Head in the Clouds

It’s been widely observed that this is an odd fit. Gruber finds it fascinating. I agree with both views. My thought experiment is this:

280 North has built a language and library that is very close (often identical) to Objective-C/Cappuccino which runs on Webkit and Javascript. Android (where Motorola is putting it’s money) has a highly optimized Webkit renderer and Javascript engine. If the two could be coupled at the same time allowing Cappuccino code hardware access (something other vendors have done) in a very iOS/Obj-C consistent way (other vendors use Javascript) it’d be a very tempting route for developers to port iOS apps to Android with minimal code rewrite.

Sure a straight port of an app designed for iOS will feel out of place on an Android device but then again the platform hasn’t really strived for consistency in it’s UI or UX patterns. It’d solve the problem of lots of shoddy apps that don’t solve user problems by bringing over some well designed (but non-native) solutions from the high class world of the iPhone.