[Chinookman]

Sure hope you're right. If I see another "lack of apps thread" I am going to shoot myself.

pu-leeze DON't do it Forrest you just KNOW it's gonnah happen...

[kennyliu]

Thanks for the post, OP. I really hope that your predictions will come into fruition soon. It's hard to see that such a great platform is suffering from the vicious cycle created by low demand and developer apathy.

Anyway, since you obviously know about developing,

1) do you know how the Cascades framework compares in resource intensiveness and stability to Air and WebWorks?

2) can we expect background services with the release of the Cascades framework?

Thanks.

[biggulpseh]

Thanks for the post, OP. I really hope that your predictions will come into fruition soon. It's hard to see that such a great platform is suffering from the vicious cycle created by low demand and developer apathy.

Anyway, since you obviously know about developing,

1) do you know how the Cascades framework compares in resource intensiveness and stability to Air and WebWorks?

2) can we expect background services with the release of the Cascades framework?

Thanks.

Yeah no problem, hope you enjoyed it.

To answer your questions, the ability of the NDK to handle multithreading and hardware acceleration makes it less resource intensive than the AIR runtime, but it all depends on what you're doing with your app. We'll have to see if RIM decides to use Stage3D in the AIR runtime in the future which, but either way, you'll always have that extra level of the runtime when you use AIR, so it will always bog the OS down. I'm not really an HTML5 guy, but I think there's a few tricks you have to pull to get hw acceleration working smoothly with transform3d and stuff, whereas with Cascades it would all be automatic, so again Cascades should ultimately be easier for devs to increase stability.

I'm pretty sure background services will be worked into the BB10 SDKs in some fashion. The new messages apps already have them so I don't see why those APIs wouldn't be available to devs. There's a lot of working going on to more or less eliminate or restructure the OPEN/CLOSED paradigm of apps we have now. From what I understand they're calling this 'BlackBerry Flow', and more information should be available at BlackBerry World/BB10 Jam.

[hurds]

crazy thing is not so long ago RIM was just making pagers.

[FSeverino]

I realize this probably wasn't what you were trying to say there, but my answer to what you did ask is: no time at all... immediately.

That's when we'll start making all the apps...

When will we finish? Now that's a more interesting question. :-)

Developers are, as a whole, pretty creative people. I don't plan to take more than a few weeks to rewrite my existing apps, once we have Cascades available in an adequate state, and would also be working on 2-3 new ones immediately.

Note that there are a few key things we don't know yet:

1. Will the first beta actually be fully functional for the core stuff we've been missing?

2. When will we be able to post Cascades apps in App World for users to download?

I'm guessing that what we'll have after the Jam will address #1 pretty well, though since it's a beta everyone should anticipate some ongoing tweaks and improvements in the APIs for a few months afterwards.

As for #2, I have no real idea. Those attending the Jam are supposed to get "BB10 Dev Alpha" devices (which some of us believe are basically the "Colt" phone prototypes that employees were testing last year, repurposed for the BB10 beta program for developers). Will those be the only way, in the short term, to run Cascades apps?

Will there also be a simulator available right away (or ever)?

Will we be able to deliver apps for the PlayBook immediately, but with deployment requiring us to bundle approximately 15-20MB of library code with each app?

Will current PlayBook users have to install another beta OS to be able to run our initial releases? Or will the Cascades beta code be bundled in a 2.1 update and available already in May?

Or (worst case for everyone) will nobody except developers with Alphas be able to run BB10/Cascades apps until much later in the year, when an OS update will be available with all the libraries included on the device?

I don't think they've said, though I'm extremely anxious to learn some answers.

Thats what i mean. How long will it take from 'HERE IS WHAT YOU NEED' until 'HERE IS OUR APP IN APP WORLD'

lol

[gtiffany]

This has been a very interesting thread. Thanks, OP. I've never known what goes into building an app, so this has been somewhat enlightening. Wish we would see more informative posts like this on the site. Keep up the good work!

[lnichols]

I hope you are right. RIM's slow implementation has worn a lot of patience thin. A year after release and we are still being told to be patient, it is coming, it will be awesome, etc.

[markbb99]

There was a poor selection of apps at launch - but then it was all going to be wonderful with 2.0 and it was going to be so easy for Android apps to be ported over. Still waiting.
I'm sorry - but as much as I love my BB 9900 and every BB I've owned before that, the Playbook just doesn't have the apps to match the iPad and Android. Even the main apps available on the BB handsets aren't available on the PB - why wouldn't RIM even make the apps they develop for the handsets available on the PB? I'm not talking about 100 fart apps - but the basics. It's always coming soon...

[Gouk]

Retweet heh3

You should not. We have different perspectives, you are a dev, I am a user.

