toddfearn.com

Apple finally realized that the masses of newbie iOS programmers out there, most coming from the Java world, really don’t get it. 

iOS memory management is just too difficult for most of these developers that have never coded in C, C++ or Objective-C, beyond maybe a college introductory course.

According to Apple:

Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) for Objective-C makes memory management the job of the compiler. By enabling ARC with the new Apple compiler, you will never need to type retain or release again, dramatically simplifying the development process, while reducing crashes and memory leaks.

They chose not to call it a garbage collector for good reason. It’s not a garbage collector.  It’s a compile time, not a run-time, driven memory management model.  Meaning the memory management is built into the binary code.

Apple was really forced to implement this feature.  Apple must compete with Java on Android and this is a critical feature. 

This makes sense.  I saw this article from Penny Crosman at Banktech.com this morning. 

Apple has a way of doing things their own way and I think in this case they are going to attempt to push the old infrastructure aside, in the same way they dictated their own terms with the initial launch of the iPhone.

Why should Apple give the carriers or the credit card companies the opportunity to profit from this space when Apple has over 200 million registered Apple ID (iTunes) accounts?  These are accounts tied to credit cards with one-click purchase.

Everyone knows RIM is in trouble.  Last Friday RIM shares lost 10% of their value based upon poor earnings (Reuters).

Some believe that RIM can reverse its fortunes with the introduction of the QNX operating system, which will make its debut on the PlayBook.  

I personally think that RIM is too far behind the iPad.  Apple has almost an 2 year advantage with the iPad, over 65,000 apps written specifically for the iPad and another 250,000 iPhone apps that will run on the device.  You could argue that Apple really has about a 4 to 5 year advantage with the introduction of the iPod Touch in 2007.

The Playbook on the other hand will probably debut with less than 100 apps. And RIM said Thursday QNX, their killer OS, won’t appear on its phones until early next year.

I’m in the financial services industry and work primarily with hedge funds.  This industry embraced RIM from day one and loves the BlackBerry.

But, over the last year I’ve seen a departure.  Wall street firms are not building apps for the Blackberry devices, and I don’t see plans for the Playbook or Blackberry development.  No one is talking about the Playbook.  But they are rushing to deliver for the iPhone and iPad.

There’s also a huge shift away from delivering a new Blackberry devices to employees within the company.

  Instead, wall street firms are providing a free iPhone app from Good Technology to access corporate email and calendars.  This saves the company at a minimum $60 per month per employee.  This is a huge savings when you multiply this over thousands of employees.  

And the employees love it.  Now they don’t have to carry a separate corporate Blackberry along with their iPhone.

These trends are huge and they will accelerate.

This is going to be huge.  Moving your credit cards to your mobile phone means that my real-life wallet will shrink by about 90%.

Google announced a deal today (Wall Street Journal) with MasterCard and Citigroup for it’s Android platform.  Verifone, the manufacturer of most of the retail credit card terminals is also invovled.

The tech used is called Near Field Communication (NFC).  Basically, wave your phone in front of the credit card terminal, and payment can be made.  Google has an advertising angle here, displaying ads to the customer at checkout.

If you think about it, they could easily add coupons, location-based deals, etc.

Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5 is also rumored to have an NFC chip installed as well.