Developing for Windows Phone 8 requires using the Windows Phone 8 SDK, which itself requires running Windows 8. And using the Windows Phone 8 Emulator requires having a SLAT-enabled machine and have Hyper-V enabled… These requirements might not seem easy to meet on a Mac… but you can do it.

In this article you will learn about the options you have and how to configure the various solutions to set up your development environment and get set to build your first Windows Phone Application.

This way: BuildaWP8apponaMac

I highly recommend you bookmark this new blog whether or not you are involved in Embedded projects: Approaching Embedded Intelligently, as with the emergence of these intelligent systems, I am convinced we will see more and more discussions around interoperability, cross-platform, openness, which you can count on me to relay! Good reading!

At this point there are different trends, and efforts going on, trying to tackle different type of problems. Different companies and communities work on different interesting solutions to answer THE question: “How do I target several mobile platforms with a minimum of efforts and at a minimal cost, and how do I get my mobile application to interoperate with the rest of the world?”

Some have gaming in mind and are looking for solutions that will allow developers to go cross-platform, still optimizing for graphics acceleration and performance, and therefore propose cross-compilation solutions such as Corona SDK or Marmalade (previously known as Airplay SDK), …

Some others are heavily Enterprise focused and deliver tools suite such as Rhomobile delivering on the several key aspects of Enterprise development needs.

Another major trend consists in abstracting the OS from the application developer by providing an intermediate stack. Cordova (previously known as PhoneGap), Appcelerator Titanium or Mosync propose this type of approach and allow developers to then use Standards technologies such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to write applications once and then deploy on different platforms. Once you are in this HTML5/CSS/JavaScript development world, you can consider using some of the JavaScript frameworks that the community proposes such as JQuery Mobile, JQuery Touch, Sencha Touch,…

Then you have companies and communities interested in getting different mobile platforms to connect, sync and use their services and solutions. Considering the fact that most applications are developed natively, they provide native SDKs to allow developers to integrate with their solutions. Windows Azure Toolkits for Windows Phone, for iOS, or for Android or the equivalent for the Amazon Web Services for iOS and Android and for Windows Phone are perfect examples of this.

This list is far from exhaustive and is growing every day. By the way, let me know if you are using, developing or have just read about interesting SDK, frameworks or tools that aim at making mobile platform interoperable.

And if you are looking for specifics on Windows Phone, stay tuned for my next post.

What are some of the questions a developer needs to ask before starting a mobile application project?

• Do I have an existing solution that I can consider reusing?
• What technologies am I (or my teams) more familiar with?
• What markets do I want to target (consumer, enterprise, developing countries, industrialized countries…)?
• What are my competitors doing?
• Where will I make the most profit?
• What choice will bring me to market faster?
• What is the future of the technologies I will be using?
• What are the security/compliance/confidentiality requirements?
• What is the upfront cost?
• What are my partners using (so I can interface with them easily)?
• Should it be proprietary or open-source?
• Should I bet on industry standards or go native?
• Should I optimize for each target platform or should I leverage a cross-platforms solution?
• Should it be free with ads or paid?
• Will my grandma use this solution?
• …

All the responses to these questions likely come with compromises that will impact the customer reach, the revenue, the flexibility, the maintenance cost … There is no absolute right response… it depends…

Actually, when someone wants to make its services or applications available on different mobile platforms, they are offered several different approaches (bear with me here, I might be over-simplifying, but I do have a point I want to make…) that they will have to choose between based on responses to all these questions:

• Go the native way: create several applications that will be integrated and optimized for each of the platforms
• Go the Web way: create a web application that will be consumed within the device’s Web browser
• Go the cross-platform way: find some good cross-platform solution that will allow him to minimize the amount of code he is developing
• Go the Hybrid way: something in between all of the above…

Note that these approaches are not exclusive.

Need to think “interoperability”

This is where interoperability comes into the game. Whichever way you decide to go, you will need to think about the following things:

• When going the native way: you might need to connect your application to a backend that is based on a platform from a different software company than your mobile platform (i.e. connect to an Azure backend from an Android application or to an AWS backend from a Windows Phone application.)
• When going the Web way, you will need to adapt your solution and development to the capabilities of the various mobile browsers to deliver a consistent experience.
• When going cross-platform, you will need to find the right cross-platform solution, framework that is available on all the mobile platforms you need to target and consider the loss in performance or flexibility.
• When going the hybrid way, well, you basically have all of the above considerations to deal with…

All of these considerations are interoperability ones. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t even have to wonder as all devices would support all sort of apps that connect to all sorts of back ends, and software would be developed with any sort of tool… (not sure I am depicting an ideal world here J).

So my next blog post will take a look at what Interoperability looks like for the mobile platforms these days.

Mobile, mobile, mobile

It is a no brainer today (and not news) that mobility is exploding in both the consumer and enterprise markets. Smartphones have paved the way, tablets/slates are following (or should I say are pushing very hard!), laptops are becoming ultra-portables and new form factors appear every day: smartphones attached in the back of a touch screen to make a slate, Touch screen detaching from a laptop keyboard to become a slate, …). Just take a look at gadget sites like Engadget or TechCrunch… You can also take a look at what was demonstrated and announced recently at CES in Las Vegas and see how many of the devices and services consumers are now interested in are mobile-related… almost 100%!!

Enterprises are also going mobile (once again, this is not news). Employees travel more; they need to access their corporate information and data while roaming. They use different types of devices and will be willing to compromise less and less. I have heard the term “consumerization of IT” many times and I think this describes what is going on pretty well. “Why should I use a different device than my personal latest generation smartphone or tablet to access my corporate information?”

