Good news everyone!

Simon “Is-he-actually-human?” Stuart and Jamie ”Something pithy” Ingilby are hosting the next episode of the Podcast at Delphi.org. The bad news to this is that your regular host, Jim McKeeth, will not be hosting. However, all is not lost! For the 50th Episode of the Podcast at Delphi.org it has been decided that the tables should be turned on Jim and that he should be answering questions instead of asking them!

As such we would like any and all questions that you might have for Jim, on his development philosophies, his role with RemObjects Software and indeed anything else you may care to ask. Please add your questions on the uservoice page.

Accepting questions until May 4th.

Somehow all the episode links were lost. I rolled back to an earlier backup of the database but that didn’t fix it. Instead I manually restored all the episode links. Enjoy!

Another combined episode with RemObjects Radio (we will have our own episodes again soon).  In this episode I talk with marc hoffman, Olaf Monien and Daniel Magin about the upcoming Developer Solutions Conference in Las Vegas for this February 2011.  There is a discount code good through Christmas on the site.  This is a really exciting conference.  It is the first joint conference with RemObjects and Developer Experts.  We are re-inventing the conference to degree.  The idea with the Developer Solutions Conference is to have all the sessions tightly coupled for a specific objective.  The objective this time around is introducing developers to cross platform and mobile application development, specifically with multi-tier database applications.  It will be a great conference and I look forward to seeing you all there.

The call for papers for the 5th CodeRage virtual conference is out.  Deadline for papers is August 17th, and the conference is scheduled for October 4th – 8th.  It isn’t a hard and fast rule, but generally speaking CodeRage is pretty close to the release of the new version of Delphi, not that anyone will be surprised by that time frame.

My question is, do most people who attend CodeRage also attend EKON or Delphi Live!, or is it a different crowd?  I ask if people will be offended if some of my sessions are recycled. . . .  Although I am sure I will have something new too.  It is all just too exciting to not put something new together.

Delphi Live! debuted in 2009, and it was a hit. So much so they are doing it again. Great line up of speakers.
I have 3 sessions planned for this year:

• Silverlight in Delphi Prism – Both a half day workshop and a regular session
• Delphi Bots Live!  - Using Delphi Prism and Unreal Tournament to create bots to battle it out in 3D

I hope to see you all there August 23-26th down in San Jose, CA.

Also, EKON 14 has their speaker list up now too.  They have sessions in both English and German.  I will have 4 English sessions there:

• Advanced Downloads – Great session on downloads and file transfers
• Silverlight in Delphi Prism – Again with a half day workshop or regular session
• Delphi Prism half day workshop

That is September 27th through 30th in Darmstadt, Germany.

I am sure I will see a few of you in both places, but it will be great to see you at whichever one is closer to you.  I will be updating the titles and descriptions soon, and have some good preview information available for you as well.

I planned to have David I’s interview posted over the weekend, but it might not be available until tomorrow.  However I wanted to get a post in to let you know that tomorrow is the start of DataRage 2.  If you are working with Databases then check it out.  I am not presenting this year, but I am sure there is other good sessions.

Primoz is a long time Delphi developer as well as writer for The Delphi Magazine, Monitor and Blaise Pascal magazines.  You may know him from his blog TheDelphiGeek.com or his OmniThreadLibrary for threading in Delphi.  You can also find his articles at 17th Elephant and he is on Stack Overflow.

• We discuss Delphi Mac support
• Delphi Garbage Collection
• 64-Bit Delphi
• The OmniThreadLibrary
• and more!

I need your questions for an upcoming interview with Nick Hodges, the Delphi & RAD Studio R&D Manager with Embarcadero Technologies. Leave them as a comment to this message and then listen to his answers in our next episode.

Comments closed in preparation for interview.  Thanks to all who commented!

There has been a lot of fuss lately about the lack of openness on apple’s platform.  There is still time for things to change, and hopefully this ends as a win for developers and consumers, but unless Apple changes their tune there will be no winners, only losers.

The general consensus among the developers falls into two camps:

1. Apple should open their platform and let people develop however they want.
2. Objective-C and XCode is all roses, why use anything else?

Personally I fall in the first camp (which you probably guessed from my opening paragraph.)  I think it would be great if Apple’s platforms were open and I could use most any tool as long as I called the correct API and use the right UI controls.

At the same time I disagree with those who believe laws should be passed, or lawyers retained to regulate how open Apple makes their platform, all in the name of freedom.  I’ve got news for you, freedom means Apple can decide to not have an open platform.

I may disprove of Apple’s actions, but I will defend their right to do it.  That is what is known as freedom, and I will not give up freedom for the benefit of openness.  If I want openness to be an option in the future, then that means allowing Apple the freedom to have a closed platform today.

Giving up freedom for openness means loosing both.

Voltaire wrote “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too,” which Evelyn Beatrice Hall summarized as “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Ben Franklin said “Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power,” which was later paraphrased as “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

Seeking to take away Apple’s freedom for the sake of openness is to sacrifice the very freedom that allows others to make open platforms.  So if we take away that freedom and we give up our freedom to be open.

I’ll just remind you of Hodges 1st Law before someone makes another car analogy, they don’t work anyway.

Apple announced their new iPhone SDK and license agreement today. Part of the change in the license agreement to use the SDK and publish apps to the app store includes

Changing Section 3.3.1 from:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.

To now read:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

This is most likely the latest volley in Apples war against Adobe Flash, since Adobe announced that their new Flash Studio would include the ability to translate Flash applications into iPhone applications.  A lot of people are also saying that this will kill MonoTouch (which allows C# and Delphi Prism iPhone development).

I checked Miguel de Icaza’s twitter stream to see his take on this.

Someone suggested that maybe MonoTouch add an option to generate Objective C for X Code to compile, to which Miguel responded:

MonoTouch already has an option to compile to C + XCode, just call mtouch –xcode program.exe

Then TheZDuck asked:

@migueldeicaza I just saw this. Does this mean the end of MonoTouch!? http://bit.ly/cT2Zyn

Which seems to be a pretty direct question, and Miguel responded:

nope.

Sure, it would have been nice if he elaborated more, but it is a direct answer.

Earlier in the day Miguel tweeted:

Started work on iPhoneOS 4.0 support in MonoTouch.

Miguel is on the beta and has Novell’s legal department to pour over the license agreement, so he has more information then those who are speculating wildly about the end of MonoTouch.  So go back to learning and using Delphi Prism and MonoTouch.  You iPhone and iPad apps are safe for now.  It would appear Apple doesn’t hate MonoTouch as much as it hates Flash.