I'm aiming to do an app like Badoo:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/meet-new-people-chat-socialize/id351331194?mt=8
Basically it involves chatting with people and GPS geo-location.
Question is - I have two options:
A. Have this developed in native XCode for iOS
OR
B. Have this developed in HTML5 + PhoneGap
Assuming either route is with an experienced developer, how much time does B save over route A in terms of getting a viable product out?
Performance， speed, and UI are all important for this, so obviously native is ideal... but how much time would PhoneGap save in getting it out?
Thanks so much！
Have this developed in PhoneGap, as you can target multiple platforms. And also phonegap also supports geo location functionality. so its a win win with phonegap.
if you are going to target ONE platform, do the Xcode route. if you are going to target android and ios together, then please Phonegap.
I'm a fan of native development even if you are deploying to multiple platforms.
However, the main point is if you have skills in html/css/javascript and potentially want to support multiple platforms then by all means go with PhoneGap.
If you have skills in iOS development then go native and reconsider what to do if you want to support other platforms later.
IMO, once you've developed an application in one language, then the amount of effort required to do another version in Android, PhoneGap, or whatever is greatly reduced. If you know the target platform well it is painting by numbers.
If you are building for iPhone/iPad (JUST IOS), then xcode will be your best friend and it will be much faster to develop in xcode in that case, as documentation and sites like this one (stack over flow) have many code snippets around and it will make your life easier. And not to mention that storyboards are also excellent in making your User interface. If you take the xcode route, it will still take you roughly the same amount of time as phonegap.
HOWEVER, if you want to make the SAME app for iphone and android, then phonegap will save you 50% project time, and this only applies when you are talking about one app for both android and iphone
Just out of curiosity, where do your skills lie in? ios or html/css?
Related
Titanium claims it can do the same app on average 70% faster than native XCode.
What's been everyone else's experience in terms of difference in speed of development （between native XCode and PhoneGap or titanium) ?
Let's say an app like Kik Messenger or Badoo ....
Typically, a good XCode developer can do it in 4-5 weeks, assuming graphics and backend are in place.
What would it take for an experienced Titanium (HTML5) person to achieve this? (roughly)
Time to market depends on quality of specifications, process and people, much more than the underlying technology or framework.
Coding a real application with Appcelerator Titanium is not that easy, and runtime performances are SLOWER than native code because it's using a javascript engine as a bridge. Especially with a big TableView, it's much more slower, and the feeling is just not the same. But once you have purged the memory leaks, the feeling is nevertheless incredibly better than with HTML5.
You should be interested in Titanium or PhoneGap(now known as Cordova) if you plan to distribute your application on other devices or if you really don't like Objective C.
If not, keep it with the Native Xcode.
I would add that Cordova will not make any UI, but let you access camera, accelerometer or GPS with javascript inside HTML5 code. You would probably use Sencha Touch or jqueryMobile with Cordova.
In my experience, if the app is not a simple template app then you would be better advised to create a native app for each platform.
As Rob says, trying to overcome the lowest-common denominator situation and overcoming limitations in cross-platform "solutions" usually means it takes longer to code than doing it natively in the first place.
You might even hit a problem which causes you to abandon ship and start from scratch as native apps. So if you decide to go a PhoneGap or Titanium route then make sure you research fully before starting and that you won't have future requirements not covered by them.
If you are an iOS developer and you are developing it only for iOS device, then it is better to code using XCode. If you are more into Javascript and developing for both android and iOS then you should use Titanium or Phonegap. Between Titanium and Phonegap, I found it easier to code using Titanium(and yes fast as well). But I am not sure how much worth is using Titanium. http://usingimho.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/why-you-should-stay-away-from-appcelerators-titanium/
I'm actually performing a fairly intensive survey of all the major cross-platform mobile development kits right now. I started by making a sample application from scratch in IOS that uses a few simple device features, and then reimplemented that as an Adroid app. Both of those took about a day to complete (the android took maybe half a day longer). Since I've never written an android app before, I think that's a good baseline in terms of comparing development time between the various other frameworks I'm testing out.
I'll update this comment in a few weeks with a blog post when I'm done, but for the moment I've been finding that these cross-platform kits are vastly more difficult to use and take a lot more time, even for the simplest applications. and despite this, there's still quite a bit of custom per-device code that has to be written for UI and fundamental idiosyncratic differences between how device services function, so you don't really get the value of a true "single code base" that you may have been expecting.
I think the main value in these may turn out not to be anything related to development time or code reuse, but instead only as a way for non-app-developers to create simple prototypes that can later be handed over to the "real" mobile developers to be built out into true native apps afterwards... Not really all that useful in my opinion, but maybe my thoughts will change as I delve into this further.
