RubyMotion brings serious Ruby development to the iOS world

For the past several months I’ve been involved with, but unable to publicly discuss, an exciting project called RubyMotion. My friend Laurent Sansonetti, creator of MacRuby, has now officially launched a serious alternative to Objective-C for iPhone and iPad development. RubyMotion is not a bridge; it actually generates native applications that are as fast as the ones written in Objective-C . You can check...

Mobile Development Marketshare Among Hacker News’ Participants

Yesterday I ran a poll amongst Hacker News participants in which I asked them to indicate which mobile platforms they develop for. Here are the results for the first 24 hours, in chart format, of that poll. Keep in mind that participants were allowed to select more than one platform if they develop for more than one. I’m very much impressed by the number of people developing for Android. Not far off from...

Programming in Objective-C, 3rd Edition is out

Addison-Wesley quietly released the third edition of their Programming in Objective-C book (USA | UK | Canada). I own the first edition of the book and it’s stellar, so I’m really looking forward to reading this upgraded version which includes the latest changes to the language, the main IDE (XCode), and the Foundation framework for developing Mac, iPad, and iPhone...

Would you use a Mac mini as your development machine?

Apple just released a brand new, gorgeous looking Mac mini. This major upgrade brings us two different models: a desktop one and a server version (priced at $699 and $999, respectively). Equipped with a HDMI port, the desktop edition of the Mac mini makes for a perfect Home Theater PC. It’s small and stylish, and as such is a great fit in your living room. Most of the reviews I’ve read focus on its use...

Web or iPhone OS applications to make money?

If you are a developer who’s interested in starting a new business or even just earning extra cash on the side, you have a few options that can lead to scalable profits and passive income. The most popular choices these days are SaaS (Software as a Service) and iPhone/iPad development. Choosing web application or iPhone OS development is a matter of personal taste, skills, goals, technical requirements, and...