

Java for iPhone - suyash
http://www.codenameone.com/
Ex Oracle/Sun Engineers build this tool that Java developers can use to run their code on multiple platforms including iOS. Beta version is free, so download and check it out!
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jaybill
This isn't "running Java on iOS". This is cross-compiling Java to Objective C,
the exact same way that other toolkits like MonoTouch, Titanium and RubyMotion
do it.

The difference is important.

You can use this toolkit to target iOS from Java, but that doesn't mean that
you get that language's infrastructure with it. I'd argue that's probably a
good thing, but either way it's a far cry from "running Java on iOS".

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MichaelGG
MonoTouch does not compile to Objective-C. It compiles to native code, just
like Objective-C, very much like Mono, CLR, or JVM do on other platforms. The
real difference is running the compiler ahead of time, versus JIT. That, and
disabling some functions that Apple deems bad, like keeping the ability to
modify or emit code on-the-fly.

In the case of MonoTouch, you do get the infrastructure; they have the runtime
ported over, and other libraries get compiled in as needed. So, in Mono's
case, it IS "running .NET on iOS".

I see no intrinsic reason this could not be done for Java, although I don't
know what this specific implementation is doing.

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fcoury
This just looks... Wrong :) Doesn't look or feel like iOS at all...

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bengl3rt
Of course not. Like so many desktop Java apps, it will look and feel like
Java, no matter where it's running.

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tfm
To be fair, it's hard to know how much of that sluggishness is the app itself
and how much is just a video-encoding artefact.

Certainly the API has some interesting inclusions -- Facebook and analytics
built-in.

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bunnyhero
Also note that the demo video is from the Simulator, not an actual device.

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potatolicious
Which is probably worse - the Simulator consistently outperforms any real
device.

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DeepDuh
So much negativity here. IMO the themes alone could be worth it. However the
whole thing seems a bit laggy in the simulator he shows. 3GS is still on sale
and I find that even with native iOS 5 it feels slow - I wouldn't want to run
such a heavy handed framework on there.

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nilburns27
Did any of you really use it or only look at the video? I agree that the UI
needs much more work (the entire Swing programming is really old - and not
really convenient). I really didn't like the resource-ui tool. However, being
able to write once and compile on the cloud (not needing to open 2
environments - eclipse & xcode ide like in PhoneGap is a huge plus). If they
will get their act together regarding the UI (html and css for example)they
might be the winner in cross-platform development world... Also I wonder their
future support in Scala.

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pietrofmaggi
It seems that you are talking about something like RhoMobile Rhodes open
source Framework[1] and the RhoHub hosting solution[2]. Rhodes uses HTML5 and
ruby to target multiple OSes and RhoHub allows you to build this apps in the
cloud.

[1] <https://github.com/rhomobile/rhodes>

[2] <https://app.rhohub.com/>

disclaimer: I work for Motorola Solution, the parent company of RhoMobile.

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nilburns27
I prefer native or html5 for fast deployment - how are the performance in
Rhodes (from yours experiences not from "Google Result") vs native?

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tsunamifury
I've used this in the past to get something across Android, J2ME and iOS --
even with the best of intentions an app turns out like a ugly mutant
frankenstein.

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dhconnelly
I think this is a little too heavyweight. Since platform-consistent UX is so
important, I'd prefer to stick with Apple's tools--at least for UI
development. It's usually easy to tell when an app is faking the native look-
and-feel in a webview, for example, and I doubt that this will be much
different.

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nl
_It's usually easy to tell when an app is faking the native look-and-feel in a
webview, for example, and I doubt that this will be much different_

It looks like this uses native peer controls; ie it will appear identical to a
platform specific app because the compiled version _is_ platform specific.

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mangler
Why is it so hard for Java programmers to learn anything other than Java?!

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thebluesky
Citation?

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mangler
Original post. iOS in Java?! Why?! GWT! Why. Just learn ObjC, Javascript,
whatever the local language is... It's not that hard really...

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bnr
The advertised benefit is reusing your code across platforms.

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smcdow
yes, write once, lag everywhere.

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zht
the video looks really really strange

