[Qt-interest] Qt as true mobile multi-platform framework.

[Constantin Makshin]

On Monday 08 November 2010 17:59:27 David Ching wrote:
> "Constantin Makshin"  wrote in message 
> news:201011061155.18370.cmakshin at gmail.com...
> >Windows 7 is Tier 1 if MSVC 2008 is used to compile Qt and its 
> >applications.
> > It's "Windows 7 - MSVC 2010" combination that's Tier 2. Considering a 
> > critical
> > bug in MSVC2010 64-bit compiler 
> > (http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com/browse/QTBUG-11445)
> > that was fixed in the end of September, "Tier 2" status of MSVC 2010 
> > doesn't look so surprising.
> 
> Yes, thank you for the correction.  Nevertheless, it was some months after 
> Windows 7 was released following a very long RC process that went very 
> smoothly that it became Tier 1 in Qt.  Too long in my view.
Windows 7 was released in October, 2009 (July for the RTM build). That's between Qt 4.6.3 and 4.7.0 releases.
Since it might be a bit strange to release Qt 4.6.4 just to add Windows 7 to the list of supported platforms (even if you think that such change is small enough for a patch release) and that bug of MSVC 2010 compiler, I guess that delay was acceptable. Moreover, nothing prevented you from using Qt on Win7 before it got official support.

> > And Android port, I think, would be in Tier 3.
> > Also, Android and, especially, iPhone are in the same situation — they 
> > both
> > are products of Nokia's direct competitors. It's sad, but understandable, 
> > that a
> > commercial company doesn't want to put effort and money into support of
> > competing products.
> 
> Well, another view is Nokia could get a lot of developers onto their brand 
> new phones for free if Qt targeted Android and iPhone too.  Developers have 
> more incentive to develop for these established platforms (more users = more 
> dollars), but if all they had to do was rebuild and re-test to target Nokia, 
> they would probably do that.  It depends whether Nokia feels they have more 
> product differentiation on their phones or on their programming development!
Qt is open-source and there are community-made ports to Android and iOS. And, AFAIK, nobody said Nokia is going to reject patches (merge requests) that would make those ports' life easier. So, to be honest, I don't see *that* big problem here.

And again — IMHO, asking Nokia to officially support Android and, especially, iOS is like asking Google/Apple to make their products available on Symbian/Maemo/MeeGo. While Google may accept such idea because mobile devices isn't its [primary] business, trying to convince Apple that they should support Nokia is... hmm... strange, to say at least.

> -- David
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