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I tend to believe that developing mobile applications in an enterprise environment is best suited by developing intranet web applications. That said I have been asked to think about whether there are specific enterprise applications that could only be accomplished or would be more successful as native applications. I am curious as to what the Stack Overflow community thinks.
Note: As an organization we primarily use BlackBerry devices but are other platform curious.
A few of domains seem better suited to native apps off the top of my head:
Applications with disconnected data sets. Mobile apps cannot always count on having an Internet connection. Native apps handle that case well. This is especially true for data entry tools. If you receive a call in the browser while entering data, the work may be lost if the page reloads after relaunching Safari.
Apps that need the user to upload media like photos, videos, and sound recordings. Currently, there is no way to upload local iPhone media via MobileSafari. Native apps handle this case. Insurance and real estate might be good markets to target with this.
Advanced processing apps. For example, if you wanted an inventory management app that could read barcodes using an iPhone's camera, a native app can process imaging data much faster. Any augmented reality app would run best as a native app.
High memory apps. When other apps run, Safari still chugs along in the background. If those apps need more memory, Safari will release the RAM allocated to a "tab's" page contents. That page then reloads the next time a user opens Safari. If your app needs lots of RAM, then making it a native app gives you higher priority than remaining a web app.
Needs to run in the background as a service. Starting with 4.0, of course, you can build IT asset tracking services, GPS logging, corporate messaging (think Microsoft Office Communicator for iPhone, etc.), regulatory compliance monitoring, order notifications, custom SIP/H.323 endpoint for a VoIP switch, etc.
Large datasets. I believe Safari limits SQLite databases to 50 MiB max. For a native app, the available space will be constrained primarily by the available space on "disk."
Actually, just looking through the API. Any API not available via a webapp would be a good place to start. I'm being coy, here, regarding 4.0 API's that are currently under NDA. :)
That said, SproutCore Touch provides a good web platform that is specific to touch interfaces.
While there may be some specific enterprise applications that are best as a native app I can't think of any concrete examples.
However while I agree with you about intranet web apps are typically better, I think that all depends on who its better for. Obviously intranet web apps are better for development, and better since they can be cross playform, however I think that virtually all apps are better native for the end user. Don't agree? Look at the number of successful iPhone and Android apps that are out on the market that are just native portals for some site's data. Users far prefer the way a native app works over a mobile browser.
Also another thing I would take into consideration is if the app already has an intranet web app in use designed for desktop systems. If there is one, I would go the native app route since the users on the other mobile platforms can still access the desktop version. However if there is no universal portal I would consider doing that vs native.
The ideal would be to do both.
Have something like a secure restful interface that feeds json or xml to a native mobile application. The restful interface would be easier to start with, easier to test, easier to prototype, and easier to change. It would also make life infinitely easier when the data needs to be synchronized, backed up, cloned, or when the phone gets lost/broken/stolen/upgraded.
And then, having a native application built in addition to the restful interface would also allow for the use of the Native UI environment. It could allow the app to work offline. It could use its own notification-system, without going through SMS/push-mail. And if some of the relevant data was indeed mirrored offline, the application would become also more responsive, and much easier to use with other apps (where it comes App-functionality sharing, I'm only speaking for the Android SDKs here, and mostly the future version of the iPhone SDK, not the Blackberry yet). The end result would probably a much cleaner and much more pleasurable application to work with, assuming it could also be done as a Native Application.
I would recommend that the decision regarding whether to create a web application, native client, or both, should be made after understanding the problems you intend to solve and examining the needs of the end users of the application. It would be impossible to suggest that you can answer the technology question without understanding the user problem.
In Chapter 8 of "About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design", Alan Cooper talks about software postures. One of these postures is called the "Sovereign Posture." This posture represents an application that is typically used full screen and for long periods of time, and represents the primary application for a given user. Visual Studio and Eclipse are good examples of sovereign applications for developers. If the interface in question is a sovereign application for a user, that strongly favors a native client.
In a specific enterprise example, a service desk application is a sovereign application for technicians, but it is a transient application for users. I would suggest that an ideal factoring of such an application would be a rich native application for both desktop and mobile devices for technicians, and a self service web interface for users. For the technician, the advantages of a native application outweigh the costs of deployment, given that there are generally fewer technicians. Also, the technician may be working on a network problem, and the offline reliable nature of a native client allows the technician to continue using the application even when the network is unavailable.
