With several exceptions, Android apps are written in Java.  iPhone apps require the iOS SDK, which is only available for the Mac.  I don’t write programs using Java and I don’t own a Mac, which means I’ve been sidelined throughout the current mobile revolution.  For quite a while it didn’t matter, I’ve had plenty of things to learn for my web projects, but I’ve recently become more interested in programming for mobile devices.

Although I could probably pickup the basics of Java and bang out some Android code, I was really hoping that I could find a solution that might work for multiple platforms.  I’ve been looking at some of the application frameworks, some proprietary and others based on web standards such as the upcoming HTML 5.

I had a fairly simple mobile app that I wanted to build.  I searched for a web framework that would help me run some experiments, and I found jQTouch.  “Use jQuery to build mobile apps!  Fantastic!” I thought.  I created my application and it performed perfectly in my browser.  It was actually very beautiful in its simplicity.  When I tried to run it on my Android phone, however, none of the forms would work.  I then shifted over to my iPod Touch and the pages didn’t even render properly.  I don’t have a lot of time to play with these tools, so I moved on.

My next find was a product called Sencha Touch.  It’s an HTML 5 framework that comes with some great demos.  Unfortunately, the model for the code is Sencha’s other product, EXT JS.  If you’ve ever seen EXT JS, it’s object-oriented and modular to the nth-degree.  This translates into an ultra-cool tool that is frickin’ hard to learn.  I actually invested several days into learning the basics of the Sencha Touch approach.  Most of that time was spent trying to figure out how to populate a dropdown listbox (yeah, it’s that complicated).  Once I finally got the hang of it, the code started to come together.  Again, my app looked amazing in the browser.  Then I ran it through my iPod…awesome!  Next, I ran it to my Android phone and it fizzled big time.  Forms didn’t really work and some page transitions took minutes to complete.  [It’s interesting to note that Sencha now owns jQTouch as well.]

Next, I installed Appcelerator’s Titanium.  I tried to get the Hello World app to run on the emulator.  It ran once.  After that I continued to receive error messages during deployment.  Again, it became a matter of time.  I can’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out the issues, even if they might be simple things.  Although Titanium’s product doesn’t require native code, I would still be stuck without an iPhone development tool because a Mac is a required to compile iPhone apps.

I was hoping to get a peek at MonoDroid, but it hasn’t been released yet (at least to me).  MonoTouch requires a Mac too.

Update:  Almost forgot to mention Google’s App Inventor.  Interesting to play with, but it’s not a real tool.

The jQuery team has announced that they’re working on a mobile platform.  That seems promising, but it doesn’t help me right now.

Windows Phone 7 is coming out soon during the Holidays.  That’s right up my alley as far as the development tools go, but I couldn’t wait for Microsoft to get it together.  I already purchased a new Android phone.

So for now, I’ll be focusing on my other applications (the non-mobile type).  Maybe 2011 will be the right year for me to move into mobile programming.  In many ways, we’ve taken a step back in time with the “app for that” mentality.  I’d like to bypass this phase.  I’d like to get to a point where we aren’t writing different apps for each mobile device.  Hopefully the web will come to the rescue again.