TamsPPC – the PocketPC Blog

George Henne’s NS Basic is an extremely popular RAD tool for mobile platforms – developers who would like to use a VB like tool which allows for easy porting, flock to it in droves.

Unfortunately, the company’s representatives have not proved too talkative so far. This has now changed, though – look forward to a highly interesting interview looking at the development landscape, mobile computing platforms and – last but not least – the iPhone and its distant predecessor, the Newton!

Please tell me more about yourself!
NS BASIC was founded on the idea that if development tools were easier to use, more people could develop apps for mobile devices.

The most widely used dev tool in the world (53%, according to Microsoft) is Visual Basic. It seemed natural to design a VB like tool for mobile devices.

Our customers are in all sorts of industries, government and education.
We have been translated into half a dozen languages: our users are in over 80 countries. Close to 20,000 developers use our products.

Diving straight into your core business (NsBasic). Tell us in a short form why the world needs yet another Basic clone!
Everyone knows Basic, for good reason. It has a gentle learning curve.
Beginning programmers can understand the concepts easily and create their first apps right away. Modern Basic implementations are well enough designed so that it is reasonable to do sophisticated applications.

Where do you see the main benefits for developers?
Ease of use and quick development are the main ones. We have had many reports of experienced C++ developers using NS Basic to put together a quick proof of concept: In a day or two, they have a workable prototype to show the customer. It often works out that there is no need to spend
2 more months recoding in C++.

On the other extreme, there are professionals in other fields that would like to develop apps for handheld devices. For example, many doctors have specific apps that would help them in their work. They’re smart people, and have learned a bit of programming on the way. They find NS Basic is just the tool for them to create apps.

How does NSBasic work? Do the programs compile to native code, or is a runtime needed?
There is a runtime, but we do our best to keep it in the background, so it isn’t a big deal. Nearly all apps have some sort of runtime these days, whether it is in form of libraries, DLL files or overlays.
Runtimes do not mean the app has to run more slowly: in fact, key code in our runtime is written in ARM assembler for peak performance. What they do is add a great deal of power: a single statement in NS Basic will replace pages of C++ coding.

You have a very strong market in the Palm OS sector. Where do you see the Palm OS going? Which platform(s) will dominate the market in a year’s worth of time?
Palm was a strong marketplace for us for many years. For Palm’s sake, I hope their new devices come out in a timely fashion and can wow the marketplace. We will certainly support them if they do.

NS Basic/Symbian OS already outsells NS Basic/Palm. We’re working hard to make it a great product: we think it will be an important part of our future.

Do you feel the US sub-prime crisis?
Not directly. It’s likely that the economic uncertainly is leading companies to put off new development projects, which will certainly affect us. It’s a worldwide affair this time, which is different from past downturns.

To what extent is NSBasic compatible with VB and/or AppForge?
NS Basic is a subset of VB, with extensions to take advantage of the mobile platform it runs on. The important things a VB programmer needs are all there – but there are a lot of specific and weird things in VB that didn’t really have a place on mobile devices. An obvious example is Windows specific features, that just do not exist on other operating systems such as Symbian OS.

AppForge was a strange case. Technically, it wasn’t great, but it had a big marketing budget. When that ran out, the company was gone: the licensing model was not friendly to its customers.

Many AppForge customers have converted to NS Basic: it is entertaining to read their comments:
http://www.nsbasic.com/palm/info/kudos5.html

You have recently expanded your reach across platforms – is porting an app significant effort for the developer?
Moving to a new platform is not new to us: Symbian OS is our fourth major platform.

For developers who use our tools, it’s not too bad. NS Basic/Palm apps move to Symbian OS usually with no changes at all. Of course, once you are there, it is tempting to make use of features that are specific to the new devices: better graphics, extra features, etc.

You still support Apple’s Newton – does it still pay? Furthermore: do you plan to go iPhone one day?
We still have a lot of affection for the Newton. We still sell the occasional copy of NS Basic/Newton. It’s an important platform in the history of mobile computing. You’d be surprised how many current developers of handheld devices started on the Newton. I think the devices we are seeing these days are finally beginning to realize the potential that the Newton introduced us to 15 years ago.

We actually have NS Basic/iPhone working:
http://cdn.smugmug.com/ria/ShizVidz-2008051501.swf

Under the terms of Apple’s iPhone SDK, tools such as NS Basic may not be released. If they should ever change this policy, we would love to release the product!

Anything you would like to add?
I think the next two years will be very interesting for developers. The iPhone changed the rules and everyone is still trying to catch up. It’s good to see touch screen S60 devices: now the software has to catch up.
Our tools have always been touch screen oriented, so we are ready for the fun!

