Apple SAP partnership, the right direction to move

I hope this applesa(a)p partnership is going to be as sweet as it sounds. Now that Hardware is going to be hardsell, the best approach is to go after services.

The desktop will be gone before we know and it will all be mobile.
The emphasis of this cooperation appears to be in the development of BI apps for the iPhones and iPads. According to this content Apple apps will use the SAP Hana Platform bankend for data and Apple will come up with appropriate SDK for building these apps that integrate the two company products. You will be hearing a lot about 'SAP Fiori for iOS' design language and the learning resource, 'SAP Academy for IOS'.

In all reality you can get away with apps for the tom-dick-harry kind to get their entertainment and satisfy their narcisstic leanings but to build apps that are enterprise worthy focused on security will be altogether different.

Read more here:
Apple/CISCO (Sept 2015): Business collaboration towards WebRTC

Apple/IBM (2014): Cloud, BigData and Business Analytics

Apple/Tesla (into the future): Siri(?), Infotainment(?), or iOT(?)

Vizable (app) from Tableau is FREE

This is a free app from Tableau meant for you, the iPad user to "see, touch and understand your data"
Simply put this is a data visualization app.

If you can touch, you can also pinch, swipe and drag to visualize your data. Sharing is no problem and take your curiosity to the next step.

Download this App from Tableau site here.
https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1039023889#

When you are getting Vizable app also get Tableau's Tableau Mobile version 9.1.2

Apple Live 2015

 Watching Apple Live event was only possible for these devices\versions:

• Live streaming uses Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) technology. HLS requires an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with Safari on iOS 7.0 or later
• a Mac with Safari 6.0.5 or later on OS X v10.8.5 or later, or
• a PC with Microsoft Edge on Windows 10.
• Streaming via Apple TV requires a second- or third-generation Apple TV with software 6.2 or later.

Microsoft Edge was able to play the streaming video from Apple site. Watched with interest at this Apple's special event. There were lots of things Apple showed off. There was the phones, the watch, the iPads and the Apple TV.

Read here for latest details as to what got better and what is new;
http://www.mobileworldlive.com/devices/news-devices/apple-gives-iphone-a-specs-bump-as-ipad-goes-large/

I only watched couple of minutes. Here are some stills from the streaming video on my Windows 10.

+ 

The Windows 10 Technical preview for Phones also runs Microsoft Edge. It still has lots of edges (no pun intended) like freezing up,  stopped videos etc but works most of the time OK. Needs switching off the phone the hard way and switch again to reset whatever that went wrong.

Here are some still captures on my Windows 10 Technical Preview for Phones:

Quo vadis? Cross-Platform App development - Part 1

There are lots and lots of Apps. In fact there are over a couple of million Apps including all of the major brands, Apple, Google, Blackberry, Microsoft with Apple at the top and Microsoft in the bottom. But this is a growing market. The variety is truly bewildering, different size devices; different operating systems(OS); different programming languages;  and different orientations.

This post is not very recent but you can see how the various mobile operating systems compare:
http://www.ibtimes.com/android-vs-ios-whats-most-popular-mobile-operating-system-your-country-1464892
The interactive image in the article really shows the popularity of a given OS/device among different geographical regions.

Windows Phone Apps is for example based on Microsoft's Window 7, 8, 8.1 OSs using .NET. With Windows OS and Visual Studio one can build Apps for all of Microsoft devices covering Phone, Tablet and Desktop. However Microsoft Windows Apps sans Html5/CSS/Javascript is OS specific. Even for apps built with Html5/CSS/Javascript the WinJS file is required (or recommended) in most cases.

Apple Apps can be used on both iPad and iPhone as long as certain files specific to each device profile is available, in general iPhone apps can be used on iPad but not the other way. However the so called iOS Universal apps can be used on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad (before the advent of iOS Universal there were two binaries created for each type). XCode/Interface Builder was used to create the iOS Universal. Although XCode, a superset of Objective-C makes this easy it is not straight forward mainly due to device size differences. Again Apple Apps are specific to devices running Apple iOS.

The same is true of Android Apps. It is built using Java in a multi-user Linux system. The recommended development platform is Eclipse. Read more here, http://developer.android.com/guide/components/fundamentals.html

Latest version of Eclipse Standard here:
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/eclipse-standard-44/lunar

However there have been several developments (bridge programs) to have a single program that can build Apps to work on any device.

• With Xamarin you can use C# shared library to build native iOS, Android, Mac and Windows apps.

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/01/master-c-and-become-universal-coder.html

•  PhoneGap (Apache Cardova) developer app used with Windows can bundle the App for a variety of platforms.

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/06/open-source-mobile-app-development-with.html

• XDK Platform from Intel can similarly create apps for multiple OSs using Html5/CSS/Javascript similar to the PhoneGap, in fact using a later version.

https://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/xdkdocs

• Outsystems cloud based development platform can build apps that works with both Java and .NET environments and you can derive source code for each of these OSs

http://www.outsystems.com/

Html5/CSS/Javascript not dependent on any specific vendor together with responsive design should address most of the cross-platform requirements. I am sure more programs on the way in this general direction.

 August 20:
Get a good brief on Intel XDK here including installation:
http://hodentekmobile.blogspot.com/2014/08/cross-platform-apps-are-easy-with-intel.html
 

Microsoft Piggy backs Microsoft OFFICE 365 on iPads - Bravo

I believe this was an excellent move to improve the Microsoft bottom line.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238570/Office_365_subscriptions_furnish_4_of_Microsoft_s_Office_division_revenue

I am not as sure as Simon Phipps blogging that Microsoft has taken a step towards (partially perhaps) embracing Open Source, I believe it is to make the best of the breed of Microsoft's product available on the best of breeds Apple product.

Read Simon Phipps article here:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/microsoft-and-open-source-two-steps-forward-one-step-back-239451?source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_pm_2014-04-01

I think it profits both companies and probably diminishes the appeal of Google trying to get into this lucrative business and a hedge against falling PC sales.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/review-microsoft-office-365-vs-google-apps-233667?source=fssr

Now as we speak, Microsoft is doing better than it did before, that is marketwise.

You could use Office 365 on your Android phone and it is just as easy.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-suite-help/use-office-365-on-your-android-phone-HA103787372.aspx