Migrating iPhone Applications to Windows Phone 7

I recently entertained a number of iPhone developers at Microsoft. The meetup I spoke to was the Silicon Valley iPhone Meetup. You can read more about the meetup here.

Meetup for iPhone at Microsoft

The goals of this post are simple. The future is pretty clear. We know a few things. There are over 4.5 billion mobile devices. According to Gartner, sales are growing rapidly.

Why the massive growth in the mobile space?

Phones today are more powerful than the Apollo spacecraft that went to the moon. Phones today can run powerful applications that were impossible just a few years ago. Core memory of the Apollo spacecraft was 2048 words or 4096 bytes. Today’s Windows Phone 7 has a minimum requirement of 256,000,000 bytes of main memory.

Flurry has reported very bullish numbers

The Nokia relationship with Microsoft has changed the way developers view revenue potential writing software for the Windows Phone 7 device.

It is obvious that good tooling can make your ideas easier to realize and implemented. However, lets be mindful that the entrepreneurial spirit is really what drives developers.

The steps for Windows Phone 7 are almost identical.

Both platforms (iOS and WP7) offer excellent resources for developers. I recommend downloading the Windows Phone 7 Training Kit. It contains a huge amount of excellent resources. Tool Environment XCode iOS Visual Studio Windows Phone 7     All the tools, training kits, SDKs are free from Microsoft. I recommend the training kit above. I also recommend going here, location of the free tools: https://create.msdn.com There is some guidance specifically for iPhone devs: https://www.msdev.com/phone/iphone.aspx There is some real advantages using a managed language to write code. Here are some advantages: Feature Value Memory Management Don't worry about memory management. Garbage collector saves you from leaks. Built in Indexers To help with list iteration and property getting. No crazy typecasting It isn't possible to declare any type of pointer as assign it to any allocated address or cast it to any other type. C# allows only type-safe casting. Generic Types Allows template classes to remain type-safe at compile time Avoid Accidental Memory Corruption Bounds checking is performed for managed arrays automatically More types Such as the Decimal type Reflection Allows object metadata to be explored during run time.     I don’t dare put names on this image. With that said, I will demonstrate Windows Phone 7 leveraging Declarative Markup and High Level Procedural Language, and Advanced tooling, Cloud integration. Some iPhone to WP7 Resources Jesse Liberty - MVC to MVVM - Key Patterns https://jesseliberty.com/2010/09/04/iphone-to-windows-phone-7-diving-deeper/ How to make the move: iPhone to WP7 https://t3kd.com/blog/2010/11/29/how-to-make-the-move-iphone-to-wp7/ Repository and discussion for tutorial series An iPhone Developer's Guide To Windows Phone 7 Programming https://i2w.codeplex.com/ Getting your app into the Marketplace Registration Walkthrough https://create.msdn.com/home/about/developer_registration_walkthrough Windows Phone 7 Application Certification Guide https://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9730558 Application Submission Walkthrough https://create.msdn.com/home/about/app_submission_walkthrough Frequently asked questions https://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/faq Some great internal links: Catalog – Code Samples https://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/ Support and Feedback https://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/feedback Roadmap – Great links to learning https://create.msdn.com/en-us/education/roadmap Downloads - Developer Tooling https://create.msdn.com/en-us/resources/downloads Official MSDN Library documentation https://create.msdn.com/en-us/education/documentation Partner offerings https://create.msdn.com/en-us/resources/partners Developer talks https://create.msdn.com/en-us/education/talks Academia https://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/academia Some useful books: Book; Foundation Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight (Foundations) https://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Expression-Blend-Silverlight-Foundations/dp/1430219505/ C# 3.0 Cookbook, Third Edition: More than 250 Solutions https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/orm-9780596516109-03.aspx C# 3.0 Design Patterns: Use the Power of C# 3.0 to Solve Real-World Problems https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/orm-9780596527730-01.aspx C# 3.0 in a Nutshell, Third Edition: A Desktop Quick Reference https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/orm-9780596527570-03.aspx Essential C# 3.0 for .NET Framework 3.5, Mark Michaelis https://www.amazon.com/Essential-3-0-NET-Framework-3-5/dp/0321533925/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264528696&sr=1-1%20 Essential LINQ https://www.amazon.com/Essential-LINQ-Charlie-Calvert/dp/0321564162 Essential Silverlight (Ashraf Michail) https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Silverlight-3-Ashraf-Michail/dp/0321554167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264528797&sr=1-1%20 Professional Silverlight 4 (Jason Beres, Bill Evjen, Devin Rader) https://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0470650923.html?cid=RSS_WROX_ALLNEW Beginning Windows Phone 7 Development https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1430232161?ie=UTF8&tag=evedevshokno-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1430232161 Book; Learning Windows Phone (O'reilly) https://answers.oreilly.com/topic/1191-how-to-get-started-with-windows-phone-programming/ Ebook; Programming Windows Phone 7 Series (Petzold) https://charlespetzold.com/phone/index.html Learning Windows Phone Programming (Yochay Kiriaty, Jaime Rodriguez) https://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920010210?cmp=il-orm-ans-learnmore-0636920010210 Professional Windows Phone 7 Application Development: Building Windows Phone Applications and Games using Silverlight and XNA https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0470891661?ie=UTF8&tag=evedevshokno-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0470891661 Windows Phone 7 Plain & Simple (Michael Stroh) https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Phone-7-Plain-Simple/dp/0735643423/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280173629&sr=8-13 Windows Phone Secrets (Paul Thurrott) https://windowsphonesecrets.com/ Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Presentation-Foundation-Unleashed-WPF/dp/0672328917/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266509776&sr=8-1 Learning XNA 3.0, O'Reilly https://www.amazon.com/Learning-XNA-3-0-Game-Development/dp/0596521952 Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0: Learning Programming Now! - Revised to cover Windows Phone 7 (Rob Miles) https://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2010/04/14/rob-miles-on-windows-phone-7-application-and-game-development.aspx Microsoft XNA Game Studio Creator's Guide, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071614060/ref=pe_606_15041530_pe_ar_t1 Windows Phone 7 Game Development (Adam Dawes) https://www.adamdawes.com/books/wp7gamedev.html XNA 3D Primer https://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/XNA-3D-Primer.productCd-0470596937.html?cid=0225newwroxblox1%20 More to come…Thanks for reading !

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 05, 2011
  I hope Windows Phone 7 gets native support at some time in the future, even if it's only through P/Invoke. The overhead and limits introduced by those "advantages" can significantly affect performance and battery life.  It would be nice to be able to drop down to "monkey" level in the small number of cases where it makes sense to do so.

• A C# dev since 1.0, already a WP7 dev, and a lover of C++.