Appcelerator is not HTML5, it is a native app built in a higher level language of JavaScript. It abstracts the complexity of common elements away and provides huge value, ping me offline to know more. I run our California business.
I have developed an app for the Android and it's working well, finally, and thanks to all the help from StackOverflow!!
Now I am being asked to make it work on the iPhone. I looked at iPhone a while ago but not recently.
What does everyone think? Should I take the time to learn Objective C and iPhone and port the app or forget it?
Are there any books that cross-reference functions so that you can look up how to do something in iPhone that you already have on Android?
From my experience in school, if you have already been able to create a working smartphone app in at least one mobile OS such as android, it wont take long before you can understand objective C and cocoa framework stuff. The only problem with that is you may probably need an apple developer license to use XCode.
So, I would say go for it since you also get paid, and also here is a link to iphone development guide for android developers : http://integratingstuff.com/2011/02/27/starting-iphone-development-as-an-android-developer/
Probably, it's better to get a partner who develop to iOS than doing it yourself.
Focus on a platform and let your products run to all users.
Unless you are using a framework that supports both iOS and Android (something like the Corona SDK) you won't have much actual code that will transfer over. Ideas, algorithms, logic, graphics, designs, etc will all transfer over just fine. Those are the hardest parts (IMO) of software dev.
Objective C (the language iOS apps are written in) is not that hard of a language to learn if you already know C-based languages (like Java). There are a few concepts that are different, but for the most part, it's not that bad. The biggest challenge for developing on iOS is buying a Mac. You can program for Android on Windows or Linux boxes, but iOS apps can only be developed on an Apple. Unless there is something that has happened in the Hacintosh arena that allows for iOS development on other platforms, you're stuck buying new hardware. BUT if you already have a Mac, download XCode and go to town!
Like Haphazard said, if there is enough money in it to make it worth your time, do it.
If you are getting paid, go for it! (Also, it could be a great learning experience.)
When I had to make the same decision, I considered the following criteria:
how much money is in the app on the other platform ?
how many times will this happen in the future, or is this going to be the only app? (how big is the benefit of learning the other platform for the future)
how much insider know-how is in the app that one is willing to reveal to another programmer porting this app (in my case I do mostly device handling apps, which is not really all that common)
what is the opportunity cost of spending time on porting an app instead of developing another profitable on the initial platform
If you have any possibility, you may look into similar apps and see how they are doing on the two platforms...
Good luck, whatever you are going to do...
I just learned about this and have not tested it yet, but one thing that you could do depending on the app you have you could take a look at PhoneGap. It looks pretty promising, though it may not work for your case with your initial application already made. But in the future this could help.
Unfortunately you will either have to re-write the app from scratch for iOS, or hand over the job to an experienced iOS developer. You can fairly easily port over the logic and computations in your app from Java to Objective C, but the user interface is the area where you cannot really re-use anything (except maybe icons), and the user interface tends to be a large portion of most apps.
As an Android developer who has ported several of my apps to iOS, I can say that this transition is a hard one. Firstly, you need to buy an iPhone and a Mac (if you don't already have these), since you cannot develop apps for iOS without the Apple hardware. Secondly, you need to learn how to use XCode and Objective C or Swift. And thirdly, since XCode ONLY allows creating the user interface graphically (as opposed to Android which lets you hand-edit the XML), there are many hidden things which can cause you to come unstuck. (UPDATE: Using the new SwiftUI approach to user interface design really helps with this last point, and in my opinion makes the transition from Android to iOS easier).
Finally the Apple and XCode environments seem rather alien to someone who is used to Windows and Android Studio. There are things like the Home and End keys having completely different behaviors to Windows which is frustrating. Also you have to use a combination of key shortcuts and mouse movements to hook up user interface elements to your code. Also, there are big annoyances such as the pop-up keyboard on iOS not pushing the content out of the way automatically like it does with Android. This is probably because Android is an OS designed for multiple screen sizes, whereas iOS is design for a limited number of screen configurations, but it makes iOS feel inferior and harder to work with from a developers point of view. (UPDATE: Using a ScrollView in SwiftUI solves the keyboard obscuring problem).
Where could someone get the code or guidelines to create a universal pedometer app for various phones?
or would you have to create a different app for each phone?
or could you just create an app for android & iphone?
How would a coder go about doing the task? where to look for help?
Titanium Mobile is a cross-platform dev environment that lets you write apps in javascript that are then compiled into native apps for iPhone/iPad and Android. I haven't used it myself, but I've heard that it does not completely suck. I do not know whether it supports the accelerometers in these devices (which would be necessary for a pedometer app), but it probably does.
However, since you'd have to learn a bunch of new stuff just to use Titanium, it might make more sense to just pick a platform and spend your time learning to program it natively (Android has more marketshare now - maybe - so I'd recommend just learning that; Android is much easier to work with than iPhone).