As a dev I would encourage you to continue improve your app, because I think BB10 will be great and successful. As a user the year 2013 is not on my horizon.

[smartie88]

I hope they will have Chinese IME

[markbb99]

crazy thing is not so long ago RIM was just making pagers.

Yeah - that's pretty crazy

2003 RIM released the first Smartphone. 9 years is a long time in this market.

[omniusovermind]

Thank you so much for this post biggulpseh, I actually learned quite a few things I always wondered about but never knew. For example, I've never liked the appearance of adobe air apps, but never knew why so many PB apps are written with it until now. This news is almost too good. Too good because now I'm going to be very impatient for all of this to unfold into noticeable changes
You gave me something cool to look forward to though.

[yanicmb]

im not going to lie but to this post really did make me feel alot better and anxious for may to see if they go further on this cascades/tat thing, but you my friend just eased a bit of the frustration i have been having with the playbook and the app selection, thanks for posting

[smartie88]

Sure hope you're right. If I see another "lack of apps thread" I am going to shoot myself.

If RIM cannot deliver, then you will see more that kind posts,so take care,my friend

[berry4life99]

For accuracy's sake, I'll point out there certainly was bias in that first post.

From a semantic standpoint, yes. but the poster probably just meant there was less vitriol than usual about apps or the lack thereof.

[mikeplus1]

crazy thing is not so long ago RIM was just making pagers.

Yeah, but it was a two way pager with email and about the same time Apple introduced the iMac and their Apple Online Store, rest is history as they say.

[markbb99]

If RIM cannot deliver, then you will see more that kind posts,so take care,my friend

Indeed - that is the reality of the situation. This Cascades magic should have happened 18 months ago... Oh wait 2.0 was going to fix the app issue...

[Jamaicangirl81]

i hope all this is true... i look forward to this

[narci]

They have not said that.

If I were speculating (and all of us are when talking about this), I'd say that we'll see Cascades in a form that lets developers release apps for the PlayBook quite a while before BB10 is actually released.

I expect we'll see either a beta OS with Cascades support in it, or simply an update to the regular OS (2.1 perhaps) which itself has beta Cascades support in it, matching what developers will begin working with in May after the BB10 Jam.

That would allow us actually to release our Cascades apps, which ultimately is the only way to get serious feedback to us and to RIM, which I believe is the intention so that it will all be fairly mature by the time BB10 itself arrives.

http://m.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/tablets/rim-confirms-bb10-is-coming-to-blackberry-playbook-1071018

"We've said publicly a number of times that our first BB10 handset will be available towards the end of 2012, and that's still firmly the case," Rob Orr, RIM's VP of product management told us.

"At some point after the launch we'll bring BB10 to our PlayBooks, yes."

[omniusovermind]

Indeed - that is the reality of the situation. This Cascades magic should have happened 18 months ago... Oh wait 2.0 was going to fix the app issue...

OK I'm a little confused now. If they've been working on and knew about this cascades stuff since MWC 2011, how and why did the idea of an Android emulator come into the picture? I'm not posting a statement Btw, I'm genuinely curious.

[lotuslanderz]

Indeed - that is the reality of the situation. This Cascades magic should have happened 18 months ago... Oh wait 2.0 was going to fix the app issue...

RIM did not own TAT (the makers of Cascades) 18 months ago.

[swyost]

Long winded justifications for a lack of apps, laced with some rose colored glasses optimism, doesn't change the fact that the apps situation is just about at the same level as that for the TouchPad which is a cancelled product. No one should need to "be patient" and wait for a business to deliver on its advertising for a product that has been out for over a year. RIM is not a troubled friend or family member about whom one needs to show kindness or patience. It is a business that shipped a flawed product out of the gate lacking basic features of the cheapest android tablets, and has not yet met some pretty minimal thresholds for app coverage. If RIM really took the "if you build it they will come" approach, meaning they had not locked up key developers from the start, they are owed absolutely no patience from any paying customer. BTW, if anyone really thinks that Adobe is working on a new Playbook version of the Acrobat Reader, they need to wake up because it is just a dream. Adobe put the absolute minimum amount of effort into the Playbook Acrobat Reader, as they do for almost very platform whether successful or unsuccessful. Again, even the TouchPad version is more complete, and has even been updated a couple times.

[egarcia75]

I�m in Mexico, I my self came back from Iphone to BB and if all this is true of course I can wait for all the changes to come!!! By the way I love my 9900, yeah!!

[StanWiz]

All I can say is I'll believe it when I see it.

[pkcable]

They already have.

Oh, an in before the lock....this thread is just too damn positive.

This pun is getting REAL stale!