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Right then, we all know that Microsoft want lots of apps on Windows Phone 7; after all, it seems to be one of the big things that loads of people ask for these days, when they’re after a smartphone. The thing is that Windows Phone 7, currently, doesn’t have a lot of apps available. That could be about to change, though, because according to Microsoft themselves, they’ve come up with a new tool that’s supposed to make it much easier for devs to port apps across from iOS onto WP7.
Basically, it’s an API Mapping tool, that works out what bit of code in iPhone 4 (or earlier models, obviously) an app accesses, and then finds which bits of code it needs to access, in WP7, to get the same result…
Say, for example, that an app needs to access the camera in the iPhone, in order to do whatever it is that it does. That app will send a call to the but of the OS that controls the camera, in order to access. This API Mapping tool allows developers to instantly find out what bit of Windows Phone 7 they need to route that software call to, to get the same app to access the camera on a Windows phone like the HTC Mozart.
That removes a nice chunk of the legwork developers need to do when porting apps, and that makes it more likely for them to even consider porting an app across in the first place.
And that can only be a good thing for people who want a Windows phone!
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