webOSroundup Developer Spotlight: Aaron Ardiri
This weeks spotlight finds Aaron Ardiri. Aaron comes to us from mobile1up.com and is the developer of a fairly new game for webOS called Caveman. Get to know him with us in this edition of the webOSroundup Developer Spotlight.
WOR: Where are you from?
AA: I was born in Perth, Australia lived in Stockholm, Sweden for 12 years and am currently living in Munich, Germany
WOR: What do you do for a living?
AA: I am a technical director for a mobile device management company – I do application development and play around with mobile devices for fun when I manage to find a few spare cycles between the hectic day-to-day ritual of what people typically call a “day job”.
WOR: When did you get interested in technology?
AA: I remember playing games on the Atari 2600 at a very young age, but when I was the right age (12-13ish); the big news was the VIC20 and C64 (commodore). My first computer was a Z80 based CP/M machine – running along at a sweet 2Mhz.
WOR: When and how did you connect with HP/Palm/webOS?
AA: I first got involved with Palm back in 1999 – with the old Palm Pilot. I maintained pretty good relations with people in the team and saw every split/merger and device made – I even still have a Palm Foleo in my collection at home.
WOR: What caused you to decide to develop mobile applications?
AA: Boredom
WOR: What do you see in the future of webOS and the new development framework (Enyo)?
AA: webOS is definitely a revolutionary operating system, it has a lot to teach other vendors but at the same time still has a little to go to be as competitive as other platforms out there as well.
When webOS was announced; I had zero interest in the platform – I write native applications – the complete shift in Palm’s strategy meant that they pretty much abandoned all their existing developer base. If you knew how to program in C/C++ – it was useless for the webOS environment – so in came a complete new fresh set of developers who focused on web technologies (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript); it is still debatable if this is really the future of mobile development or not – but it surely has shown to have its advantages over the existing development methodologies/frameworks that have existed on other platforms over the years.
For myself? Enyo has nothing of value for me as a developer – I simply need the PDK and I’m set. When Palm offered the PDK back in early 2010; I was on it before you could even notice it was out.
WOR: What types of new webOS devices do you hope to see?
AA: Tablets!
WOR: What in the future of webOS is most exciting to you?
AA: While many people were skeptical about the acquisition by HP; Palm really needed to do something different – because obviously they failed badly trying to do it on their own.
webOS is a great operating system – definitely in the top three available. if done right; it can equally share market space with the likes of Android and iOS – but that is all about execution.
Just to show my age (I hope readers understand this); think of webOS in the context of BETA vs VHS back before digital mediums were around; BETA was a superior standard; but VHS ended up being the success story (of course, DVD, bluray et totally killed VHS).
It just goes to show that having a great technology/platform doesn’t mean success; it is 10% technology, 90% execution.
WOR: Are there any projects in particular you are working on that you would like the community to know about?
AA: Caveman!
WOR: If you would like to follow Aaron’s work you can find him in the following places:
Twitter: @mobile1up
Developer Site: http://www.mobile1up.com
Apps: Caveman, Cronk, GW Series, GW Lab, GW Jetpack, GW Monkey, GW Monster, GW Escape, GW Retreat, Abiosis:Chains
If you are a webOS developer who would like to be considered for the Developer Spotlight, or you have some favorite developers you would like to learn more about, please send your story, or the developers information to [email protected]