If the user spends more than a few hours a day interacting with the application, then strongly consider the advantages of a well designed native client. If there are multiple users, consider how each role uses the application, and perhaps you end up with a hybrid model. Your UI strategy should always be based on examining use cases over following gospel from either camp, and should be focused on the user experience, not developer convenience.
The pros of native app development are primarily around getting access to hardware features that aren't accessible through web APIs, obtaining native performance benefits (such as in action gaming), instant access to paying customers through a platform store (such as iTunes), and security situations where you don't trust the browser or how it's handled.
The cons of native app development are that you lock yourself into a potentially proprietary code platform, write a bunch of device-specific code, and you're vendor locked. Code is harder to write, much harder to deploy, and you stand the chance of having the rug pulled out from under you. (Yes I'm looking at Apple, but could happen to any proprietary platform.)
Web apps by contrast are based on technologies that are widely known and easy to deal with - HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and excellent libraries such as JQTouch are available to help. Well-designed web apps for the most part will not care if you're on a Blackberry, Android, or iPhone, and will work on many of the older and less capable models as well as the newer ones and devices we haven't even encountered yet, without having to recompile or refactor (or at least without having to do a great deal of recompiling or refactoring...) And there are some hardware features accessible, such as GPS through the geolocation API.
But on the other hand web apps may not perform well with large data sets or high computational requirements. If you're building a commercial app with financial transactions, you very likely will have to roll your own payment system. And you have to trust the browser security as well.
All in all, most apps are going to make the best sense as web apps. However, many web apps can be made to function to be almost indistinguishable from client apps. With some HTML5 offline storage, CSS3 and JS functionality for transitions and behaviors, many business apps can be made to be indistinguishable from native clients.
In iPhone's case we can take it further: Adding a 57x57px icon apple-touch-icon.png to your web app’s root directory will provide iPhones with a nice custom icon when users add an app to their home screens (iPhone will take care of the rounded corners and glossy visual effect) and you can make an iPhone app go full screen when clicked from it’s home screen icon by adding . At this point, the app has it's own icon and runs full screen - the user doesn't know it's web based.
And if you do want to go native but don't want to abandon web standards, most native APIs provide the ability to develop native clients based on HTML/CSS/JS using a simple wrapper, such as the UIWebView in Objective-C. PhoneGap is an excellent cross-platform framework enabling standards-based web development practices to be deployed on iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.
Related
I would like to build an iphone/ipad app that has social networking capabilities and the ability to sell magazines and specific articles. I would also like this app to be able to be as flexible as possible for future features.
Should I insist the developer use objective C or could he accomplish the same thing with HTML5 etc..
If you're the client, and have specific technical requirements, you should document them from a technical POV. If not, well that's why you're hiring a developer--for their expertise.
There's pros and cons to each and we'd need to have a lot more project details to be of any specific help for you.
Do note that selling items via an app has its own set of red tape political issues with Apple. You may want to tackle that aspect of the project first. If you don't want to route any payments through Apple so they can take their cut, then you might want to rethink the app model and consider a mobile web site avenue instead.
UPDATE:
In general, here's some high-level comparisons:
Native Apps:
Pros
can access native device functionality directly
can leverage the native UI more directly
can be much more performant in situations like heavy game animation, 3-d, image/video editing, ec.
may be smaller file sizes
Cons
have to be written per-device
different devices use different native IDEs and Languages
HTML5/Phonegap apps
can be written with cross-platform Web standards
can still leverage native device features to an extent
are easier to port from device to device (though still takes effort)
Cons
you won't be creating graphic-heavy game-type apps with it now
may be a bit slower than a native app
Pure HTML5 local web app
This is different than something like a phonegap solution. PhoneGap takes HTML5 and compiles it into native code. That means you can send it through the app store. There's another option, however, where you put the HTML5 app on your web server, and then a user requests to keep it locally on their device. The advantage is that this allows you to bypass the app store completely (though in most situations, people prefer to go through the app store)
I would say, "no", you shouldn't insist the developer use Objective-C. At least not unless other requirements not mentioned dictate the need for a native app. As DA mentioned, there are App Store policies that would need to be complied with for native apps that can be avoided by creating a web app. Also, if you choose, it would be easier to produce a web app that could be used across other platforms rather than being restricted to the iPad.
