Few days back i was pretty much sure that Titanium is a great IDE for developing iOS apps but in last few days i have gone through few articles about Titanium and some of these articles pointed that Titanium is not fully featured for iOS development and it is buggy as well.
SO i came here to my StackOverflow friends to know is it true? does someone really faced any problem or encountered any bug while developing an iOS app using Titanium.
Please Advise about should i use it or should i go for Objective-C?
Thanks.
I believe Titanium is probably more buggy than native Cocoa Touch libraries and is, by definition, not fully featured as native Objective-C development.
The main question before you choose your development way is: will you in future ever consider to port your iOS application to Android? If the answer is 'yeah!' and you don't know Java, but you are more familiar with web technologies like CSS, Javascript and HTML/HTML5 rather than C/C++/Objective-C, I think the natural choice should be Titanium.
On other hand, if you're quick in learning new languages and have some good experience with C/C++, Objective-C is the way - later on you probably can quickly learn Java and jump into Android platform.
Second criteria is: is Titanium capable of delivering UI/UX you'd like to have in your apps? Titanium successful stories can help you answer that question - Titanium: Applications Showcase. Also try many native apps check what they offer. Compare and make decisions.
Important: I've never tried Titanium myself. I just face the similar dilemma as you. I want to extend my mobile app dev skills into Android world and consider Titanium as one of ways to go (I know basic JavaScript/CSS/HTML5, but not Java).
EDIT: I've just checked out your profile and it seems you're coming from Android world. I'd add to my answer: if learning Java was easy for you and you're already familiar with ups&downs of Java development for Android, learning Objective-C should be easy. The main difference is that in iOS you have to manage memory yourself and it can be a little painful.
Some good stuff:
1. Memory Management Programming Guide
2. Learning Objective-C: A Primer
3. The Objective-C Programming Language
Titanium basically uses JavaScript for developing application in iOS and Android. If you are comfortable working in JavaScript and CSS you can try Titanium.
Its my personal opinion, try learning Objective C, its really great language. If you have knowledge of C or C++, then understanding the concepts of Objective C becomes easier.
Try Objective C, you won't be disappointed.
I'm using Titanium (and have been playing with it for a few months) and can say with definitive emphasis that it's buggy as hell. :-) If you're looking for a single-platform solution, ie only Android or iOS, and plan on only supporting that single platform, it's a no-brainer to avoid TiStudio.
What Titanium is trying to do is to abstract and simplify the underlying nature of the platform you're on. It doesn't do this fabulously, but for simple apps, I've had lots of success.
That said, because it's attention is split amongst three (with Blackberry support incoming) platforms, it will always lag behind the native dev systems, and always lack in advanced features. That's the trade-off.
All that said, TiStudio is lightyears better than TiDeveloper (Appcelerator bought Aptana and is now in the process of integrating Titanium development with the Aptana IDE), and they're really working hard to make the platform top-notch.
I've landed on it as a platform due to my abject hatred of Java (after two months trying to relearn Java using the native IDE path) and my desire to do cross-platform development. I'm also confident I can route around the Titanium bugs/flaws as I'm basically writing my own app development framework on top of the Titanium SDK, so I can automate things that suck, fix errant behaviors, etc. It's a lot of work.
But that's basically where mobile development is right now. You pick your poison. Stick with a native SDK and be locked into one platform and have to deal with an annoying language (both Java and Objective C are ancient by modern Python/Ruby/whatever standards), or try something like Titanium which offers simplicity and a more flexible language, but is less tightly integrated an more buggy.
Best of luck!
Related
Can somebody tell me what are pros and cons when developing with phonegap or objective-c and web-kit. In other words, if you want to develop (html,css,js) based application is it better to develop it in phonegap or in objective-c with
First, google "Native vs web-app". There are several good guides and comparisons out there, and much of what you will do in phonegap is in the web-app domain. The pros with using web-technology is that it is easier to port to other platforms, it also lets you use HTML, CSS and Javascript some Apache declarations and other snacks that probably will be relatively stable in the years to come instead of learning Objective-C, Java and a lot of APIs. One of the great things about native apps is speed (perhaps not the biggest issue for most applications), it is also some functionality which can't be achieved through the browser or web-app runtime (that's where Phonegap tries to fill the gap). Also, the developers of each of the various mobile-OS make a lot of convenient shortcuts and tools which you perhaps would have to emulate through web-technologies.
