The Tablet Show

While at Øredev in Malmö, Sweden, Carl and Richard talk to Jen Meyers about developers being able to design. The conversation starts out talking about different UI designs in tablets and phones, including iOS7. Jen digs into the idea that design is just not that difficult - developers need to learn some things to work with designers or to implement any designs at all. And there's plenty for designers to learn too! UX design is its own unique science, and everyone involved has to learn to be effective.

Carl and Richard talk to Josh Johnson about mobile development and testing. Initially the conversation digs into iOS7 - the biggest revision to iOS since its launch. Then it's time to talk testing. Josh starts at the beginning, talking about different styles of testing, from unit to integration to acceptance testing. Josh explains how Calaba.sh works, adding a framework to your app to deploy down to the phone to do testing. Right on the phone! The conversation continues along the lines of various testing processes, including a discussion on Xamarin Test Cloud and Less Painful. Your mobile apps need to be tested too!

Mark Miller flies to Dublin to tell the world exactly what's wrong with iOS7. A passion user experience designer, Mark dives into the nitty gritty of consistent UI design, where iOS7 gets it right, where its wrong, and how it compares to the Windows 8 design. No UI is perfect, but some are less perfect than others! Mark brings a very funny look into what great UI can look like.

Carl and Richard talk to John Breslin about his experiences building companies in Ireland. Starting in the 90s, John was involved with internet technologies from the beginning. The conversation digs into how the internet and people's relationship with it has evolved, as well as how the companies themselves have changed. Think startups are just in the Silicon Valley? Think again!

Carl and Richard moderate a panel discussion on the state of mobile development with Todd Anglin, Lino Tadros, Gill Cleeran and Laurent Bugnion. The conversation starts out comparing the latest incarnations of hybrid development and native development, includng how technologies like Xamarin fit into the equation. The panelists also dig into the enterprise development story for phones and tablets and where Bring Your Own Device is going.

Carl and Richard talk to Kirby Turner about his experiences building iPad applications. A former .NET developer, Kirby switched over to iOS development when he bought a Mac. The conversation starts out talking about the differences between building iPhone and iPad apps. Kirby talks about the user interaction differences - where you are and how you hold the device matters a lot! Beyond consumer apps, Kirby also digs into how to handle private apps for relatively few number of iPads (less than one hundred). Check out the links for information about Kirby's book on building iPad apps!

Carl and Richard chat with Michael Crump about his experiences migrating Windows Phone 7.1 apps to Windows Phone 8. The conversation starts out with a short recap on some of the recent craziness around Nokia and Microsoft and the calibre of phones and tablets coming out these days - it's time for the second wave of Win 8 devices! Michael digs into the benefits and challenges around switching to Windows Phone 8, including access to new resources, dealing with multiple screen resolutions and buildings apps where the code base can be largely shared between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8. It's time to make the move! Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!

Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about the differences between consumer and business apps in the mobile and tablet space. Rocky has been thinking a lot about how we build applications for different purposes and discusses it with the boys. The conversation digs into native vs HTML, common (or branded) UI design vs. device-specific UI and more! Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!

Carl and Richard talk to Michael Perry about his efforts to design mobile application that are resilient when they disconnect, reconnect and deal with erratic connectivity. Michael takes the problem apart, working through all the key concepts needed to tolerate being occasionally disconnected, culminating in a discussion of his open source library called Correspondence. Check it out! Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!

Time for a bit of gossip? Carl and Richard bring Mary Jo on the show to talk about all the crazy changes around Microsoft. What does the merger between Nokia and Microsoft mean? Does Surface have a chance? Who will be the next CEO of Microsoft? MJ and the boys talk about these questions and more! Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!

Wow - 100 shows! Carl and Richard think back over the past two years of Tablet Shows, from October 2011 to September 2013. What's changed and what's remained the same? Any breakthroughs? Any surprises? Any idea what's going to happen 100 shows from now? Thanks for listening - we couldn't do it without you! Make sure you activate your Windows Azure credits in your MSDN Subscription! You could win an Aston Martin!

Carl and Richard talk to Jason Ostrander about his experiences building Android tablet applications. The conversation starts out talking about the differences of building in Java on the desktop versus mobile and tablet devices - being far more resource constrained and performance sensitive. Jason also digs into his experiences with Android OS fragmentation, as well as building the software that ships with the Barnes and Noble Nook device. The Android ecosystem is alive and well, and there's lots of stuff to build!

Carl and Richard talk to Jeremy Freeley and Alan O'Connor about their experiences building Road Buddy for Windows Phone 8. Road Buddy uses the GPS and accelerometer data from the phone to determine if you are in a car accident and contact emergency services with your location, nature of the impact and medical information. Jeremy and Alan talk about how they built the application, the challenges in integrating via text message with emergency services, their involvement with Imagine Cup and a whole host of other issues around getting to market with a cool mobile application.

Carl and Richard talk to Bart Read and Kevin Boyle about building hybrid mobile apps using Cordova. Cordova is the Apache open source version of PhoneGap, which was purchased by Adobe a few years back. The conversation digs into a variety of products built to utilize Cordova, all with the goal of making it easier to build mobile and tablet applications across multiple platforms with one code base.

Carl and Richard talk to Ben Buttigieg about building Nokia Music. Ben talks about working with Nokia to bring a great music service to market for both Windows Phone and Windows 8. The conversation digs into the public APIs available to build your own applications on the platforms that utilize the metadata and music services of Nokia Music.

Carl and Richard talk to Chris Hardy from Xamarin about his experience building an application for Windows Phone and then migrating it to iPhone and Android. Chris talks about his Days Until Xmas app he first built for Windows Phone. The conversation digs into the differences in building UI between the different phones (it's harder than you think!) and what code can actually be shared between projects. Chris has put the iOS version of the app up on GitHub so you can take it out for a spin!

Carl and Richard talk to Jim McKeeth about programming in Delphi to build tablet applications for iOS. Yeah, that Delphi? What, you thought it went away? Delphi has changed hands a couple of times, but has continued to evolve and work with modern development practices, Internet technologies, etc. Jim describes the entire development environment, how you can build native iOS apps with the tools, and soon to build Android apps as well! Could Delphi be the enterprise tablet development solution?

Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Morgan about testing mobile applications. Jeff references his Lean Dog book Cucumber and Cheese - a Testers Workshop. The conversation starts out with the idea of Acceptance Test Driven Development, involving not just testers and developers, but all the stakeholders, including domain experts, operations people and more! Jeff talks about Gherkin, the near-natural language for describing requirements (and tests) not only in English, but 40 other languages! While the focus is on mobile testing, all testing is well served by the idea of acceptance focus.

Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about his experiences building mobile applications - first! The conversation starts out with the challenges of making mobile web applications that work well. Web pages have gotten too large to load quickly or render effectively, HTTP Archive says in 2013 the average page size is 1.2MB! Shawn digs into how to architect a page so that it sends down the mobile version first, fast and light for a phone, but also usable on a regular browser, and then load additional resources if the browser is capable. Great discussions on dealing with retina displays and bandwidth restrictions as well. Time to evolve your web page design!

Carl and Richard talk to Rob Daigneau about building backend services for mobile applications. The conversation starts out talking about service design patterns, the different approaches to creating services so that they are reliable, scalable and performance. Rob digs into the differences between SOAP/WSDL and REST, TCP and UDP and more. Many of these technologies are years old now, but today in the mobile-first world they're hugely important. The tools are getting better!