NS Basic has a large and active user community. If you have questions about our product, let us know. We’ll be around to help, along with many of our other users.

Editors add due to overwhelming interest: in order to understand Rudolf’s position, please look at this article before reading the interview. It looks at HP’s strategy in some detail!

HP’s mobile strategy has recently left a few open questions in some analyst’s heads. As TamsPPC has had an excellent relationship with HP ever since we debuted on a rx4240, we proudly present you this interview with Rudolf Gruber.

Rudolf Gruber is the sales manager for mobile devices for HP Austria – he sat down with us for a no-holds-barred interview looking at topics like custom UI’s, PDAs, the future of touchscreen devices and Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrades.

A big thank-you goes out to him for taking the time!

Please tell us a bit more about yourself! (translated by editor)
I am at HPO since 1982. When HP was merged with Compaq in 2002, I became responsible for marketing the business line of mobile computing devices for the Austrian market. This means that I am responsible for iPaqs and business notebooks alike, and hope to be able to answer your questions well!

Let’s dive in head first: the 21x is a great PDA hampered by the lack of a Windows Mobile 6.1 upgrade. Readers are unhappy, as HP once was considered a “future-safe” investment. Could you shed some light on why there are no upgrades available?
HP is evaluating for all iPAQ platforms, what are the Pro & Cons for the customer to move to a new Windows Mobile version.

Taking Windows Mobile 6.1, the key improvements were rather relevant for the Smartphones (eg. UI, OTA device management), which are not of big value for pen/based PDAs. On top of that the 21x platform is mainly selling into Enterprise and MidMarket, where long life cycles and ROM stability are key influencers.

A big part of HPs enterprise customers are running their own applications on our pen/based products. Thats the reason why their are expecting platform stability for at least 2yrs.

In two years from now, do you still see HP producing PDA’s?
HP still has a very strong position in the PDA market, and even if this market is declining with almost 50% market share in EMEA thats definitely a business we will not step out shortterm. Nevertheless the focus for HP is clearly in the converged space.

Palm has enjoyed huge success with its ultra-cheap handhelds. Do you plan to do something similar / can something similar even be done with Windows Mobile?
Portfolio bandwidth including affordable price bands are major influencers in the Smart Mobile Device Market.

HP has launched two new smartphones on Oct 21 to expand the portfolio with a 20Key voice-centric smartphone and a large display slider device. With those new platforms we are covering multiple form factors for different customer segments also looking for different pricepoints.

(images added by editor)

HP’s phone products are notorious for their QVGA screens. Why doesn’t HP deploy higher-res screens?
HP is always evaluating new technologies. This also includes the evaluation of new screen technologies and new User Interfaces. Form factors are pretty much influencing the decision for a specific screensize.

For small screen sizes below 2.8″ only a limited number of customers are looking for high res screens, thats was the outcome of multiple focus groups we did.

Nevertheless for larger screens the future is highres, touchscreen and improved UI. HP is investing a lot in R&D for those areas to develop products, which are time to market in terms of latest technology, securing a superior user experience.

Looking at Windows Mobile: are you happy with the way the platform is developing currently?
The WM platform has massively evolved over the last couple of years and brings huge benefits in terms of end/to/end user experience for multiple target segments, not only for enterprise and midmarket customers.

Microsoft has put a lot of efforts to into the overall Messaging capabilities and integration into Microsoft backend systems.

Most manufacturers add a huge bunch of UI apps to their devices. HP does not – why?
HP is evaluating new user interfaces with a higher integration compared to what we do see today in the market. The benefit of a more graphical user interface is obvious, but it only makes sense, if such a user interface is fully embedded into the ROM and the key applications.

Where do you see WM two years from now? Do you think that the touchscreen-less WMS will survive?
Touchscreen based products are a big trend today and many new products came up and will come up in the future. This will surely be a growing market.

Nevertheless there is a big variety of form factor preferences in the market, which will also keep opportunities for non touchscreens.

How do you think that th mobile OS landscape will look in two years from now? In five?
For the evolution of mobile OS platforms, there are multiple influencers, GTM strategy, customer focus, ISVs, VARs, devices supporting those OS platforms etc.

As the Smart Mobile Device Market is still one of the fastest growing markets, there are a lot of new opportunities.

Each and every .NET CF developer is perfectly aware of the pains involved in obfuscating applications in order to keep their source code safe. ArianeSoft’s Pocket Programming Language is another development solution for PocketPC (it IMHO has quite a few advantages over .NET CF) – here’s what they have to say on security:

Please tell us a bit more about yourself
My name is Alain Deschenes, I live in Montreal, Quebec, Canada with my wife and daughter. I have been programming for the past 20 years. I started on an Apple IIGS in 1986 in Basic, then Pascal, Assembly, C and C++. I am the president of ArianeSoft Inc. and the author of PPL (Pocket Programming Language) and DataMite.

