Embarcadero Bridges Gap From Desktop to Mobile - supports iOS in C++Builder XE5

According Embarcadero&#x27;s website Delphi XE5 offers all the same plus Android support: <a href="http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.embarcadero.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;delphi</a>, <a href="http://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.embarcadero.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;cbuilder</a>. If they&#x27;re targeting mobile developers I wonder why Embarcadero hasn&#x27;t released a cheap &quot;indie&quot; version of Delphi yet. Last I checked it had much better compile times than C++Builder and the language itself could easily be marketed as a &quot;friendlier C++&quot;. Meanwhile, outside of some larger companies where it&#x27;s entrenched Delphi&#x27;s popularity is waning.<p>Edit: Now that I&#x27;ve looked at their online store through a US proxy I see that they have: <a href="https://store.embarcadero.com/542/catalog/product.s3703/language.en/currency.USD/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.embarcadero.com&#x2F;542&#x2F;catalog&#x2F;product.s3703&#x2F;lang...</a>. Not that the conditions are very good:<p>&gt;<i>If you’re an individual you may use the Starter Edition to create apps for your own use and apps that you can sell until your revenues reach $1,000 per year. If you’re a small company or organization without revenue (or up to $1,000 per year in revenue), you can also use the Starter Edition. Once your company&#x27;s total revenue reaches US $1,000, or your team expands to more than 5 developers, move up to the Professional edition with an unrestricted commercial license.</i><p>The upgrade from Starter to Professional costs $899.00.

I used to use Borland&#x27;s products in a job. They used C++ Builder 6 and migrated their code to the later compiler, Codegear 2007 and it was truly dire (6 was alright). It was exceptionally buggy, the linker continually crashed, and the help system took 14 hours to install (not an exaggeration). The VCL had difficulty with manifests and proper theming on XP and above I think (particularly tab pages) and it desperately needed fixing &#x2F; replacing. The company tested the version after 2007 and it would compile illegal C++.<p>I think after they spent years developing C++ Architect and then chucking it in the bin, many of the developers jumped ship and Borland was left with few developers, a shell of its former self. They also had stupid products like their PHP IDE (I wonder how many they actually sold???) and as far as I know the company I used to work for is still making software using the creaking aging VCL! A large code base to rewrite is no fun!<p>A shame for Borland (or whatever they are called these days) but I am not inclined to buy this software.

Embarcadero C++Builder is the successor to Borland&#x27;s Turbo C. It has changed names several times, having been marketed under the brands Borland, Inprise, CodeGear, and Embarcadero.

The biggest issue C++Builder has for me is that it is pretty damn expensive considering Xcode is included as part of OS X. The Professional version is £850 and still requires the extra purchase of the Mobile Add-on pack which is an extra £423! That makes the total cost £1273!! I would rather <i>pay less</i> and buy a Macbook Air which comes with Xcode.

here&#x27;s what most cross-platform library vendors never get: it&#x27;s actually easier, and ultimately faster, to learn each environment&#x27;s native API, then learn one cross-platform API and all of the idiosyncrasies on each platform it supports. Inevitably, there will be some aspect of the native platform that doesn&#x27;t work correctly within the x-platform sdk and then you have to hack around it.