As an Apple Watch user, I’d naturally like to be able to make little Xojo apps for it. Now before there is groaning en masse, I appreciate that my desires may not align with Xojo Inc’s time/money/manpower/desires, but as a Xojo developer, I’d still like to express my interest in it.
I believe the situation may have similarities to the Raspberry Pi. A number of us expressed a desire to build Xojo apps for the Pi and although some complained that Xojo Inc had enough on their plate, it turned out that most of the work had already been done, with LLVM and Linux already under the Xojo belt and it opened up a whole new market for Xojo.
In terms of the Apple Watch:
the expectation is for simple, sparse apps so very few controls are required. The focus is on clearly displaying information to the user. Label, Button and ImageWell would make a reasonable 1.0 in terms of controls!
Apple Watch uses a much simpler layout system than Apple’s own auto-layout
we can already build iOS apps
it gives Xojo another market to break into
The ability to build Apple Watch apps is currently 11th in Feedback so if you support this idea, please give it some points to get it into the top 10 <https://xojo.com/issue/36809>
[quote=243432:@Jean-Yves Pochez]I would really prefer android over apple watch
I think the work to go to them is the same or almost ?
but only someone at Xojo inc can tell us ;)[/quote]
Well I don’t work for Xojo Inc but I can still tell you - it’s more work on an epic scale to start a whole new target such as Android. As I said above, the Watch (and new Apple TV for that matter) run a (mostly) subset of iOS. Now, this isn’t to trivialize the work it would require for the Watch but it’s a completely different league to creating an Android target.
[quote=243432:@Jean-Yves Pochez]I would really prefer android over apple watch
I think the work to go to them is the same or almost ?[/quote]
No. If you read part 2 of the article series in xDev about Multicore processing (was in the Jan/Feb 2016 edition) then you know a bit about the background of Linux, and why Android is a very different thing. They use the same kernel, but EVERYTHING else (and it is that EVERYTHING that you use in Xojo and that matters here) is very different. So a HUGE undertaking.
Pi was relatively easy to implement, and so should be the Apple Watch, as much of what is already used for Xojo Linux and Xojo iOS, respectively, are the same.
As much as I would like to see Android on Xojo happen, for the time being, I would truly prefer to see more love for iOS.
If it is not too difficult to do Apple Watch (akin to Pi), I am all for it, but it seems to me the top priority is (sounds like a chorus) CONTROLS, CONTROLS, CONTROLS, and exposing more framework properties and methods.
As it stands Xojo iOS is pitifully short of complete.
Make a new Thread like “Vote for more iOS controls” and point to a feedback case. Perhaps you can get more points for it than for the apple Watch integration.
The Apple watch integration can potentially hinder the efforts to complete Xojo iOS. Unless Apple watch can be a spinoff of the present Xojo iOS, I would really resent seeing Xojo engineers disperse on yet another venture, when they have not IMO completed a now a full year old product which barely looks the same as what I saw in beta back in 2014.
As for feedback cases, let me be bluntly cynical : if feedback points counted for more than lollipop, solid first Android support would be the order of the day.
for the most part “Apple watch” should just be another device, like iPad Pro as far as XOJO for iOS is concerned…
So finish what was started with the current iOS version, then adding “Watch” should be a minor effort.
They did add ONE control : ContainerContol. And that one is beautiful. But we are still light years away from a decent support. Where is scrollview ? Where is accelerometer support ? Where is phone support ? I could go on and on and on…
At the risk of getting someone angry, I could compare to B4i. But I’ll be charitable…
I hear you, and I largely agree with you Michel (see the ongoing related thread). Happily, an Apple Watch target would require very little in the way of controls and I just urge Xojo Inc to look into the possibility. I wonder if there’s a lot of gain to be had for both Xojo Inc and for us rabble, for relatively little effort.
Even the now-native watchOS 2 framework is very different from what you see on iPhone/iPad and iOS as far as our framework is concerned. It is more complex than adding Pi support, which can share basically the same Linux framework as other platforms. You’ll see additions we’ve been working on for iOS before something like watchOS. Not saying it’s a bad idea (I’m wearing one myself right now!)- I just wanted to be clear on that point.
All those points allocated to Android would appear to be redundant although I do notice that the status hasn’t been changed to scheduled. I’m pretty sure just a small portion of those point allocated to this would quickly move the F/R into the top 10.
We no longer display the Scheduled status as it was confusing users into thinking that cases were to be implemented in the next release, when what it really meant was “something we plan to do in the future.”
IMHO; I see iOS and Android as being more logical than appleWatch. I honestly don’t see the appleWatch being around for much longer; I predict the appleWatch is Cook’s Newton, it has a fan club; but ultimately it appeals to such a small market that it’s not really viable to keep around. P.S. I loved the Apple Newton and was sad when it finished; but understood why.
