Panorama for iPhone

[Bruce De Benedictis]

I could see some sort of run-time application with some limited interface
menus that could read the file, do certain manipulations with it, and sync
with a full database application on the home computer. The problem is that
there are so many possibilities within Panorama that deciding which features
to support is a daunting challenge in itself.

Bruce De Benedictis

>> The users would greatly
>> benefit from having their Enterprise client screen on their iPhones.
>> While I have seen a few messages from users inquiring about this,
>> have we heard anything from the top of the hill?
> 
> Obviously I've been watching the iPhone SDK developments fairly closely.
> I am an iPhone user myself, as well, so I am quite aware of how very
> cool it would be to have Panorama or some variation of Panorama on the
> iPhone. Unfortunately it seems that there are some substantial technical
> roadblocks in the way of that happening, at least for now.
> 
> * Panorama is a Carbon application. The iPhone doesn't support Carbon,
> only Cocoa. Rewriting Panorama for Cocoa would be a huge undertaking.
> There would be some potential benefits, but some drawbacks as well
> (including possibly breaking some existing Panorama databases). A big
> drawback is that making the Mac version of Panorama a Cocoa application
> would make it much, much more difficult to share code between the Mac
> and Windows version. (As many of you have noticed, this has already bee
> a problem over the past few years, though I hope to resolve that this
> year.) Of course just rewriting for Cocoa wouldn't be enough to make
> Panorama run on an iPhone, you would also have to rework all of the user
> interface code to use the iPhone's touch interface.
> 
> * Apple is currently forbidding any iPhone application that contains a
> programming language. For instance Flash, Java, Perl, Ruby, etc. would
> not be allowed as iPhone applications. I believe the reason for this is
> that they want to maintain complete control over program development on
> the iPhone. I also believe that this means that Panorama's programming
> language would not be allowed. Obviously this would severly cripple the
> utility of such a product for many (most?) of you. Another problem is
> that Panorama itself now relies on code written in Panorama's
> programming language, especially for the Enterprise version.
> 
> On this point it will be interesting to see how Apple treats FileMaker
> in this regard, since FileMaker also contains a programming language.
> Then again, I believe that FileMaker is also a Carbon application so
> perhaps it is a moot point.
> 
> * Currently another possible issue is that the iPhone only contains
> 128Mb of memory. Of course many of us can remember when 128 Mb would
> have been considered a huge amount of memory, and most Panorama
> databases are much smaller than this. One consequence of this is that
> the iPhone only allows one application to run at a time -- when you
> switch back to the home screen it actually quits whatever application is
> running. I'm not sure if this would be a deal breaker for Panorama or
> not -- they apparently have some code to help an app quit and launch
> quickly while restoring it's previous state.
> 
> I imagine there are other roadblocks as well. On the other hand, I think
> the potential market is huge, and will probably wind up being much
> larger than the Palm/Windows Mobile market ever was. The Panorama
> Enterprise synchronization system would seem to be a real natural for
> the phone as well. So I'll be keeping my eye out for ways that these
> technical issues could be overcome so that Panorama can tap into the
> iPhone. (And of course, as Robert mentioned, Enterprise Server will
> allow the iPhone to be used via a web application.) For right now,
> however, my plan would be to continue on the current roadmap of
> finishing Panorama Server, then bringing Panorama for Windows up to par
> with the Mac version.
> 
> Jim Rea
> President, ProVUE Development
> 
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