Migrating iPhone Applications to Windows Phone 7

I recently entertained a number of iPhone developers at Microsoft. The meetup I spoke to was the Silicon Valley iPhone Meetup.

You can read more about the meetup here.

Meetup for iPhone at Microsoft

The goals of this post are simple.

The future is pretty clear.

We know a few things. There are over 4.5 billion mobile devices. According to Gartner, sales are growing rapidly.

Why the massive growth in the mobile space?

Phones today are more powerful than the Apollo spacecraft that went to the moon. Phones today can run powerful applications that were impossible just a few years ago.

Core memory of the Apollo spacecraft was 2048 words or 4096 bytes. Today’s Windows Phone 7 has a minimum requirement of 256,000,000 bytes of main memory.

Flurry has reported very bullish numbers

The Nokia relationship with Microsoft has changed the way developers view revenue potential writing software for the Windows Phone 7 device.

It is obvious that good tooling can make your ideas easier to realize and implemented. However, lets be mindful that the entrepreneurial spirit is really what drives developers.

The steps for Windows Phone 7 are almost identical.

Both platforms (iOS and WP7) offer excellent resources for developers.

I recommend downloading the Windows Phone 7 Training Kit. It contains a huge amount of excellent resources.

Tool	Environment
XCode	iOS
Visual Studio	Windows Phone 7

All the tools, training kits, SDKs are free from Microsoft. I recommend the training kit above.

I also recommend going here, location of the free tools:

http://create.msdn.com

There is some guidance specifically for iPhone devs:

http://www.msdev.com/phone/iphone.aspx

There is some real advantages using a managed language to write code.

Here are some advantages:

Feature	Value
Memory Management	Don't worry about memory management. Garbage collector saves you from leaks.
Built in Indexers	To help with list iteration and property getting.
No crazy typecasting	It isn't possible to declare any type of pointer as assign it to any allocated address or cast it to any other type. C# allows only type-safe casting.
Generic Types	Allows template classes to remain type-safe at compile time
Avoid Accidental Memory Corruption	Bounds checking is performed for managed arrays automatically
More types	Such as the Decimal type
Reflection	Allows object metadata to be explored during run time.

I don’t dare put names on this image. With that said, I will demonstrate Windows Phone 7 leveraging Declarative Markup and High Level Procedural Language, and Advanced tooling, Cloud integration.

Some iPhone to WP7 Resources

Jesse Liberty - MVC to MVVM - Key Patterns	http://jesseliberty.com/2010/09/04/iphone-to-windows-phone-7-diving-deeper/
How to make the move: iPhone to WP7	http://t3kd.com/blog/2010/11/29/how-to-make-the-move-iphone-to-wp7/
Repository and discussion for tutorial series An iPhone Developer's Guide To Windows Phone 7 Programming	http://i2w.codeplex.com/

Getting your app into the Marketplace

Registration Walkthrough http://create.msdn.com/home/about/developer_registration_walkthrough

Windows Phone 7 Application Certification Guide http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9730558

Application Submission Walkthrough http://create.msdn.com/home/about/app_submission_walkthrough

Frequently asked questions http://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/faq

Some great internal links:

Catalog – Code Samples	http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/
Support and Feedback	http://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/feedback
Roadmap – Great links to learning	http://create.msdn.com/en-us/education/roadmap
Downloads - Developer Tooling	http://create.msdn.com/en-us/resources/downloads
Official MSDN Library documentation	http://create.msdn.com/en-us/education/documentation
Partner offerings	http://create.msdn.com/en-us/resources/partners
Developer talks	http://create.msdn.com/en-us/education/talks
Academia	http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/academia

Some useful books:

Book; Foundation Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight (Foundations)	http://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Expression-Blend-Silverlight-Foundations/dp/1430219505/
C# 3.0 Cookbook, Third Edition: More than 250 Solutions	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/orm-9780596516109-03.aspx
C# 3.0 Design Patterns: Use the Power of C# 3.0 to Solve Real-World Problems	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/orm-9780596527730-01.aspx
C# 3.0 in a Nutshell, Third Edition: A Desktop Quick Reference	http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/orm-9780596527570-03.aspx
Essential C# 3.0 for .NET Framework 3.5, Mark Michaelis	http://www.amazon.com/Essential-3-0-NET-Framework-3-5/dp/0321533925/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264528696&sr=1-1%20
Essential LINQ	http://www.amazon.com/Essential-LINQ-Charlie-Calvert/dp/0321564162
Essential Silverlight (Ashraf Michail)	http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Silverlight-3-Ashraf-Michail/dp/0321554167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264528797&sr=1-1%20
Professional Silverlight 4 (Jason Beres, Bill Evjen, Devin Rader)	http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0470650923.html?cid=RSS_WROX_ALLNEW
Beginning Windows Phone 7 Development	http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1430232161?ie=UTF8&tag=evedevshokno-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1430232161
Book; Learning Windows Phone (O'reilly)	http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/1191-how-to-get-started-with-windows-phone-programming/
Ebook; Programming Windows Phone 7 Series (Petzold)	http://charlespetzold.com/phone/index.html
Learning Windows Phone Programming (Yochay Kiriaty, Jaime Rodriguez)	http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920010210?cmp=il-orm-ans-learnmore-0636920010210
Professional Windows Phone 7 Application Development: Building Windows Phone Applications and Games using Silverlight and XNA	http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0470891661?ie=UTF8&tag=evedevshokno-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0470891661
Windows Phone 7 Plain & Simple (Michael Stroh)	http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Phone-7-Plain-Simple/dp/0735643423/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280173629&sr=8-13
Windows Phone Secrets (Paul Thurrott)	http://windowsphonesecrets.com/
Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed	http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Presentation-Foundation-Unleashed-WPF/dp/0672328917/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266509776&sr=8-1
Learning XNA 3.0, O'Reilly	http://www.amazon.com/Learning-XNA-3-0-Game-Development/dp/0596521952
Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0: Learning Programming Now! - Revised to cover Windows Phone 7 (Rob Miles)	http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2010/04/14/rob-miles-on-windows-phone-7-application-and-game-development.aspx
Microsoft XNA Game Studio Creator's Guide, Second Edition	http://www.amazon.com/dp/0071614060/ref=pe_606_15041530_pe_ar_t1
Windows Phone 7 Game Development (Adam Dawes)	http://www.adamdawes.com/books/wp7gamedev.html
XNA 3D Primer	http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/XNA-3D-Primer.productCd-0470596937.html?cid=0225newwroxblox1%20