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Tag: Mobile

Smartphone Encryption is a Red Herring

EnigmaMachine.pngAs the Founder and CEO of a software company that makes a development tool for mobile platforms, as well as for desktop and web, I have a lot of experience with encryption. The current controversy over encryption is really important to me. During World War II, the Germans created a way of sending encrypted messages to commanders in the field. The device came to be known as an Engima machine. It looked like a typewriter but had an encryption key that changed a message into unreadable noise. That message could only be decoded if you knew the key used to encrypt it. The Allies worked very hard to get their hands on one of these devices so they could learn how it works and be able to decrypt the messages and know what the German military plans. Ultimately the Allies figured it out and it helped them win the war. If this has peaked your curiosity, check out the movie U-571 (a fictional account of the effort to obtain an Enigma machine) and The Imitation Game about the team that figured out the encryption key.

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Deploy iOS apps to your devices without an Apple Developer Membership

With the release of Xcode 7, Apple combined the iOS and Mac Developer programs into a single Developer Program. Previously these programs were $99/year for each and now they are $99/year for the combined Apple Developer Program which lets you create and deploy apps for iOS and OS X.

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Don’t Give Mobile the Cold Shoulder

A recent article on Computer Business Review asks “Why are developers giving mobile the cold shoulder?” The article cites the State of Mobility 2015 Global Developer Study by Progress (they do not provide a link to the study).

Perhaps the reason is because mobile developers have not yet tried to see how quickly you can create mobile iOS apps with Xojo?

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Computers For Cross-Platform Development

Since we make a popular cross-platform development tool, I’m often asked “what type of computer should I get for cross-platform development”?

You might think that can be a tricky question to answer because they are so many different types of computers. But there is only one computer that can run the three major operating systems without violating a EULA: a Mac.

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Gartner: Mobile apps can’t be created fast enough. What’s the solution?

Speaking at one of their conferences, Gartner principal research analyst Adrian Leow said last week that enterprises are increasingly finding it difficult to build all the mobile apps they need. The demand for mobile apps is increasing far faster than the supply of mobile developers can create them and it’s only going to get worse. This is clearly a problem.

There are three possible solutions to this problem:

  1. Find a way to decrease the demand of mobile apps. (Good luck with that one.)
  2. Increase the number of mobile developers.
  3. Decrease the time it takes to build mobile apps.

Solutions 2 and 3 are not mutually exclusive. You could potentially do both. Adrian Leow even points to the solution when he suggests that developers use rapid mobile app development tools. These tools can provide solution 3, but they don’t create necessarily create more developers.

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