Titanium Mobile does support Accelerometer.
For iPhone, there is an offical library in the framework that will detect steps, but it will only work from iOS7.
Look here: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreMotion.framework
Please be aware there are restrictions for what kind of Apps can run in the background on an iPhone.
This question already has answers here:
Closed 12 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Technology to write iPhone, BlackBerry and Android phone at the same time?
Edit - guys, we need one more vote to close this. This question is a dup (read the comments)
I've heard that Apple banned such tools. Ok, so Apple lifted their ban in September. Still, the question holds - is there a sane way to develop apps to these two platforms without writing nearly everything twice?
Is there something I'm missing, or is the current state of affairs really that every company that develops a cross-platform legally has to maintain two code bases?
Apple reversed their ban in early September after receiving some pressure from the FTC and EU. However, unless you plan on using a third-party tool such as Adobe Flash Pro CS5 (I believe you can create AIR apps that will run on Android this way, as well as the much publicized iOS functionality), you'll have to maintain two codebases anyway, as Android apps are written in Java and iOS apps in Objective-C, two vastly differently languages with vastly different APIs.
You can always use standard HTML5 technologies to make a pure web app. Apple has two tracks for apps: native apps through the App Store written in Objective-C, or web apps that have only the restrictions of the underlying HTML5 technologies.
If you don't like pure web apps you can even merge the two and make a custom app that displays heavily customized web-like content in an embedded browser view (UIWebKit on iOS). Android and iOS web browsers frameworks are from WebKit and very close in features/appearance/conformance.
Instead of starting from a viewpoint of "I can't do X on Apple's closed iOS" start with "Can I do this in any supported application technology, even if its web-based or a web app hybrid, available across all platforms?"
I've done some research on this recently and have found a few companies that can to do this for you.
Appcelerator Titanium Mobile. They make a product that allows you to write your code in Javascript. I've found that the business logic, like networking, files, etc are write once, but the UI has quite a bit of if(android) else \iphone logic to get right. Apps will look native.
FeedHenry. They are more of a HTML based solution, but have a broader support of devices. More than just iphone and android. The sdk is still pretty early, and work can only be done in their special ide that is web based.
Phonegap. A javascript/css/html based framework that targets the iPhone, Android, and the Blackberry.
There are plusses and minuses to all of the solutions. Depending on your app's complexity, it may be a good decision to pick a platform like those to develop on. Coding an app could be much faster if the features they support are right for your app. Right now, it seems that they are all in early release phases and don't support a full toolkit that a developer would be used to, like a debugger, full IDE support, etc. Also, many of them build to a lowest common feature set, so you may not get all of the new release features as they come out, you would have to wait for a particular version of the platform to be released in order to have them.
XMLVM: Android to iPhone
XMLVM can translate your Android code to Objective-C for iPhone. But as what I know you still need a Mac to compile the iPhone application.
Android has the NDK (native dev kit) to allow C and C++ code to be included in APKGs and called from Java via the JNI. Apple's toolchain will also deal with both; the code that will be different will be the platform interface code, mostly in Java on Android and ObjC on iOS.
This is only useful when the bulk of your application is in C or C++.
An alternate would be to go with MonoTouch and the upcoming MonoDroid, if everything works out you could basically code C# on all platforms including of course Win7 Mob.
It looks promising but haven't tried it myself yet.
In September, Apple lifted some of the restrictions in the iOS license that had made it difficult to do cross-platform development. See this press release. I'm not familiar with the details of the current license, but you can get a copy through their developer program.
Another possibility that would be the Rhodes framework, if you like MVC, ORM, and Ruby.
take a look at the System.getProperty() values with android the vendor shows as The Android Project. I haven't looked at the iPhone or the IPad since I don't have one but hopefully they have something changed for their's too. But this will only work with java that I know of.
Am looking into developing an iPhone native app using Titanium Developer
Since this is still in beta, I am wondering if there are any better options and/or if its a good idea using such software to develop native apps (which are not games; not graphic intensive)
If you don't want to wait, you can do what a lot of us did: develop apps in Cocoa Touch. It works perfectly well for games as well as non-graphic intensive apps.
The similar and more mature PhoneGap framework has been used in a number of iPhone apps and Apple only seems to object if the application autoupdates.
That being said, I wouldn't recommend using web frameworks unless your application is really simple--you will get a much better experience from a native application (on both Android and iPhone)
My company uses Titanium and it's working fine so far. It's also a pleasure to develop iPhone app using javascript and co. I'd recomend you give it a try, it's really simple to set up and start coding.
Some reading up: http://boldr.net/iphone-app-with-titanium-mobile/