A recent case study posted in Microsoft’s developer site tells how one programmer ported his iPhone app over to Windows Mobile. It’s the logical next step in the campaign to woo the hearts and minds of mobile developers away from Apple’s iPhone platform. Or more likely, it’s hoped to be the way of getting Windows developers now writing for iPhone to give Windows Mobile another try. “Dude, we’re over here! Remember us?”
Perhaps Redmond can hire sign wavers to stand on the corner with signs shaped like giant hands, the ones that you see pointing to condo developments that aren’t sellin. Microsoft could set up offices in vacant strip malls, so the sign wavers could direct developers to attend seminars on the benefits of Windows Mobile 6.5 and the forthcoming Windows Marketplace, which no doubt will be everything that Apple’s App Store ain’t.
Go for it!
The case study at Windows Mobile Developer Center tells how engineer Luke Thompson at Gripwire.com ported Amplitude to Windows Mobile. According to the report, he was able to get his app to run on a HTC Touch Pro phone with a build of Windows Mobile 6.5.
For the Macphiles and their Windows counterparts [do the latter love Windows or just hate the Mac, I wonder?], the discussion is all about “only” apps, or programs that only run on either iPhone OS or Windows Mobile. This is a very unrealistic and unbusinesslike attitude.
Of course, developers will seek new customers for their products on different platforms. While they will look at the market picture for earch OS and its hardware platforms as well as the business case for the respective stores, developers will have another important question to answer: How many IDEs will they and can they take on to produce small, low cost applications?
This will be a concern especially for small developers. Certainly, they will want Xcode for the iPhone — after all, this case study is about porting to Windows Mobile from the Apple platform. Apple is currently the mindshare leader. But what will be the next target? Windows Mobile? If you’re into Eclipse, Google Chrome? Or Maven 2 for Cydia packages.
A Mac developer in the mobile space who declined attribution predicted that “iPhone and Android will pretty much kill Windows Mobile in the next couple of years.”

Microsoft will be throwing plenty of dough around to prevent that. Speaking of which, I got a laugh at the hand Microsoft’s legal dept.

Here was a note in the case study:

Luke ran into an issue with hardware variations in the end device. The expectation was that the application would run on both devices; however, the latter Windows Mobile release on the HTC Touch Pro was a significant improvement over the HTC Touch Diamond 2. Most other issues with similar devices centered on the display and required that all layout and alignment code be changed to be device independent and take into consideration the screen resolution. Once this was set, the device displayed the layout accordingly. The expectation is that this should translate quite nicely between different devices.

My guess here is that this is called an “expectation” because there are so many Windows Mobile devices and makers that one or more might not be compatible. Could it be?

At the Windows Team Blog, Community Product Manager Constanze Roman makes some even wilder statements:

In his conclusion, Thompson credits the Windows Mobile Developer Community for helping him resolve the issues he encountered along the road, stating that: “The large development community, both within Microsoft and outside, and the various whitepapers, blogs, virtual labs, websites, and other online documentation, offered a wealth of information that provided direction and greatly facilitated problem resolution. The only real challenge was assuring total portability between screens, and that was assured by utilizing the concept of aspect ratios.”

I have no doubt saying that Luke Thompson never “said” that statement. These were the words of the corporate flak or hired writer who crafted the case study. No human being outside of a PR or Marketing department ever uses the word “utilizing.” Or “wealth of information.” Or “greatly facilitated.”

I found two actual quotes from Thompson in the case study. The first was about developing in C# over Objective C.

“What I’m finding is that it’s harder to mess up with C# than in Objective-C, which is used for iPhone application development. This makes any extra effort needed to customize the classes I want worthwhile,” commented Luke Thompson, Gripwire software engineer porting the Amplitude application.

Of course, he’s more familiar with C#.

The second was about the IDE interface. He likes Visual Studio and said its integration with the interface tools was better than the Apple Xcode setup.

Luke commented, “The ease and speed of development was illustrated by putting together four different interface screens simultaneously. With Apple, this activity is really jumbled and you need to jump between numerous applications.”

