Job writing apps for iphone or windows mobile??

[adstevenson]

I'm looking for answers to this question because I'm at a cross-road with my career path. I'm attending college to get a computer science degree with the intent on writing software programs for mobile devices. I thought I would go with Windows Mobile platform, but now I'm wondering if I should go with the iphone. I know there are a lot of developers, etc on this forum that do this kind of work and would like anyone with any opinions, comments or hard earned experience to let me know what they would do if they were me.

[Rudegar]

with iphone or ipod touch you have to own a back to make offical apps
you have to pay app store some money to be able to summit apps for review
if they are suited for app store
the apps have to be written in objectC which is an alternativ to c++ as in
a ext to old ansi c to add object support so it's more pleasing then structs with function pointers

with wm you got 2 realistic paths
using .net compact framework this is the fast way to get something to show for
but is generaly much slower then
native win32 sdk apps where you have to write everything and have less gui IDE do make it
more user friendly for you
but native win32 which is in c++ is much faster

you could get a mac and use bootcamp to install windows then windows would run as native not emulated so it would not be slow
then you could do both asuming you had the time to get into both platforms

allso the sdk of objectC and cocoa for iphones i believe is free and got an IDE too

and with winmobile you have dl the sdk for wm and if you want an IDE you have to pay for visual studio as i dont believe that the free express version of visual studio works with mobile
but i could be wrong
but i believe that the compiler itself is free so if you got the sdk for wm you can compile using an console compiler which is free

[Keland44]

I'm not a developer but I started computer science back when I was in school (C/O 07) and I would say that if your lookin for the money iphone apps and blackberry apps are the way to go. If you check out a thread in development and hacking it's about why there isn't a facebook app for windows mobile like there is for blackberry and iphone and a user made a good point iphone apps and blackberry apps are the bread an butter right now. But there is still some possiblities with Andriod recently coming out and also Windows releasing an App store when Windows Mobile 7 is released.
The good thing though is that with developing apps like for Apple you can pretty much do that as a side project and help you generate extra money and be like this guy http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/11/18/iphone.game.developer/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
So it's still a possiblity you could still branch out. I would say to develop for both. Look at the company Beejive. They developed a great messanger app for the blackberry and then for the iphone and now for windows mobile is still in the beta and probably soon one for andriod. But final words I would say don't limit yourself. If you really like and want to program and you think you have a good app that would be useful on all platforms then go for it.
Sorry to talk your head off.

[adstevenson]

with iphone or ipod touch you have to own a back to make offical apps
you have to pay app store some money to be able to summit apps for review
if they are suited for app store
the apps have to be written in objectC which is an alternativ to c++ as in
a ext to old ansi c to add object support so it's more pleasing then structs with function pointers

with wm you got 2 realistic paths
using .net compact framework this is the fast way to get something to show for
but is generaly much slower then
native win32 sdk apps where you have to write everything and have less gui IDE do make it
more user friendly for you
but native win32 which is in c++ is much faster

you could get a mac and use bootcamp to install windows then windows would run as native not emulated so it would not be slow
then you could do both asuming you had the time to get into both platforms

allso the sdk of objectC and cocoa for iphones i believe is free and got an IDE too

and with winmobile you have dl the sdk for wm and if you want an IDE you have to pay for visual studio as i dont believe that the free express version of visual studio works with mobile
but i could be wrong
but i believe that the compiler itself is free so if you got the sdk for wm you can compile using an console compiler which is free

Good point