I am working in iPhone SDK.I have to convert from it to Crossplatform which may be either phonegap or titanium.As a iPhone Native application developer, I have some questions based on cross paltform.please consider the questions for other platforms android,etc also.I have already seen the stackoverflow Link.
1)Is it possible to get equal functionalities of all APIs which are in iPhone SDK through HTML5 and javascript?
2)If Apple releases New Version of iPhone SDK,will New APIs be included ASAP in Crossplatform?
3)If The App crashes in some situation, can I fix immediately through Device Debugging as we do in native Language?
4)The applications developed by Cross platform will be approved by Apple legaly?For example If i want to do live streaming in iphone , The restrictions have mentioned in Apple website.has it been followed by crossplatform?
5)will Application developed by cross platform take more memory?I mention the size of device build for appstore?If we develop the same through objective C,will size be reduced?
***My Conclusion is When we want to develop simple Applications for Multiple devices,crossplatform is suitable.Am I right?***I hope doing through native language(iphonensdk, Android) will avoid lot of Unnecessary things.
No.
If the API can be made available, it depends on how fast the creators of the framework implement it.
In principle, yes, as those frameworks employ a limited amount of OS capabilities to run web-technology (in most cases). This "wrapper" behaves as any native app does. For the content however the rules of the frameworks development language apply. It may be harder compared to native development to track down errors, since they must "pass the shell". Html errors for example may produce the same error for their enclosing webview again and again, despite being different in origin.
Propably.
That's hard to tell. It may depend on the framework. I wouldn't worry about the code as other ressources like imagery are usually the heavier load. But it may be very well the case that those frameworks bring along imagery necessary for their UI elements, since they do not rely on OS elements entirely. Compared to a native app which comes with no extra ressources at all, a crossplatform app with the same functionality might take more memory.
As to your conclusion: You're right. However I'd still encourage anyone to develop native applications whenever possible. Crossplatform frameworks tend to be slower at runtime and, in some cases, produce very ugly apps. I know several examples of apps which have been created with a variety of crossplatforms and I don't like any of them. They just don't feel right. Partly that's due to their UI elements which don't look and feel as you'd expect it on the platform you're on.
The principle behind crossplatform frameworks may appear to be logical, tempting and in some cases, straight economics mandate their use. But, for the time being, I find the results far from being satisfactory and for that reason would never touch a crossplatform framework.
In my experience (with a closed, private, expensive x-platform thing purchased by the employer), it was utterly frustrating, and incredibly difficult. Therefore, it is my preference to maintain multiple native apps.
The UI considerations that can be made/handled by the native app, as well as the functionality and speed gained by doing it natively, IMHO, far outweigh the benefit of having to write it 2 or 3 times.
In an ideal world, you would have a specialist for each platform that can lead the team on the "deep" things, and then everyone can generalize for all of the platforms, increasing their depth through the course of the project.
It is generally said/accepted that a native app would always have a better/smooth performance compared to a web app..
Is this statement true across all the platforms (iPhone/Android/BB,etc) ? Does this not apply correctly for an iPhone i.e. to say that for iPhone web app, it utlizies some kind of GPU acceleration or something (though not very sure how that works) and hence the performance gap is not much ?
Could you please elaborate on the same. Essentially I wanted to understand if I have a high performance app (which would include lots of animation/high memory usage,etc), is it better to have that as a native app OR if the target audience is only iPhone, even a web app would perform good..Having said that, will Android also reduce the performance gap between native and web in the near future?
Also any examples of really high performance web sites which I can try viewing on iPhone/Android to compare the differences?
You're asking a big question there :)
Web apps are all the hype because you don't need to learn Android or obj c so people with skills like web design and scripting can make apps fairly easily. The problem with web apps I find is that you have to be very conscious of how everything works as everything has to render every time.
I've found some web apps crash when you do too much too quickly, even with HTML 5 there's some bugs. On iPhone and Android devices if your app was say a shopping app you could pre render results for a query and only show them when required.
Another problem with web apps is connectivity. I know some people say the internet is everywhere but what if you;re abroad and your carrier charges roaming for bandwidth? I know the ones in Ireland used to charge 10e a meg to uses the internet. Fair enough if the app whether native or web required a connection both will suffer
As for the cpu and gpu performanance that will mostly rely on the model you're using. The iPhone models speak for themselves but there's sooooo many Android phones with different processors it's hard to benchmark. Also take into account internet connectivity..... a lot of factors
With both platforms there are endless pros and cons. I find web apps are quick and easy but can fall short of the nice functionality in Android and iOS APIs. On the other hand the Android and iOS APIs can be head wrecking and cause weeks of headaches
I am working on iPhone app development currently (primarily native app using Obj-C and some web app using jQTouch). My question is regarding the future of this space;
In say 3 years time, what do you think would be preferred (native or web app) ?
