Agreed - from what i've seen on the dev forums, the amount of involvement/activity/support from RIM devs has been excellent. Wining over app developers is essential to their survival and they seem to have realised this. Whether that's enough at this point is, of course, another question. I hope it works out for them.

I actually completely disagree... at least in regard to native stuff, java-only on Android isn't so bad.

For me, native Android dev has (over the past few years) been one headache after another and only recently has it started to approach being in any way user-friendly (though i still use command line tools and makefiles to build native code ,and have to switch to eclipse to develop the required, but wasteful, java wrapper) . There is *still* no native c++ debugger (at least not one provided by google), other than command-line-based gdb (and even that is flaky as hell), which in 2012 is, quite frankly, embarrassing (the latest preview of the adt tools supposedly goes some way to rectify this, but the track record from google on the reliability of new features, hasn't been great). Almost every NDK release has had issues that required me to either debug/hack the build tools, or implement some other workaround.

As I say, its getting better, but this stuff should have been ready from day 1.

My recent foray into playbook dev has, on the other hand, been surprisingly good. Expectations weren't high, but so far everything has just worked. Everything ran from Eclipse - compiled and debugged just fine (Even has wifi debugging which was a welcome surprise). The provided libraries seem well thought out and provide access to pretty much all the functionality of the device (compare to android where the NDK provides almost zero access to anything OS related - requiring the frequent use of JNI to call into java code. Android 2.3+ has better features in this regard (though still not great), but it'll be a while before 2.2 is a negligible minority).

I think RIM certainly has an uphill struggle ahead, but based on my experience, if they fail, it won't be down to poor developer tools.

How about an OS that doesn't cost money AND it doesn't have ads either. That would be pretty cool. Surprised no one has thought of this.

Hmm.... customizable avatars... virtual, 3d multi-user, environments. All thought of in 1995? These guys were true visionaries!
Or maybe they read Snow Crash which was published years earlier.

I'm just going to ignore the patent's laughably simplistic "instruction" on technical issues such as "position" and "orientation" and the blindingly obvious "invention" of the client not processing every avatar in the environment.

Wow. Just wow. After reading the claims on the USPTO site it boggles the mind that such a patent could be granted in 2009. As a game developer myself, i can guarantee that every single thing mentioned in that patent has been done *at least* 10 years prior - probably more like 15 or 20. In addition, the history of the patent application (ie. the back and forth between applicant and examiner - all public record) is very illuminating - the arguments (for the claims being valid) being made are laughably simplistic, and the prior art considered is mostly limited to existing patents. Moreover, I find it *fucking offensive* that parasites like this can try to claim ownership over what is (for the most part) an extremely open, patent free, and innovative industry (albeit moreso in technology, than game ideas!). Ever been to GDC? Each year, hundreds of developers from competing companies will share the tips and tricks used in their latest technology, with no expectation of financial compensation. I have *never* heard a game developer complain that someone else was using their "invention" - much more likely they'd be flattered. The success of the games industry is in fact, a great counter-argument to those who argue that the elimination of patents (software or otherwise) would be catastrophic to inventors. Why are these patents being approved, and what recourse against the applicants do we have for applications that (presumably deliberately) ignore prior art - not to mention the waste of taxpayer money involved?