There is an interesting conversation taking place over on Bob Keeney’s blog regarding REALbasic and the iPhone.
Paradigma Software has had a Valentina Client for the iPhone for almost a year, and while its seen some use, I often feel that just having it has helped bring new customers to use Valentina DB who have no intention of using Valentina for the iPhone.
A lot of folks commenting know REAL Software – the company – very well. Maybe too well. Supporting the iPhone sounds like a monumental task, and you’ve been waiting a long, long time for Cocoa support and that’s likely come at some cost. You don’t want to go through that with iPhone support.
But at the end of the day, a company closely associated with the Mac – and therefore Apple – must have an iPhone strategy, or they will see their customers move development to a tool that supports both. Runtime Revolution has already announced a mobile strategy for Runrev and in preparation for a mobile strategy. Unity, a popular 3D development system – dropped their basic product to free but charges a professional level of pricing for iPhone compatibility (they use Mono on desktops and generate Objective-C based projects for compilation to iPhone).
So I have to agree with Geoff Perlman of REAL Software – REAL must have a significant iPhone strategy or they will not be able to evolve with the market.
