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Q: Why don't I just use MIDP 2.0? It's got CustomItems and all that.

Cool. Go for it. In fact, we'll personally call everyone who's got a MIDP 2.0 wireless device and tell them about your application -- yeah, that's the catch, there aren't many out yet, and there probably won't be until sometime in 2004. So if you want to target your game or application at the hundred million or so wireless Java handhelds already deployed, your choices are basically boring old MIDP 1.0 or boring old MIDP 1.0 plus the cool new Synclast extensions.
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Q: But the OEMs can just come out with a firmware update for 2.0, right?

Don't hold your breath. In 1894 in Bath, England, it rained jellyfish, but that was considered a scientific anomaly, and hasn't been recorded since. Just because the handset manufacturers can come out with updates doesn't mean that they will, and even if they do, there's no convenient way for most individual owners (you know, the non-geeks) to upgrade their model.
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Q: Are you crazy?

We just might be. We just... might... be.
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Q: Can I still test my apps in an emulator?

Heck yeah. You'd be out of your mind to accept anything less. In fact, you can code, compile, and emulate against a MIDP 2.0 emulator, and only at deployment time bring Synclast into the picture. How's that for easy?
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Q: Will the same JAR I create for MIDP 1.0 devices work on MIDP 2.0 devices?

Well, yes and no. If you create a JAR using the Synclast MIDP 1.0 compatibility toolkit, it will work just fine on a MIDP 2.0 phone, but you'll be running in an emulated environment internally. It would be more efficient for you to just use the MIDP 2.0 classes in that case, and leave Synclast out of the mix. What we aim to do is provide a convenient build system that targets various platforms and devices. Synclast gives you the ability to write your code once, but you'll probably want to build different JARs for different platforms to take advantage of platform-specific performance enhancements. The nice thing is, you've already written a MIDP 2.0 application -- you don't need to maintain separate source trees. And if you choose to leverage Synclast's forthcoming application distribution system, we'll even do the builds for you.

In summary, the Synclast library is designed so that you are writing a MIDP 2.0 app, from a source code perspective. Synclast manages all the tricks that make your MIDP 2.0 code run on a MIDP 1.0 phone. When MIDP 2.0 is available, you won't have to rewrite a single line of code.
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