Yahoo has been busy. Last week, it announced a new customizable home page you can personalize by adding favorite Yahoo services and social-networking modules. On Tuesday, Yahoo unveiled a new iPhone-optimized design for the iPhone's Safari browser that invites you to sync the modules between the PC and your iPhone.
Here's how it works on the desktop. When you navigate to Yahoo.com from your browser, you'll be able to click a link at the top of the page to try out the redesigned home page. You'll then move to m.www.yahoo.com (which is distinct from m.yahoo.com on the desktop). From there, you'll see a much sparser design that is flanked on the left by a list of modules--Favorites--that you can add and activate. These include Yahoo finance, eBay, Facebook, MySpace, Movies, Maps, Messenger, Weather, and so on. Hovering over the module displays a summary and some points for interaction. Clicking more deeply may short-cut you to a new Yahoo page.
You'll be able to sync changes to these favorites on the iPhone's newly optimized site, and vice versa. The second of three tabs on m.yahoo.com from iPhone's Safari (it redirects to new.m.yahoo.com) is where your preferred news categories and social networks manifest on the Web app. After logging in, you'll be able to see, edit, and add new favorites.
In addition to acquiring syncing smarts, Yahoo's mobile iPhone site has undergone a dramatic redesign. Once a richly populated, linear site, the new home page on iPhone hosts just three tabs--Today, which features headline news and a search field, My Favorites (described above), and All Sites, which provides shortcuts to a plethora of Yahoo services.
Interestingly, Yahoo Mobile the Web app is posed to at least temporarily cannibalize Yahoo Mobile the iPhone app, a richer native application that also endeavors to make accessible Yahoo's reams of services and information. While Yahoo's iPhone app also has a Favorites section (called My Interests on the app), it does not currently sync with the desktop Web app.
A Yahoo spokesperson told CNET that the PC-to-mobile sync functionality is planned for native iPhone app in the future.
Both Yahoo's new iPhone-optimized Web site and its new favorites-focused Web app operate now in the following 17 countries: U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, France, Spain, Italy, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina.

Comcast's new iPhone and iPod touch app allows subscribers to check and send e-mail, listen to their VoIP voicemails, check out TV listings, and more. It may not be of much use if you don't subscribe to those services, but hey, it works.

Comcast customers may have a love/hate relationship with their broadband service of choice, but the company has been making numerous efforts lately to expand its services in order to tip us a little more towards the "love" side. One of those expansions includes the recently-launched iPhone and iPod touch app aimed at customers who make use of all the company's services, including e-mail, VoIP, TV listings, and Comcast On Demand.
We were given the opportunity to play with the free Comcast Mobile app with all of the services enabled in order to test things out. While it may not be enough reason for someone to start subscribing to Comcast, it's a handy app to have if you're already a user of these services.

From the main screen (after you log in with your Comcast username and password), you can access your Comcast Inbox, your Address Book, your Digital Voice info, the TV listings, and Comcast's On Demand content. The Inbox not only displays your Comcast e-mail, it also shows how many voicemails you might have waiting in your VoIP box. In terms of an e-mail client, it's pretty run-of-the-mill, comparable to Gmail's iPhone interface, but tapping on your voicemails will play it right through the iPhone or iPod touch's speakers, which is cool.

The Address Book's neat feature is that you can import your iPhone's contacts so that they are merged with your Comcast contacts. From here, you can search your contacts by name, and tapping on someone's e-mail address will bring up a new message in the Comcast Mobile e-mail interface.

Why you would want to do this instead of simply sending someone an e-mail through the iPhone's native Mail client is somewhat beyond me, but if you're married to the idea of keeping your Comcast e-mail completely separate from your iPhone, then this solution works decently enough.
Through the Digital Voice section, you can see all the same information you might see on your iPhone's calling interface—except through Comcast's VoIP service instead. Outgoing calls, missed calls, and voicemails are all displayed here, and you can even change your call forwarding settings right from within the app.

Finally, the TV stuff. "The Guide" allows you to navigate through the TV listings by searching or casually browsing—you can change times and days easily to see what's on and when.

Tap on a show to read the description of that episode, see a list of showtimes, add it to your favorites, or share it with friends. You can also set reminders for when the show is about to come on.