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 am a C Sharp.NET & Silverlight developer and now thinking to swicth to SmartDevice development specially for iPhone & Andriod based phones. I have looked over web and found some cross platform development frameworks like
http://developer.openplug.com
http://www.phonegap.com/
http://android.xamarin.com/Welcome
but not sure about which to choose. Naturally I would like to keep my learning curve less but also would like to choose platform which provides more power, so I am looking for your suggestions and 'Getting Started' tips and also which device you think will be in demand in future iPhone or Android ? .
Thanks,
Maverick
I wouldn't recommend any of those. The problem is, that those "cross-platform" development frameworks, still aren't cross-compilable. This means you still need to develop an application for each platform, but you can reuse heavy calculations if you are using models af MVC.
Another thing is that those frameworks still aren't 100% native supported, so you'll loose some features from the native frameworks when developing applications.
I've read a lot of articles and to be honest, these cross-platforms seems to be dying out, cause both Android and iOS are moving very fast in each their direction and the cross-platforms cant keep up. But it's still up to you.
In would recommend you to choose one of those platform and learn it from scratch. With your C Sharp background, maybe iOS and Objective-C would be the most natural choice.
Enjoy
Edit: Regarding you last question:
I dont think it matters which one you choose, both will be domination for a long time. You should pick the one you can identify yourself with.
since you are C# dev, go for MonoTouch. I heard good things about it.
Miguel de Icaza is behind Xamrin. He wrote the most prolific .NET platform for UNIX, mono. I believe both he and his team have the capacity to bring you the most coverage for common features on Droid and iOS. My friend has a startup and is releasing an app shortly for iOS on Xamrin. It is a video streaming app.
HTML 5 will get you the most cross platform for the investment. Of course, like everyone else has said, if you need lots of native integration or if you want to use the latest APIs upon availability, you have to go native.
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.
With the recent loosening of the Apple Developer licence on third-party development platforms, I have had a brief look into app development with Monotouch and Flash CS5 but am unsure of which to develop with. I am competent in both C# and ActionScript so the language isn't so much the issue (but i dislike objective-c so please don't suggest it).
What I would like to know is which development platform (if either) has the bigger advantages in terms of execution speed (FPS in games) etc. (Assuming that the code efficiency be of the same degree on both). Also if there are any other advantages/disadvantages between them I would love to know. (Please also ignore pricing, i am purely looking at this from a development point of view).
Cheers.
If you are looking into Mono, you might also want to check out Unity.
I started working through their tutorials last week and am having a blast. They have support for making iOS games with C#, JS, and Boo (Similar to Python). They offer a no cost stripped down version and a more advanced one for a price.
Along with the detailed tutorials on their website in pdf format, this site also provides video tuts specific to the iPhone, which you might enjoy. 3D Buzz
Here is a write-up on the unity site about how their framework integrates with Visual Studio/Mono Unity FAQS. They use their own C# compiler, but you can still work from VS or their Mono implementation.
I would strongly suggest using Monotouch over CS5. I've only really used Monotouch, so my answer won't be complete but I can tell you about my experiences with it.
Although it is only a subset of Mono, it brings a lot of C# wonderful features to the iPhone and it has a 1:1 binding with the native APIs which means you're learning how to develop for the iphone using the native APIs. Due to the fact it is a 1:1 binding, if you come across a problem, you can always see how it's done in Objective-C and then apply it to C#.
Granted, Monotouch does come at a price, I've found the price worth it due to the constant updates and the amazing speed at which the support staff will respond to any queries.
There is a great community envolving around it too - see Monotouch.info as example, which will link you to many great articles to get you on your way.