Do you consider piracy an important issue in the mobile computing space?
Yes. Most, if not all, mobile applications and games are cracked these days. It is a big problem. If a little company wants to stay alive and healthy, it needs to work on anti-piracy features in their programs.

Has ArianeSoft itself ever had piracy problems?
Yes, we are always working on tightening our security. We know we cannot win this game but at least we try. It is very unfortunate that people, even today, don’t realize that the sales we are loosing as a small company, really impacts on our future. The mobile community is like when I started on the Apple II, they were mostly small companies developing softwares. We have to work harder and protect our softwares better without causing too much troubles to our customers.

What does ArianeSoft do to help its customers stay safe?
We follow the warez scene closely and make sure our products stay protected, we have multiple methods for protecting them and change them every once in a while so that cracks only work for one version.

.NET CF has recently gotten under fire because applications created with it are easily disassembled. Is this possible with PPL, too?
Not unless you know how to. There are encryption, compression involved and then you need to know how the undocumented PPL’s bytecodes works. We are not saying it is impossible but until PPL really becomes a major player with critical applications developed with it, there should be no worries.

Does ArianeSoft plan to offer a “signed app” program in the future; thereby hindering pirates to run unsigned code on their machines?
No plans yet, maybe in the future.

Some developers have considered virii an effective deterrent to piracy. Do you think that their idea could work out theoretically?
I don’t think so. We need to protect the customers. We need to make sure the program is not going to think you are an illegal user and do something bad to your device or your data. The only thing your program should do in the event of piracy is stop functioning.

Do you think that device manufacturers are interested in reducing piracy?
I don’t think they care and they have no reasons to. They should care about making better devices and the software developers should worry about piracy. Unless they find a hardware solution to piracy, then that would be an amazing feature.

Will ArianeSoft ever offer a “disassembler” or release the specifications for its intermediate language to the public?
No.

Anything else you would like to add
We are starting work on version 2.0 of PPL. There is still a long road ahead but PPL 2.0 will bring major improvements to the visual form builder with a complete object-oriented control library. Thank you for considering us for an interview.

Resco Defender(aka tower defense for Windows Mobile) recently scored a rave review from TamsPPC. Due to our long-standing cooperation with Resco, I am proud to present you an exclusive interview with the game’s creator – enjoy:

Please tell us a bit more about yourself.
My name is Juraj Mojik and I am a game developer & programmer at Resco.net.

Have you designed other applications/games for mobile devices before?
I have designed and programmed these games for Resco – Seal Ball, Table Soccer, Diamonds and Defender. I also participated on Resco Brain Gain.

Where did you get the idea to create Defender?
Tower defense games are quite popular lately. It is because they are simple and very addictive. We have tried it on ourselves here at Resco so we know what we are talking about

After some research we found out, that there is no remake for Windows Mobile which fits our needs. So we decided to make our own concept.

What were the main issues you faced while bringing Tower Defence action to the PocketPC?
The issues are almost the same with any game idea that should be played on so many devices – how to make it look good on so many different display resolutions and orientations. We decided to make the whole game map visible all the time instead of scrolling a larger map. We had to layout the information and control elements in such a way, that the game view is maximized on every device.
– square screen

– portrait mode

– landscape mode

Also we had to think about the controls – stylus and keyboard – to make the game as easy to play as possible. The main goal was to keep it simple and fun.

The game’s enemy hoardes sometimes have really astonishing capabilities. How did you work out the balancing?
This is the work of my colleague Michal, who is also a graphic artist – he has spent hours playing Resco Defender and setting the stats for the enemies and the towers. He has set the Medium difficulty to be challenging for him and derived the other difficulties by weakening or strenghtening the enemy stats. He tried to set the game to be entertaining from the beginnig to the end so you have to build and upgrade towers at every level from 1 to 100. I think he was quite successful.

Why didn’t you include a dedicated set of levels/missions? A terrain editor?
We thought that the most entertaining way how to play tower defence games is the creative one – where you do not have a set of levels, but everything is up to you – how you build your maze.

What is your favourite ‘tower layout’? Why?
I prefer long horizontal lines from left to right. Only in the middle I create short vertical lines (arranged like teeth) so the enemies have to go around every top of a vertical line, where I position a boosted black magic tower – very effective for destroying ground enemies. I use almost every type of tower possible to create maximum efficiency:

What is your favourite tower? Your favourite creep?
My favorite tower is the Teleport tower, because wisely used it can have destructive effects. Also the overall graphic effect of this tower is nice.

