Why should someone develop native applications for Sailfish OS?
In the past I developed a few apps, but I didn’t get much satisfaction from it and eventually gave up. I still own a Jolla 1, which is still working. With the release of the new device, my curiosity came back, but after looking at the updated SDK I didn’t find anything particularly interesting. It’s still based on Qt 5, with the same examples from 2015, and it’s not possible to use recent computers with ARM processors.
I pre-ordered the new phone, but I’m not sure I will go through with the purchase.
I still have the “I am the first one” T-shirt and the cap, which I still wear proudly. I don’t know how many native applications currently exist, because I can’t access the store and I’m not aware of any alternative way to check.
If I have to rely only on Android applications, then I might as well use Android. Is there any strategy planned to encourage developers to get involved?
there is the Jolla store (which you can not access without a SFOS device), but there are Open Repos and Chum of cause too, which have web interfaces. Those are native apps too and likely there are even more apps on those two than on the Jolla Store itself:
I have puplished four app. q-Ball is a puzzle game where i used raw opengl, box2d, clipping algorithm, etc. Source code found here: Source code while the YouTube video is here: YouTube video. The others you can see in the attached image
The only thing that makes sense to me is to help a European phone … , I can do the others more easily with other phones. Except for the beautiful UI of salfish os. Developing for other operating systems, on the other hand, has many other advantages. Is it enough?
Well, as a maintainer and developer of a number of apps, I have to say it’s mostly for fun and the utility of maintaining/developing apps that i need. My experience with android was miserable in comparison. In any case, although I use the old slow SDK methods with virtual box, some have substantial speed ups with docker.
I’m ok with the slow nature of it since most of the embedded programming I do is no faster for smaller payloads (mostly pi pico sdk / arduino). Most of that has to do with my slow machines
In the end, I’m just much happier with the apps I have on SFOS. I need to fix a LOT of things (video encoding, audio acquistion stuff, missing interfaces to mastodon apis, broken api requests to hafas backends, etc, etc, etc) so it’s clear it would be nice if there were more people on board to help with all that. On the other hand, patience is it’s own reward?
I still haven´t got my phone and don´t how this thing works but native competitor for whatsapp would be great. I think that alone would sell 100k phones more People are very well aware about the privacy issues of the big tech.
Do you mean a native client for the whatsapp service? This will not work out, because meta will ban you if they find out, and they will find out if there are thousands of users.
Or do you mean an alternative app that does the same thing as whatsapp? This already exists - use whisperfish signal client.
For me the fun is to solve a problem, to build a solution and to create a handy program. The tools herefore are only tools. Nice to have but never good enough. At the time I learned my second programming language I was told “To make a good solution for the given requirements is the real job, not the use of tools to write it down”. And today, after working with more programming languages and many tools, I can say: This is correct! So try it again with a great idea for your next app and you will have the fun again.
PS.: To support my words a glimpse in the history. And in the world of humor:
Please don’t lose time with tools. Be a wizard of programming and create device drivers with the “cat” command:
