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Im an iOS developer and im trying to start with Blackberry development and i've done my part of research and came up with this:

BlackBerry is an open platform that provides a variety of development languages and runtimes designed to fit your skills. Your choice will be based on a combination of familiarity, possibly having a pre-existing codebase as well as the target devices you wish to serve.

My questions are:

  1. Is this feature (variety of development languages and runtimes) only for the BlackBerry Z10 ??

  2. Will the app development for the bold and the Z10 be the same?

  3. For the Runtime for Android apps . is that the best choice for me if i have an android background?

  4. I want to make an application for both touch and non-touch device in blackberry. Is that possible ?

  5. Should i use Eclipse for the job??.

  6. Is there any SDK for the Mac OSX??

Thanks in advance ...

Serg
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Mutawe
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3 Answers3

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Is this feature (variety of development languages and runtimes) only for the BlackBerry Z10 ??

BlackBerry 10 supports many different runtimes like Adobe Air, Android, Native development in C/C++.

The older BlackBerry OS just supports Java development natively.

Will the app development for the bold and the Z10 be the same?

No

For the Runtime for Android apps . is that the best choice for me if i have an android background?

Porting of apps is highly limited. Lots of third party libraries are not supported. Lots of Android specific APIs like maps, LVL, in app billing etc. are not supported. It may or may not work depending on the complexity of your app.

I want to make an application for both touch and non-touch device in blackberry. Is that possible ?

Yes.

Should i use Eclipse for the job??.

Both the BlackBerry OS use Eclipse as the native IDE.

Is there any SDK for the Mac OSX??

Yes

Raghav Sood
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  • Thanks @Raghav Sood for the answer, im wondering if there is any way to get started with this because the https://developer.blackberry.com is mainly talking about the blackberry 10 development – Mutawe Mar 10 '13 at 07:43
  • @Mutawe That is because they are now concentrating on BB10 devices. See https://developer.blackberry.com/java/ for development stuff related to the old OS. – Raghav Sood Mar 10 '13 at 07:45
  • is https://developer.blackberry.com/java/ java is the same for the bb z10 ? – Mutawe Mar 10 '13 at 07:47
  • @Mutawe The Z10 does not support Java development. That works uptil BlackBerry OS 7. For BB10, you'll need to use the C/C++ tools if you want to do native work, or use Adobe Air or the Android Runtime. – Raghav Sood Mar 10 '13 at 07:50
  • Thanks for your kindness, is there any tip for me ?? – Mutawe Mar 10 '13 at 07:55
  • @Mutawe I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "tip". – Raghav Sood Mar 10 '13 at 07:56
  • a tip for getting started, Where to start, what development environment to use, using mac or windows, Eclipse or ..., something like this :) – Mutawe Mar 10 '13 at 08:01
  • Uh, there's plenty of resources online that would explain all of that much better than I can in a single comment. I'd personally suggest using Windows though. BlackBerry devices sometimes refuse to let you debug from a mac. – Raghav Sood Mar 10 '13 at 08:02
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Is this feature (variety of development languages and runtimes) only for the BlackBerry Z10 ??

No, those features are for Blackberry 10 OS in general.

Will the app development for the bold and the Z10 be the same?

Nope, while BB Bold has BB7 OS, BB Z10 has BB10 OS which is completely different than BB7. And apps in BB10 are not backward compatible.

For the Runtime for Android apps . is that the best choice for me if i have an android background?

The best choice depends on your skills,target and planning. IMO, if you already have existing app in android, you can easily port that in BB10 using Android runtime. However, you want to focus on pure BB10 app development, the best choice is cascades which is native programming for BB10. It is mixture of QT (usually for interface design) and C++ (usually for program logic).

I want to make an application for both touch and non-touch device in blackberry. Is that possible ?

If you are still talking about BB10 devices, there is no non-touch device so far. There are devices with/out physical keyboard. And yes, it is pretty easy to configure the same app for both devices.

Should i use Eclipse for the job??.

Blackberry provides the complete development environment including the IDE (QNX Momentics IDE) which is eclipse based. take a look at the Blackberry developer's site

Is there any SDK for the Mac OSX??

Yes, There is. You can find everything you need at Blackberry developer's site

Morison
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1) Versions of BB before the Z10 only supported Java development or Web based (aka Javascript) development. Native development was not supported in BB7 and earlier.

2) No - bold is Java based. Z10 is C++ based with others layered on top.

3) This will greatly depend on you app. I haven't used it myself.

4) I don't think they've said anything about non-touch BB10 devices and developer support. My guess is everything BB10 will have touch. The bigger question is producing an app for BB10 and an app for BB7 and earlier - they are different technologies and require different code bases in most cases. They have a set of JS extensions called WebWorks that is somewhat cross-BB but support on older devices is subject to browser support.

5) For BB10 you will probably end up in their Eclipse variant - QDE. For BB7 and earlier they have an Eclipse plugin. For WebWorks, I just use emacs and Chrome although they have a "simulator" they call Ripple - I'm not a fan.

6) Yes but it came out fairly late so I'm not sure exactly which versions it covers.

DrC
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  • Thanks @DrC for the answer, im wondering if there is any way to get started with this because the developer.blackberry.com is mainly talking about the blackberry 10 development – Mutawe Mar 10 '13 at 07:44