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Xojo Upcoming
What We Learned at XDC 2014
Issue: 12.3 (May/June 2014)
Author: Marc Zeedar
Author Bio: Marc taught himself programming in high school when he bought his first computer but had no money for software. He's had fun learning ever since.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 7,506
Starting Page Number: 14
Article Number: 12304
Related Web Link(s):
http://www.xojo.com/cloud/
Excerpt of article text...
The annual Xojo Developer's Conference is a terrific opportunity for Xojo fans to get an idea of the future of the development environment. While Xojo, Inc. wisely refrains (usually) from mentioning specific roadmaps or making explicit promises (as software developers we all know how schedules can slip and technical complications or third party dependancies can make features more difficult to add than expected), we at least are given a glimpse at what the company envisions (see Figure 1).
This year's conference in Las Vegas was no exception. While it didn't have quite the drama of last year—then we had the name change to Xojo, iOS preview, and much more—this year's news was in a way, more concrete. Attendance was up 16% with people from 14 different countries.
Foremost on everyone's mind was the status of iOS support, and XDC did not disappoint. The demos were far more elaborate, and within the keynote address Xojo, Inc. CEO Geoff Perlman actually showed a Xojo app running on his iPhone (see Figure 2). Last year the work for the ARM compiler for iOS support had not even been started (meaning that only the iOS Simulator could be used to test apps), so that alone shows how much progress has been made. (In my other article on XDC in this issue, I talk about Joe Strout's iOS sessions, if you want more detail about iOS development.)
Even better, a timeline was given—though I'd still regard it with a grain of salt—that iOS will be available in beta this summer and available for all later this year.
Another significant bit of news is pricing: iOS will be another Xojo platform just like Desktop or Web, and will be priced at $400. Current Xojo Pro users will be able to add iOS for half price (though that will mean their annual renewal price increases by $200).
Also revealed was the official launch of Xojo Cloud (
http://www.xojo.com/cloud/
), Xojo's own web app deployment system. Using the latest build of the Xojo IDE, Web Edition users can now deploy Xojo web apps on Xojo, Inc.'s own virtual private servers with just one click. The IDE handles everything regarding building the correct version of the app and uploading it and all required resources to the correct server. Xojo the company handles everything about the server, making it incredibly hacker-proof and maintenance-free.
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