I have a Mac Mini that I got for free. It does not have an Intel processor so I cannot upgrade the OS and cannot do any IOS development. I can do OSX development.
My plan is to write a program that uses Cocoa and OpenGL version 2.x. I think that this will then be portable to IOS later when I get a new Mac. At a minimum, I’ll learn Cocoa and OpenGL programming. Even if the code cannot be easily ported, my knowledge and experience will apply.
I think that at this point in my career, I need to learn a few new tricks. Knowing C/C++ and how to program system things like inter-process communications, compression, encryption, and device drivers, is not going to be good enough. Sure, I could get a job writing the actual OS code for IOS or Android but what are the chances of that? On the other hand, the world might be heading towards tablets having the biggest market share of computer users in the medium future. I’d like to have more options open to me so that I don’t have to take a job writing code for slot machines or accounting packages on PC’s.
Biotech will be around for a while and there will certainly not be tablets doing lengthy sequence comparisons. I just don’t want to be stuck in this industry if the work here at Active Motif goes away for some reason.
Next on the list; OSX, OpenGL, Cocoa, and the resulting Mac version of Planetary Defense!