The downside, as far as we can tell, is that you can't actually program your Comcast DVR through the iPhone app (something we hear you can do with the DirecTV app, which is apparently "totally awesome" according to other Ars staff members). Is it really that great that I can look at the listings while I'm out and about? (Note: If this functionality is present somehow and we have just missed it, please let us know.)
Finally, the Comcast On Demand part of the app allows you to watch movie trailers and... that's pretty much it. Again, this feature is mildly cool—we guess—but it's not mindblowing and it's certainly not a feature that's going to sell us on subscribing to Comcast. Movie trailers can be seen all over the Internet, even from the iPhone. However, we suppose if you're already in the app and in the mood to check out some new movies, then this is a convenient place to do so.
Overall, the app is a handy companion to your already-existing Comcast services—assuming you actually subscribe to all those things. Most of us on staff don't, though, so many of the app's features are a bit of overkill for us. But hey, it's free. Go download it and give it a try.

The new Google Mobile App for iPhone makes it possible for you to do a Google web search using only your voice. Just hold the phone to your ear, wait for the beep, and say what you're looking for. That's it. Just talk. Once the App is on, you don't have to push any buttons to search. Check out the video below to watch engineer Mike LeBeau explain how this works.After you speak your query, Google Mobile App will return search results formatted for your iPhone.And if you're doing a local search, there's no need to specify where you are because Google Mobile App now has Search with My Location. Search for "movie showtimes" or "Mediterranean restaurant" and you'll automatically see results based on your current location. For this to work, Location Services must be enabled on your iPhone and you have to opt-in to let Google Mobile App use your location.To get the latest Google Mobile App for iPhone or iPod touch, go to the App Store and look for "Google Mobile App." Note that the voice search feature is currently available only in U.S. English and for the iPhone. Read more about other features of Google Mobile App.Watch this video to see what Googlers from Chicago, London, New York, and Mountain View are searching for. Then consider sharing your most interesting voice search query by submitting a video response.

Google’s just-released and much-publicized update to their Google Mobile iPhone app features some very clever interaction design for the voice search feature. There is an on-screen button you can tap to initiate a voice search manually, but, as illustrated in their example video, you can initiate a voice search just by lifting your iPhone to your ear.

In order to trigger this automatic voice prompt, you must:

1. Move the iPhone.
2. Trigger the proximity sensor next to the speaker at the top of the iPhone.

You need to do both, in that order. The voice prompt is never triggered by motion alone, nor by covering the proximity sensor without first having moved the phone. The only way it is triggered is by moving the phone and then triggering the proximity sensor. It’s very clever, and the resulting user experience is very nice.
But here’s the intrigue: There is no public API in the iPhone SDK for using the proximity sensor in this way.
As you might imagine considering the number of accelerometer-driven games in the App Store, there are plenty of public API calls to access data from the iPhone’s accelerometer. But the only thing apps can do with the proximity sensor is turn it on and off. When the proximity sensor is on, the screen turns off and stops accepting touch input when you cover the sensor (typically with your head, when holding the phone to your ear to, say, make a phone call, but you can just as easily trigger it by covering the sensor with your finger). By default, the proximity sensor is turned off, and the overwhelming majority of apps leave it that way.
If you’re a registered iPhone developer, you can read the relevant documentation for the proximitySensingEnabled property in the UIApplication Class Reference. An app can check the status of this property (is it on or off?), and can toggle it, but that’s it. After an app has turned the proximity sensor on, the app never finds out when or if it has actually been engaged. There is no way for an app to be notified when the proximity sensor has been triggered.
No way, that is, via the public APIs.
If you use something like the command-line strings utility to examine the UIKit framework, you can see that there’s an undocumented (and therefore private to Apple) method named proximityStateChanged. And if one were to strip the FairPlay DRM from the current Google Mobile application binary — which, of course, you wouldn’t do, because you’re not supposed to strip FairPlay DRM, but I’m just saying if one were to do this — a class dump of the application binary would show that Google Mobile does in fact implement proximityStateChanged.
So, (a) Google Mobile is using an undocumented API, and (b) to my knowledge, there is no way to duplicate the behavior of Google Mobile’s “just lift the phone to your ear to trigger the voice prompt” feature using only the public APIs in the iPhone SDK. Needless to say, using undocumented APIs violates the iPhone SDK Guidelines. A developer that plays by the rules cannot do what Google is doing.