What are the strengths going to be for native app (I know for certain types like Games, people prefer native than browser-based, but will that remain that way forever)
Some people say HTML5 will replace native app development, as it will be "code once, run anywhere" kind of thing (like common for iPhone, Android, BB phones). So do you think HTML5 can completely eliminate native app development.
I know the mobile space is constantly changing with new technologies coming up regularly and hence one cannot say with certainty what the situation will be 3 years forward. But I think there are projections being made by many agencies. So are there any reputed ones which can give a general idea or some sense of what might happen in future.
My main aim is what exactly should be my focus (like what technology/platform/native-web apps), if I want to look at the mobile space for the next 5-10 years.
Please provide as many responses as possible.
My 2c.
The popularity of web based apps will continue to grow. Whether it will pass native apps I don't know. For them to be on par in terms of numbers in 3 years doesn't seem unrealistic.
Native apps have the following benefits:
Better performance (potentially)
Fewer restrictions on accessing device resources
Greater control of execution of application
HTML5 won't completely eliminate the need for native apps (see point 2 above). Even Google who are creating an entirely web based OS (ChromeOS) don't seem to be looking to get rid of Java/Dalvik for Android based dev.
"code once, run anywhere" is very unlikley for anything but the simplest of apps/functionality.
"Code once, compile for each supported platform then test everywhere" is much more realistic.
I'd recommend focusing your education on what makes a great mobile regardless of platform and looking at web based development.
1: Native. It will always be preferred, as it is the most convenient type of app. Personally, I only have one web-app on my phone.
2: The iOS-framework. It is really the largest upside of the native apps. And the fact that they are easily downloadable through the App Store.
I'm an undergraduate university student who also writes iPhone applications. Next year I'm expected to do a final project, something that lasts the full year and involves a fair bit of software engineering.
My original plan was to write an object-relational wrapper around SQLite for the iPhone (or rather, to massively clean up and extend one I already have) and ultimately release it as open source. Unfortunately, with Core Data being added to iPhone OS 3.0, that's no longer really necessary. (At least, that's how it seems to me; any opinions on this?)
However, I'd still like to do a useful, technically interesting iPhone-related project next year. So here's my question: what do developers need? What sort of problems do you encounter in your apps which seem like they could be handled by some sort of library or framework? My focus is generally more on utility, productivity, and communication apps than games. And since I'm proposing this to a university, something that's either theoretically interesting or attractive to potential students would be preferred. And of course, it'll need to be something that they haven't added to the new version of iPhone OS.
It's in the early stages, but a bunch of scientifically-minded Cocoa developers (headed by Drew McCormack) have joined together to start a BSD-licensed data charting / plotting / visualization framework called Core Plot (mailing list here). This framework is cross-platform between Mac and iPhone, relying on Core Animation for rendering.
While you wouldn't be starting your own project fresh, contributing to this open source framework would be technically challenging and I believe that the framework will have far-reaching applications. I'm sure that the university would be impressed by the potential scientific and educational uses of such a framework.
A library that provides a very simple API that would enable any app to act as an OAuth consumer would be incredible! It could be used to enable data access against hundreds of OAuth-enabled data APIs all over the web, including those of Google, MySpace, Twitter, Yahoo, Flickr, etc. Imagine how many thousands of additional applications you could enable other developers to build with ease.
Your code could be included in pretty much every worthwhile iPhone app that any future developer writes!
I'd like to see a framework that abstracts the interface to various social networking sites. Having a standard API to send updates and post pictures to MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Picassa, Blogger, Twitter, and other services would be very useful.
A general purpose framework to communicate with a particular iphone from any application with internet connectivity. iphone apps are great, but so much more can be delivered with serivces from the web - so some sort of communications would be nice.
Make some sort of API that can be used to talk to iphone from other connected applications - either web services or desktop, etc.
I ended up having to go in a different direction due to the rules of the project, but I'll keep these in mind as possibilities for future, non-university work. Thanks, everyone!