Look what 2011 washed in: The year that was in mobile development
December 21, 2011 —
(Page 1 of 2)
It wasn’t the year of the LAN—or even the year of the smartphone. If anything, 2011 was the year of the cloud. But it was also the year of the desktop, of the Scrum agile methodology, Android devices, proliferating app stores, the HTML5 draft standard and the passing of Steve Jobs.
Year-as-a-Platform. The cloud fragmented. Was it Software-as-a-Service? Platform-as-a-Service? Infrastructure-as-a-Service? Database-as-a-Service? The industry groaned under the weight of SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, DaaS and many others, as vendors sought to differentiate their cloud offerings by coining their own four-letter acronyms. Analysts happily jumped into the new paradigm, eager to sell reports, rank competitors and rent out experts to explain that their clients were leaders in the emerging Buzzword-as-a-Service marketplace.
Despite the vendor and analyst hyperbole, the cloud genuinely grew significantly during 2011. Established enterprises saw the benefits, as did startups. Consumers also jumped into the cloud with services from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Dropbox. Although there were a few high-profile service outages, the reliability of the cloud swayed skeptics, as did its scalability and affordability. Yes, there are kinks to work out, such as security models, data portability, code portability and service guarantees. Yet it’s hard to deny that for many business purposes, the cloud is definitely ready for prime time.
Metro Style. If customers like cute little icons and animated tiles on their smartphones, they’ll love to have those same icons and tiles on their desktops. At least, that’s what Apple and Microsoft seem to think. Apple’s Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion,” publicly released in July, brings the iPad look-and-feel to the MacBook and iMac. Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 8—previewed to developers in September—goes much further, replacing much of the familiar Windows user experience with a touch-screen-based swipe metaphor called Metro. Both Lion and Metro have been panned by critics, who say that it’s the wrong UX model for the desktop. Well, you can’t please everyone.
Calling a Scrum. Agile development continued to rise in 2011. There was no new Agile Manifesto (although the movement did celebrate its 10th anniversary), but it seems that Scrum is the favorite methodology of most agile practitioners, except for those who choose to use a hybrid model. Lean software development started gaining traction as a philosophy, as the Japanese scheduling system called Kanban found its way into agile shops. It’s not new; Kanban cards appeared in the 1950s in Japanese manufacturing, but it’s new in the software development arena.
Robbie the Robotphone. Google’s smartphone operating system knocked Apple off its perch; carriers now sell many more Android phones per month than iPhones. That’s not surprising, given the vast number of handset manufacturers, models and form factors available running Android. By contrast, there’s only one iOS device manufacturer: Apple. Yet, despite Android’s success in phones, it lags far behind in the tablet market, which is wholly dominated by the iPad. The biggest threat to Android is fragmentation. A rising threat might be Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.5. RIM’s fast-fading BlackBerry isn’t a threat at all.
Point and Click. Where do you purchase software? Not in brick-and-mortar stores, not from catalogs. Today, the hip, happening place to buy bits is in an app store, whether it’s for your cloud services, for mobile devices, or even for traditional servers and desktops. Every platform maker has a store now, complete with provisions for monetization, delivery and license control. Nearly everyone wins: The platform maker gets recurring revenue by capturing a percentage of third-party software sales; developers gain a level playing field to promote and distribute their products; and consumers like the convenience and simplicity. The big losers are software resellers—and makers of DVD-ROM discs.
The Markup Language. HTML5 has come of age. It’s about time: HTML4 was approved in 1997, and the new language has key features that the Internet needs. Forget about Flash or other rich Internet application languages; HTML5 is an open standard, doesn’t consume huge amounts of CPU resources or battery power, and handles audio, video and other media formats without nasty wrappers. The only challenge is that HTML5 still isn’t a standard. When will it be finished? Nobody knows.
Reality Distortion. Steve Jobs’ death in October 2011 dominated the news for months, and “What’s going to happen to Apple?” was the question on everyone’s lips. Not since the passing of Princess Diana has the world stopped to pay homage to such a transformational figure. Love him or hate him, admire him as a genius or dismiss him as a bully, there is no doubt that Jobs redefined his world—and ours. From the original Macintosh to Pixar, from the iPhone to the iPad, from digital publishing to music distribution, Jobs made us all think different.
We'll be taking a more in-depth look back over the next week, but for today, we also look back at mobile and table development.
Related Search Term(s): Android, Apple, cloud, Google, HTML, Metro, mobile
Share this link: http://sdt.bz/36208
Most Read Latest News Blog Resources
Zeichick’s Take: The handheld and the tablet, circa 1976
Texas Instruments' and Hewlett-Packard's calculators were doing things decades ago we take for granted today
|
|
Google talks tools at AnDevCon III
New 3D debugging tool and recent ADK changes are detailed by Google developers at the third Android Developer Conference
|
|
Android is the focus of two new design tools
Anywhere Software and Xamarin provide ways for developers to create and test their applications on PCs
|
|
Achievements and learning: Gamification comes to businesses and schools
Startup takes page from gamers by offering achievement marks to get developers more engaged in their projects
|
Virtualization: Not just for machines anymore
Network virtualization allows multi-tiered applications to behave as though they were in a physical network
|
|
Achievements and learning: Gamification comes to businesses and schools
Startup takes page from gamers by offering achievement marks to get developers more engaged in their projects
|
|
Google talks tools at AnDevCon III
New 3D debugging tool and recent ADK changes are detailed by Google developers at the third Android Developer Conference
|
|
SmartBear rolls out new quality solution: API Complete
Software gives organizations ability to write test scripts and monitor APIs by bridging the DevOps divide
|
Creation
To write better software, cultivate your ability to be creative.
|
|
Slick...but who needs it?
compilr.com is a well-designed site and the folks behind it seem to have their heart in the right place. But...who needs it?
|
|
How to be a better software developer
Want to be a better developer? You won't get there by mastering an interesting language or learning a new set of APIs.
|
|
Wooing Galatea
Do yourself a favor and check out Galatea 2.2, a wonderful book by novelist Richard Powers.
|
Five SCM Best Practices
Two-thirds of all software projects fail, according to the Standish Group’s CHAOS study. Improper usage of software configuration management...
|
|
|
Best Practices for Branching and Merging Patterns
Development teams often create a branching pattern, usually drawn out on a white board or in a Visio document, that is used as a model to...
|
|
Automated Error Reporting
We invite you to read a short e-zine that tells you all about automated error reporting for .NET applications. This 8-page e-zine is packed...
|
|
The End of Application Redeploys
Imagine that every time you wanted to write, send or receive an email, you needed to restart your computer. How much time would this take, a...
|