BARCELONA, Spain — Say you’re at a social gathering or a work function and the topic comes up of Nokia and Intel announcing that Qt will sit at the heart of their new MeeGo operating system designed to run on everything from cars and refrigerators to smartphones and computers. (You just know the topic will invariably arise.)
And say there’s a geek present who needs to be impressed. Stifle the panic and simply follow this brief Qt primer and you’re sure to make a lasting impression.
First off, it’s pronounced “cute,” not Q-T.
(It should be noted that many corporate Qt developers insist on calling it Q-T to preserve their dignity around the office.)
Second, it’s a software development package that has become increasingly popular with coders. Qt, for example, was used to help create applications like Google Earth, the Opera Web browser and Skype.
Nokia acquired a number of the world’s Qt experts in 2008 when it bought Trolltech, a company that had been shepherding the software, which does exist in an open-source form. Nokia, the cellphone giant, has since
placed a huge bet on Qt.
At its best, Qt makes it easier to create software for a wide range of devices and operating systems. People at the Mobile World Congress were showing off phones and other hand-helds running the Qt code.
I’m told that Qt lets you move an application from device to device with relatively few modifications. You can tweak the software to take advantage of a particular product’s dimensions and horsepower, but can otherwise leave the guts of the software alone.
Intel and Nokia hope to incite even more developer interest around Qt by running applications written with the software on devices running on either MeeGo and Symbian, Nokia’s smartphone operating system.
It’s fascinating to see just how much inciting Intel has to do these days.
For years, Intel relied on the notion that software developers knew its x86 chip architecture well and would tend to lean toward it.
Over time, however, the tools used to create applications have become simpler, moving people well away from dealing with chip architectures. The end result is something like the iPhone, where even a coding novice can create an application that makes money.
In fact, the iPhone seems to have undermined a lot of Intel’s claims around Atom, its chip for mobile devices.
Intel has long insisted that Atom will win in the end on everything from cars to laptops because it’s x86 and brings people closer to a proper computing experience. But, as it turns out, people don’t need a proper computing experience, as proved by the popularity of the iPhone, which is really perceived as a consumer electronics gadget rather than a computer.
Now Intel will be relying on Qt developers to create software that shows why Atom’s horsepower is important in the consumer electronics store.