolutely be the killer app
like Turbo pascal was.</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>The goal would be to produce a compiler/language that uses
the respective OS to render the standard controls - windows uses Comctl32.dll,
Apple and Linux etc must have their own, so there needs to be something that
drives the OS native graphics libraries and controls. That is not
relying on some added party framework like wine that may lag behind the state
of the art. Much better to tap into what the latest version of any
OS is capable of rendering. If VCLX on windows is inferior to VCL then
either people won't want to use it, or there would need to be some automated
tool to port code to VCLX (renaming component types etc) as a batch process to
produce the other OS flavours.</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>As far as I am concerned it would be fine for Embarcadero to say
we will only make VCLX portable within certain constraints, it may well be
less than the current VCL in some areas, but it does not have to be more than
VCL, as those who want easy portability may be happy to give up third party
components and win32 calls and live in well defined boundaries in order to
get code they can compile and run on various OS's. If some win32 calls
could be given some equivalents it would be neat, but this would be icing
on the cake.</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>(b) The other way to go would make a really easy way for a browser
to run any Delphi app, so it could be put on a web site. Now others
have pointed out that can be done via browsers that can call up some RDP client
or terminal services client. It is not easy yet however. I don't
know how one could do that, but there must be something possible. I
would certainly be paying close attention to whatever the Google OS is likely
to do, as I would imagine thats the sort of direction they would be thinking
too, some way to web enable any desktop applications via some RDC or VNC
connections into a browser or particularly the Chrome browser.</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>(c) make Delphi grunty to. 64 bit and 128 bit - why not go
to 128 or 256 bit compilers in one jump? ok so the processors to run it are not
there yet, well one can only dream eh? I would settle for int128 for now
(extension to int64).</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>Thinking beyond mobiles, the generation beyond them will be
smaller not bigger. Maybe there will be display glasses that can be
put on to get the advantage of a huge screen display just like we have
earphones these days rather than speakers. Maybe virtual keyboards -
projected onto a wooden desktop from a small projector. Likely it will
have a fast broadband online connection to ones home server where the data and
programs actually are.</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:black'>For Microsoft my prediction would be to bite the bullet, evaluate
the Windows kernel, and if it is inferior to the various linux and Unix ones
out there ditch it and put Win32 and ..Net and all the other API's over such a
kernel. Its been spectacularly successful for Apple to do that with
OSX, and the Windows development environment is particularly good</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>John<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <br>
I have also been through the same era and agree. They should
agressively pursue the cross-platform verison but make a decent job
of it this time.<br>
<br>
Eric<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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