Another couple of trends that are interesting to look at are the fast growth of the Cloud and its services, along with the acceleration of the Internet connectivity and enlargement of available bandwidth on the go or outside of work (at work too BTW). A connected mobile device can now not only access the Internet, but it can also access Cloud services. You can now do a lot of things securely and comfortably from your smartphone, your slate or your laptop. As a matter of fact, there is a rule that applies here that my kids know very well: “The more you get, the more you want”.

So yeah, the consumer and enterprise businesses are really becoming mobile (the trend was initiated some years ago, but it is actually gaining momentum now).

Some mobility keywords: differentiation, fragmentation

Now, let’s look more closely at the mobility market and, as mentioned earlier, bearing in mind that mobility is no longer just about accessing email and passing phone calls. Devices are now expected to access the Internet, allow services consumption, have an optimized user experience, connect with other devices, run various types of applications, play different media (music, video, …), and so on… And while all the players are surfing the same trends, they are all doing it in different ways:

• Different OS’s: we see different major OSs in the mobile space such as Windows Phone, iOS, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, WebOS.
• Different User Experiences: different designs are implemented to please end users, simpler, more integrated, more intuitive, icons vs. tiles …
• Different business models: some device manufacturers develop their own OS, others work with OS vendors.
• Different application platforms: these are different from one OS to another, coming with specific tools, specific development languages and optimized APIs, while mobile browsers are based on different engines more or less Standards compliant.
• Different application distribution models and monetization models: with regards to how applications and services are distributed and sold to customers, there are once again diverse approaches: closely controlled, open …
• Different backend platforms: as mentioned earlier, mobile applications are now connected and most of the time need to connect, interact, and sync with some backend, web services, Cloud services, which happen to be as varied as mobile platforms, if not more.

“Different” is good as it offers the end user a wider range of choice. It also helps push all the players to deliver better experiences to their customers as a way to differentiate. However on the other side of the coin are possibilities like fragmentation (said like this, it is scary, right?).

Charlie Kindel, in a recent article, was discussing the mobile platform fragmentation and described what he thinks are the 5 axes of this fragmentation: User Interface, Device, Operating System, Marketplace and Service (I highly recommend reading this article, it is very instructive).

In another article Charlie breaks the mobile ecosystem into its market components: Developers, Users, Carriers, Device Manufacturers and OS Providers. There is certainly a chicken and egg situation here: is it the fact that each of these components has its own objectives that leads to fragmentation, or is it the other way around? I will not attempt to answer this question as solving this “Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything” would not help (knowing the answer is 42 wouldn’t help much either, right?).

Fragmentation is a fact and the different actors in the mobile space have to cope with it. And when you consider developing a mobile application or solution, you will have to ask yourself a long series of questions before starting work…

… I will try and list some of these questions… in my next post

As a new member of this team, I cover client platforms Interoperability (Windows Phone, IE, Windows 8 and therefore HTML5/CSS/JS). Ramping up on these topics and starting to explore the interoperability specifics, I am realizing how complex, vast and critical Interoperability is for mobility in the consumer and enterprise markets. Therefore I thought it would be a good idea for me to synthetize my findings and thoughts into a series of blog posts.

The teams’ charter is to engage with developers, customers and communities to help improve interoperability between Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies. The goal is to participate in and contribute to defining standards and implementing them. The team contributes into the development of cross-platform frameworks, develops prototypes and technical bridges and publishes white papers and code samples, and is at the forefront of many Open Source efforts at Microsoft. In addition, it helps product groups integrate better support for these standards into future products. Technical work done can be seen on the interoperabilitybridges.com website.

Projects the team has participated in recently and that you have certainly heard about are things like the following:

• Windows Phone Toolkit for AWS
• Windows Azure support for MongoDB
• Full support for Windows Phone 7 in PhoneGap
• Windows Node.JS port
• JQuery Mobile support for Windows Phone 7

So we are looking into enabling particular scenarios such as the one that I am writing about today: mobile interoperability. The series of posts is not intended to deliver a magic response to all the questions you might have regarding mobility and interoperability. Actually you might end up with more questions than responses… which I think is good. The intent of this series is to help you identify what you may want to pay attention to when considering a mobile application development and introduce you to the nascent world of interoperability of the mobile ecosystem.

The series is made of the following 4 articles:

• A developer’s perspective on the mobile ecosystem
• How to approach a mobile development today
• What interoperability looks like for mobile platforms these days
• Planning on targeting Windows Phone for your next project? Here are your options. (coming soon…)

The last few years have totally changed how mobility is considered as it became critical if not central to a lot of products, services and solutions. Furthermore, given the actual fragmentation of the mobile market, I am convinced Interoperability is very important for every single player in the mobile field to get it right, whether they are software vendors, hardware vendors, services providers or simple developer.

So, I’ll dive into all this in the first post of the series, which I plan to publish early next week!

You can read details about the release on the interoperability @ Microsoft blog.

In order to see how this works, you can watch the videos below. The first one is an introduction, while the second one is a more detailed “Getting started” guide.

To download the framework and the Visual Studio templates, visit the PhoneGap.com site.

As I am moving on to another role at Microsoft, you will see different topics covered in here, related to mobility and HTML5/JavaScript development.

I recommend you start following @MSFTWEB on twitter if you are not already doing so as it is a great source of info about Windows Embedded.

I wish all of you great embedded endeavors, and for those interested in Interoperability… welcome!

- Olivier