Delphi XE

This one has to be top of the list. Shout it from the rooftops. Embarcadero have released a new version of Delphi (along with their other dev tools). They've decided to name the new version Delphi XE instead of continuing their previous naming convention and calling it Delphi 2011. This did initially make me think that they were releasing a free 'Express Edition' version, but sadly it's not. I'll always have a soft spot for Delphi as it's the tool that I started out my professional career developing with and here at MSM, we are one of only a few companies still offering Delphi development services and support for existing Delphi applications.
Details of the new release can be found at: http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi

Windows Phone 7

I seem to be mentioning Windows Phone 7 every month, which shows that Microsoft's marketing is working well! Everything I've seen about the platform does look quite impressive, but I have to say that I'm honestly not that interested in getting a Windows Phone. Microsoft are just far too late to market on this one, I don't see how they can catch up with the big players. Anyway, Microsoft have released the production version of the Windows Phone 7 developer tools, which means the platform is ready to go and we'll be seeing handsets appearing very soon. To celebrate their achievement, staff who worked on the project had some kind of Windows Phone parade through Microsoft's campus at Redmond. The key comedy moment was when they carried a giant 'dead' iPhone as if at a funeral. Oh dear. Who in their right mind thinks that the release of Windows Phone 7 is going to kill off the iPhone? Well, details can be found here:
http://techflash.com/seattle/2010/09/windows_phone_marked_with_thriller_dance_pallbearers_carrying_iphone.html

IE9 Beta

Another important release from Microsoft this month was the release of IE9 beta. IE9 has much better support for web standards so developers like us will be able to write our web applications so that they work across all the major browsers without having to make customisations specific to IE. This would mean that developing a web application would be cheaper. If only everyone using IE would upgrade to IE9 once it's released but I suspect IE6 will be with us for some time yet.

One of the key new features that Microsoft are making a big song and dance over is that they've written IE9 to take advantage of modern graphics hardware:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/09/10/the-architecture-of-full-hardware-acceleration-of-all-web-page-content.aspx
They claim that IE is the only browser that does this, something that the Firefox developers dispute somewhat:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2010/09/wrong_wrong_wrong.html

66% of All Windows Users Still Use Windows Xp

All this talk of new versions of IE making our web developers' jobs easier is great, but sadly IE9 won't be coming to Windows XP and according to a recent survey, 66% of all Windows users are still running Windows XP:
http://slashdot.org/story/10/10/03/1240252/66-of-All-Windows-Users-Still-Use-Windows-XP
Looks like we'll be having to add IE6/7/8 specific customisations for some time to come.

Flash and Apple…Again

Want to hear more about the tedium that is Apple vs Adobe? Sure, why not. I came across this article recently that discusses the statistics behind some claims about Apple's market share and the relevance of Flash on the web. It does put things in perspective a bit. I have to say, I do love the last sentence of the article.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/09/21/apple-v-adobe-some-surprising-statistics/
As some of the comments on the article point out, the statistics gathered are US-centric and historically mobile phone users in the US use mobile data services less than say the European or Far East markets, so as usual the stats have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Also, Apple recently relaxed restrictions on developing applications for the iPhone and iPad. Previously, developers could only use Apple's tools and no others, but now developers can develop applications in C# using MonoTouch (http://monotouch.net/) or using the latest version of Flash:
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/apple-relaxes-ios-development-tool-restrictions-app-review-guidelines-released-2010099/.  This should reduce the cost of building Enterprise applications with iPhone support.

 Jon Stace
15/10/2010