[ Thanks to An
Anonymous Reader for this link. ]
“When the iPhone was announced, Apple had created another closed
ecosystem that runs on just one processor architecture. This was a
critical decision from an engineering and design standpoint that
allowed for two things. It allowed for Apple to have over-arching
control of its platform and 2) permits extreme performance from
3rd-party applications. While I don’t condone closed ecosystems and
platform dependence, having application code (Objective-C) built
specifically for a device is a boon for mobile performance and most
certainly attributes to the success of Apple’s iPhone. That’s not
to say that we are doing it wrong, however. Java has been an
obvious choice for mobile and has dominated in this space for over
10 years. The range of hardware configurations has narrowed
somewhat in that time, but it’s still varied enough that Java
continues to dominate in this space. We all need to be able to play
Angry Birds, right?”