My favorite creep is the pink one – which we call cloner – the one which when destroyed falls apart into four small ones. I like it because there is a lot of money for this one.

Can we expect a sequel?
We have a lot of interesting ideas, but only time (and success of the first one) will show if we make a sequel. But we would love to.

Anything you would like to add?
We love to hear from players that Resco Defender is entertaining and fun. Thank you for your support.

The Austrian Games convention recently offered us the opportunity to get a little interview with Thomas Kritsch from Microsoft Austria. Thomas is the marketing manager for the XBOX platform – and spoke a bit about the XBOX 360 and a lot on mobile devices/gaming – enjoy(picture courtesy of abc texte/Dr. Doris Maria Kohrs)!

What should my readers, who own an XBox 360, do now?
If the console is defective, contact customer care. The console will be picked up, fixed and returned for the next 3 years in Austria…

Should consoles be sent to service preventively?
Not every console is defective. If you have a console at home, it can work well. If it breaks, see above…

As far as I know, the XBox and the PPC both run in the same department at Microsoft’s. Is there any collaboration?
No. The XBox is in Entertainment/Devices department, a department responsible for Games4Windows, the XBox and Microsoft’s mice/keyboards/… . As for the PPC, no idea to whom that belongs…but it isn’t in my department.

Why doesn’t Microsoft attempt to converge Games4Windows to PPC?
We license our games out, but have no own development for mobile games. Stuff like Ages of Empire can be licensed.

How are these licenses given out? Flatfee or profit cut?
Sorry, this is not my department. Out licensing department can decide what’s best on a per-game base, and the results are not being published!

So a house can just walk up?
Yes. Go to licensing and tell us what you want to do…

As for the Zune, will there be games?
No! The Zune is a dedicated media player that is NOT programmable. It is a media player and does nothing else.

Do you plan such an interface?
Can’t say as of now (giggles).

Do you plan to integrate PPC and Zune somewhat? Where is the difference between a 16GB rx4240 and a small Zune? Won’t they converge as SD cards get bigger?
The difference is, that the Zune is intended for people who do NOT need the PocketPC UI. They want media and that’s it – and that’s what the Zune UI is developed for!

Will Zune maybe converge in an “iPhoneish” fashion?
The brand Zune will remain independent. However, we can always expand the Zune functionality later…

What OS is the Zune based on? WM or another RTOS?
No idea. This is information that also won’t be released. The UI needs to work – and that’s it.

ArianeSoft managed to create quite a splash with its recent discount on its PPL programming language. However, little was known about PPL except its price – and this is where we dug in. Read on for an interesting interview about PPL’s history and its future roadmap!

Please tell us more about you and your company
My name is Alain Deschenes, I started programming at the age of 12 around 1986. I started on an Apple IIGS with AppleSoft Basic and 65c02 assembly. I then moved on to a Mac IIvx and worked with it for a couple years learning Pascal, C and 68000 assembly. In the early 90’s I started working on the PC and moved from there to Borland C and Borland Delphi.
From my early days of programming, I was passionated about programming languages. I wrote a few basic interpreters back then, I had a facility learning all kind of new languages from Lisp, Python, Forth, Cobol and so on.

In 1995, I started working for a company called Megadata Group Inc. in Montréal, Québec. They just started working in the EDI (Electronic Data
Interchange) field. The main bulk of our business was with accounting packages that we wrote modules for in Cobol. Then in 1998, they offered me to write a custom EDI software that we’ve called MegaEDI. As of today I am still working full time at this place and still working on MegaEDI.
I wrote the whole thing in Borland Delphi 5.

ArianeSoft Inc. was officially in business in April 2006. The main motivation behind ArianeSoft is to provide people with great softwares at an affordable cost. I also do custom programming for business of any kind. I haven’t put much effort into this aspect of the business yet since most of my time was dedicated to PPL. I have done a few contracts for a medical clinic and am looking forward doing more custom programming in the future.

What was the motivation to create PPL? How do you position yourself in comparison to .NET and native C++ development?
In January 2004, I started working on PPL as a side project. I have had a few Palm’s and PocketPC’s at that time and they were either hard to programmed with or require expensive softwares. The solutions offered were either very slow or required big runtime libraries. PPL was a great opportunity for me to learn programming on the PocketPC’s and put my knowledge of writing compiler/interpreter to use. The idea of programming easily on these little devices and be able to do so on the road was one of the main goals of PPL. In April 2004, I released the first beta of PPL on PocketMatrix.com and kept on releasing more and more betas until September 2006 when I decided it was time for PPL to hit 1.0.

I have always dream about writing my own RPG one day and having a nice Ultima-like RPG on the PocketPC/Smartphone is still one I cherish to this day (I know I am old school for games). There are no programming language that offers an easy 2D game creation toolkit in a professional development environment for the PocketPC, Embedded Visual C++ is the only solution for some serious game programming but it is not easy to learn and you need external graphic libraries. Game programming requires way more than just a graphic library, you need physics, sprite functions, particles, music and so much more. PPL combines most of these into one small package.

PPL has not been put together to compete with the likes of Microsoft because it simply cannot. It is mainly a one man’s project. I simply wanted to offer a nice complete all-in-one alternative to the big programming environments.

Another goal of PPL was simplicity and the small size. PPL is small, very small. In one 1 mb file, you get a fast compiler, interpreter with no variable types, object-oriented syntax, garbage collection, complete graphic engine, particle engine, sprite engine, music engine, cross-platform easy assembler, hundreds of built-in functions, encryption and compression functions and I forget so much right now.

I believe PPL offers the easy the simplicity of .NET. .NET seems like a nice platform, I have never gotten into it much because C/C++ offers what I need, I need speed of execution. I don’t like the idea of having runtime libraries (VB) when I program. Now that most WM devices will include .NET frameworks I am starting to like the solution a little more.

How fast is PPL compared to .NET and C++ apps?
PPL is an interpreted language written by a small company. It won’t ever compete the likes of .NET and C++. Yes, .NET is interpreted too but the the amount of people behind this project is huge compared to PPL. C++ is extremely fast. On the other hand PPL compares favorably to Perl, Lua and most smaller programming language. PPL offers an easy cross-platform assembly language called PASM which dynamically compiles to machine bytecodes to help you when you need raw speed. I plan on using PASM to build version 2.0 of PPL.

Do PPL apps need an extra runtime library? If yes, how big is this library?
No, it is all included in the executable files you created with PPL. One of the main goal of PPL was to stay away as much as possible from external runtime libraries. The nice thing about PPL is the fact that you can create very small .ppc files (compiled bytecodes files) that you can use directly with the PPL.EXE program. You can always compile pieces of code and attach .ppc files together when you need it at runtime. You can distribute PPL projects as either an executable file or as a group of .ppc files along with the PPL.EXE file.

Do you need to pay a license fee on a per-pcs basis when applications created in PPL get sold?
No, PPL is license free for shareware and freeware softwares. Commercial applications of PPL are subject to licensing but this is on a per case basis.

Could you maybe name a few ‘big’ apps written in PPL? Which PPL apps are you especially proud of?
PPL is still young, it will take a little more time until we see something big coming out but there are a few that have made the news.
The iPhone “emulator” for the PocketPC was written in PPL, the original one, the one you first saw on Youtube in April 2007. The best examples of what can be achieve with PPL are the Editor and Visual Form Builder that were written and maintained by Brad Manske. People are starting to come out with some nice applications written in PPL and cannot wait to see what will be coming out in the future.

Many developers were recently left sitting in the rain as AppForge went belly-up. What can you offer developers to ‘migitate’ the single-source problematic?
PPL is growing every month. More people are moving to it and even big companies are starting to find an interest in it. I am working hard on creating a community behind PPL. I think this is what will keep it alive through the years. Customer service is our top priority, our forums are a live proof of this. I have invested so much time of my life into PPL that there is no turning back for me, I will see PPL become an official alternative to the big names. I have some big plans for future versions that I am very exited about.

Do you plan to support any additional platforms? Symbian or Palm OS maybe?
I am focusing on WM platforms for now. The Smartphone is a huge market right now, I want to concentrate on it. In version 2.0 I plan on adding more platforms.

Which mobile OS do you expect to dominate the market in 5 years?
I am not in a position to predict things but from what I see, Windows Mobile is gearing up to be a leader if Microsoft put the efforts needed into it. It has the potential but still need some work. The diversity of options you find in these devices is what will remain attractive to customers.

Anything you would like to add?
I hope programmers will give PPL a try, join us at http://www.arianesoft.ca/forum.php. We are very dedicated to our products.

It’s vacation time finally…time to chill out, relax and have fun! For me, vacation time always means looking at loads and loads of new apps for my handhelds – after all, nothing beats a few rounds of a cool game after work.

Anyways, the discount code HOLIDAYTIME gets you 20% off all Palm OS and PocketPC software in the TamsShop for a week from now – have great fun shopping!