Back in April I blogged about my first impressions of iPad, I’m happy to report that I’m still very satisfied with my iPad. I also like to follow reports of general consumer acceptance of this useful gadget.

On May 5, Apple announced that “consumer purchases of electronics grew 9.7% year-over-year.” And they attribute the growth to the iPad. Furthermore, they sold more than a million iPads in its first 28 days of availability. In the announcement, Apple compares the iPad sales statistics to iPhone’s sales statistics saying it took 74 days to achieve that same milestone when they released the iPhone in 2007.

As a software developer at MapleWorks, I look at these stats with great interest. The last I read, the Apple App Store’s 200,000 mobile applications had been downloaded 4 billion times by consumers for their Smartphones.

Imagine the market opportunity for developers of mobile applications for Tablets.

The iPad is here, after a flurry of news media and speculation. There has been a lot of emotion surrounding the release of this technological marvel. Many people are waiting to see if the iPad will create a new category of electronic devices between the cell phone and laptop. The Apple fanboys are touting the iPad as the future of electronic computing, referencing its 10 hour battery life, advanced touch screen and application distribution system. The naysayers, on the other hand, are less impressed with what it has and are focused on what it doesn’t; web camera and cell phone capabilities for starters.

After a week of solid use of the iPad ,  I have  formed my own opinions. First of all, I’m finding the iPad more of an enjoyable experience then using a standard PC or laptop. It’s small and convenient, the battery life seems to last forever and there are a multitude of applications to enjoy. I often find myself reading a book, checking my mail, browsing the web, watching a video, downloading new applications etc , while not noticing the time or  whether I am  in  the living room, basement  or backyard.

The biggest draw I see for the iPad is its ease of use and flexibility. The device reaches all users from the two year old to the ninety year old grandmother. This is very powerful in the electronic consumer space. The wii gaming console demonstrated this in previous years, with its record sales and wide spread adoption, despite its lack luster graphics and previous generation hardware specs. As for flexibility, the iPad has a vast number of applications. So many applications are available, that no matter what your interests are, there is an application that meets your needs.

In conclusion, I see the iPad as the must have device of the year. The demand is growing and it’s going to be hard to get your hands on one in the near future; I know I’m not giving mine up at any price.

Sent from my iPad

Tablets are getting a lot of attention, so the time is ripe for software development companies to deliver Tablet applications to consumers hungry to add value to their Tablet purchases. (Read the report summary on page 2 of “The Rise of the Internet Tablet: The Keys to Success” from In-Stat research (February 2010)). The time is ripe not only because consumer demand is on the rise, but because the market is not yet overcrowded.

Having developed apps for Smartphones, MapleWorks plunged headlong into developing a Tablet app. It’s now available. Called MapleWorks MaplePaint™, it’s a note taking and drawing application for Android-based Tablets. Here are some screen grabs.

If you’re a software development company trying to figure out how to deliver a Tablet app, you’ll find that the challenges are similar to those you faced with developing Smartphone apps; e.g. physical constraints and operating system quirks. Want to learn more about the challenges of developing mobile apps? Read our white paper, Mobile Applications Development: Leveraging Experience to Maximize Gain.

It’s an interesting world we find ourselves in.   The concept of the Tablet has been around for over 20 years, but the supporting infrastructure (security, most notably) was not in place and the mindshare did not exist either.  Indeed, it has taken many years for the straightforward SMS technology to be mostly accepted.

Now, Smartphone technology and application availability is growing at an astounding rate.  Thanks to the Apple store and the Nokia forum, to name a few, developers can post applications and consumers can browse the marketplace easily.

With Google Android and the Series 60 SDK, among others, developers are plugged in to the marketplace quickly and easily.  As we have been working with the various SDKs, we have developed applications for iPhones, Android-based Tablets, Blackberry devices, and others.  Developing software for a variety of mobile devices presents some interesting challenges – there are different screen sizes, different hardware capabilities, and even different operating systems that the same application will need to run on.

We predict that manufacturers, application developers and consumers alike will find 2010 to be an interesting year in the mobile device world.  Rumors promise that Apple will unveil a Tablet in the next week or so.  Does that mean that Tablets are the next “it device” for consumers?

Come back and visit us in successive weeks as we report on the technology developments and our own findings about developing software applications for the new mobile devices.

Use the “My Documents” folder for exchanging data files and documents:
When synchronizing files between a Windows Mobile device and a desktop computer, you can see the content of the “My Documents” folder on the desktop computer. The “My Documents” folder is very important on Windows Mobile. It is used for store data files and documents. If you have any documents stored outside the My Documents folder, they will not be synchronized with your desktop.

Battery life:
Windows Mobile devices are battery-based devices. Battery life will become much shorter if your applications are consistently sending or receiving data through Wi-Fi or GPRS or if they are running background tasks. The reason is applications with these kinds of behavior will not only use more battery power, but also prevent the device from going into the sleep mode. The latter is the key to saving battery power when a device is idle. When you design an application, try to avoid frequently exchanging data in the background. If you cannot, be prepared to use up your battery life much more quickly. This is not a good design practice as your users will become very annoyed if they find their batteries being draining more quickly.

My first impression of the Windows Mobile development is very good. Microsoft did a great job to make a universal development environment for both Windows Mobile and Windows desktop. Visual Studio can be used to develop both applications and it comes with a very good Device Emulator for Windows Mobile.

The Windows Mobile applications can be automatically loaded and run in the Device Emulator which speeds up debugging and testing. Microsoft keeps the same desktop Win32 API interface for Windows Mobile and technologies such as MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes), ATL (Active Template Library) and COM (Component Object Model) can also be used in Windows Mobile. With previous development experience in Windows desktop platform, I didn’t experience much of a learning curve in the Windows Mobile development.

Despite the similarities, there are some differences that need to be taken into consideration when developing a mobile application.  They are primarily in the areas of display, input, storage and battery life.

The application we most recently developed provided SIP services to the phone and I’ll explain how we took these factors into consideration while developing a top of the line application.

Some of the SIP services included a buddy list, online/offline presence, and call history.

Display Difference:

When your application needs to work on both a Pocket PC and a Smartphone, you need to pay attention to the differences in display screen size. A typical Smartphone screen is much smaller than the screen of Pocket PC. When developing the application to run on both devices, I had to consider the screen difference and design accordingly. This was especially true when adding the Buddy List pop-up menu. It is important to test both devices right from the start of the development cycle. For example, Smartphone has two hotkeys that correspond to two screen menus. If your application has more than two screen menus, these extra menus are not selectable on the Smartphone. It is easy to find this out by testing with both devices. If you don’t do this early on and mainly test the application on one device then when a problem is seen later, it could prove more costly and consume a lot more effort to fix it.

Input methods:

Pocket PC’s usually have a touch screen and it will let you enter data by clicking the keys on an on-screen keyboard or by using the stylus pen to write on a designated portion of the screen. Because of the limited size of the display, Smartphone does not have a touch screen, therefore it has no on-screen keyboard. Data entry on a Smartphone is more difficult than on a Pocket PC. For example, if you wanted to type the letter C on a Smartphone, you would have to press the 2 button three times. The Smartphone has no stylus pen. Using Smartphone is like using a PC without a mouse; everything has to be done through the keypad! Because of this, some user input tasks that could be easily performed in the Pocket PC may be very difficult or impossible on the Smartphone. When designing an application requiring user input, make sure to test it on both devices. If possible, try to avoid letting the user input long or complex words.

….more next week….