53 karma · joined August 5, 2011
The overall size of the screens affects your perception, too, I think: a large iPad screen feels different than a pocket-size phone screen.
Underscore.js may have some useful abstractions, but they'd be better exposed as Objective-C categories rather than trying to shoehorn everything into Javascript syntax.
1) Objective-C is a pretty decent language. It's not perfect, it has some baggage, but overall it's pretty neat and has enough flexibility to build a good platform.
2) Apple has built two good platforms, in AppKit (Mac) and UIKit (iOS). These frameworks are the real secret sauce, not the language. They're comprehensive and generally well-built, and make working on Apple platforms a joy. They actually take advantage of the unique features of Obj-C.
If someone could produce a web framework of the same caliber as UIKit, I think Objective-C would make a great server-side language. But building such a framework is not easy.
You could create your own layout engine, but most developers choose not to, especially since the consistency of iOS hardware means they can predict screen sizes easily. Your other option is to make your app a thin wrapper around a Webkit view, but that tends to produce poor results (see the Netflix iOS app for an example).
* Standardization. Difficult, but possible, if you can convince the entities involved that it's a good idea.
* Machine learning. Unreliable, since even a human might have trouble bridging the gap between the phone calendar's idea of an 'appointment' vs the desktop calendar's idea of an 'appointment.'
* Future Magic. Only works in Microsoft promo videos.
Neither of the two serious solutions seems very good. Is there a better way that I'm missing?
I feel bad for people who have hopelessly broken setups, but not bad enough to want to help.
Is Speaker Deck a for-profit idea, or is this a side project for Ordered List? I'd hate to see this turn into SlideShare: a hopeless mishmash of tacky ads.