With iOS we have a hen and egg problem.
People demand stuff, but not much for iOS at least from me. And priorities are more towards desktop/database apps.
I would love to have a plugin SDK for iOS and just rebuild my plugins for iOS.
Than I could (like with Linux ARM) get a lot of functionality quickly to iOS.
[quote=243625:@Christian Schmitz]With iOS we have a hen and egg problem.
People demand stuff, but not much for iOS at least from me. And priorities are more towards desktop/database apps.
I would love to have a plugin SDK for iOS and just rebuild my plugins for iOS.
Than I could (like with Linux ARM) get a lot of functionality quickly to iOS.[/quote]
I agree 100%. With your plugins iOS will be boosted. Honestly… I tried with Swift, but Xcode is a hell of IDE. Despite some IDE problems, Xojo IDE is getting better and have more attention ( I really prefer this done focusing in other areas ). Why don’t you get it and release something as great as your Dynapdf or MBS in that fills a gap.
[Public]
I really prefer the way Xojo is taking, from low level to framework, not no mention IDE work.
Just to add,
64 Bit AND LLVM, are two different beasts. LLVM IMO is more important than 64 bit as a feature!
Bringing a Linux platform to a new CPU arch is no trivial…
But yeah, I agree 2015 has been a revolution to Xojo in terms of new compiler, framework, targets, small team, deadlines.
Mobile is dead as a market… desktop, not yet.
Let me add my request to Christian for MBS plugins for iOS.
I used the MBS plugins to implement the NSUserDefaults method of saving user preferences on a desktop solution. It was relatively easy to read Apple’s NSUserDefaults documentation and implement the solution.
Then I tried to use the declare methods of iOSKit to implement the same feature in iOS. I am obviously not very skilled in using declares because I had to give up after about 20 hours of trying and go back to saving user preferences in a document file.
You can always PM me with any questions about iOSKit. I’m always willing to help if something isn’t working for you.
I’m also very interested in this. Is this already part of your iOSKit?
NB: I’m personally willing to pay for iOSKit, or others, if this helps in keeping development going forward.
I’m not sure what you are asking about? NSUserDefaults, many controls, missing base classes, camera access and more are included. Take a look at the readme and example views to get a full picture of what is available and how to use it:
https://github.com/kingj5/iOSKit/blob/master/README.md
We might want to take this to PM since we are veering off topic
I was talking about storing app settings; not sure yet which class I would need for that. I will examine your iOSKit tonight and will PM you if needed.
NB: It isn’t that OT as one might think, especially when talking about funding your time and effort in providing functionality that Xojo is currently missing.
It’s not about one class. It’s about that the average xojo developer needs to write declares to get basic things done.
MBS Plugins have over 2000 classes. With a plugin SDK, I could bring maybe half of them to iOS quickly. That would extend the possibilities a lot there!
Originally, I understood that plugins were not possible because of iOS7. Now that we are with iOS 9.2 and that iOS rate has crossed 82% back in May 2015 http://9to5mac.com/2015/04/29/ios-8-adoption-rate-2/ would it not be time to drop the dead horse, and boldly walk into a world where iOS plugins are possible ?
Or should we take all promises from early 2015 as now dead ?
We still support building for iOS 7
It is deprecated (see http://developer.xojo.com/deprecations) but not removed and until its removed iOS 7 is a bit of a boat anchor regarding plugins
Its only been deprecated since 2015r3
Which other specific promises would you be referring to ?
“Aggressively adding controls”
Let me see here… Apple dropped support for iOS7 on Sep 24,2014, will most likely be dropping support for iOS8 in the next 6 to 8 months.
Currently over 75% of all iOS devices are running iOS9, and less than 7% are still stuck on iOS7.
I’m not getting the math here. 93% of all known iOS devices have left iOS7 far behind… yet …
We’re going to rehash that one yet again ?
We should just stop saying anything abut “the future” and let it just surprise the heck out of everyone as every time we say anything its used to beat us with repeatedly
[quote=243803:@Dave S]Let me see here… Apple dropped support for iOS7 on Sep 24,2014, will most likely be dropping support for iOS8 in the next 6 to 8 months.
Currently over 75% of all iOS devices are running iOS9, and less than 7% are still stuck on iOS7.
I’m not getting the math here. 93% of all known iOS devices have left iOS7 far behind… yet …[/quote]
There are some places you can get historical stats about percentages but if I recall correctly iOS 7 was still 15 - 20% at the time we decided to mark it deprecated
I wont say when / if it will move to “unsupported” … future talk and all that 
Everything is fine in the best possible world. Please do not ask about anything.
If you can’t / won’t / don’t accept that priorities can and do change I’m sorry - they did
We’ve said that - repeatedly
Maybe it’s that we aren’t kept up to date about the future. We all know that future plans change. We don’t know what the current plans are, we only know what the prior plans used to be.
It’s ok if “Aggressively adding controls” is no longer on the table, but that’s the last we heard. I asked about why there hasn’t been more iOS love and the answer was that the community was going a great job filling the gaps and that allows Xojo to focus on other things. That sounded very reasonable. We only know what Xojo tells us.
Even if we were told nothing about the future, I think it’s very reasonable to have expected some iOS controls to be added.
Wasn’t iOS development mentioned as justification for what turned out to be an increased cost of maintaining a Pro license?
From all I get out of this type of conversation, it is that Xojo is severly handicapped by very limited resources. If we sit back and look at the conversion after resetting the NVRAM in our head, it is all about the very core of making Xojo iOS up to the mark, to make it acceptable by the “masses” that has not come to the marketplace, or had come and left disappointed and bring them back.
I made it a point to give Xojo iOS a look over, checked it out, put my hands to the keyboard. To appreciate this, do know that Xojo iOS is $299 whereas Swift is free. Features wise POLICY is the same - they are ready when they are ready. The big difference is Swift/Xcode is always ready and you don’t have to start a feedback and garner votes and then wait for it to be ready.
What is the risk to Xojo? Well, I can’t say about all the risks but I can say what I have done (and this is a risk to Xojo not from me, I am only one individual, but think of more than me and add them up). What is the risk? When using Swift for iOS, a natural progession is - “Hey what is it like to write a Mac app using Swift/Xcode? After all I already have what is needed.” So I did, I followed some tutorials (and there are plenty). Once I get the feel of Swift iOS, the progression is easy for Swift OSX.
With Obj-C, I had a lot of problem. Swift? No problem. The battlefield is no longer the same. The competitors no longer wear the same uniform. The weaponry no longer the last time your espionage team returned.
Cross-platform advantage? No more. The battlefield here has also changed. Windows side of things are “diverting” to modern UI. “Diverting”, you can see the traffic police at the road junction showing the way forward. Classic legacy controls are only for backward compatibility and transition. They are no longer the future.
I know it may be difficult for Xojo to read this. I do understand they may read this as a criticism. But heck if I do not care about Xojo, would I have bother?
I just hope Xojo can see where things are heading. To charge $299 for an unfinished product and openly expressing the direction for some enterprising and intelligent users to fill in the big gap for free or have 3rd-party add-in/plug-in developers (jacking up even more $$$ on top of the $299), I don’t see how this can succeed.