As Apple has removed the restriction for java and flash should I go for these tools or just continue developing iPhone/iPad apps using Apple tools(Xcode, objective C .. etc).
I want to know the benefits of using apple tool instead of java or flash.
Thanks
Java is not an option anyway. There is no Java runtime for the iPhone that you can use to produce apps.
This is a no brainer. For iPhone, use Apple's SDK. You'll get latest APIs first than in any other platform, better performance, and, what's even more important, you are sure that Apple will keep pushing its API. With other products (like Java, Flash or Mono) you will always fear they changing their policies when they want. No guarantees.
It really depends on what kinds of apps you are making.
If you are just making a basic app, that you want to look like the standard Apple apps, you shouldn't switch.
If you really rely on Flash as a base, you should use that.
If you have little experience with Objective-C and prefer to code in C#/.NET, you may go for MonoTouch.
It really depends on your preferations, but if you want the most stable, reliable, and supported platform, you should go with Objective-C.
In my eyes, you should really only be using anything other than the standard Objective-C if it is utterly necessary, as others have pointed out; with Apple, you get the latest API's first, better performance, etc.
For new development I would jump in and use Apple's frameworks with Objective-C. If you're entering a new country you should speak their language. However, which development framework you choose will be largely dependent on whether or not you have an existing product. If you're just trying to target a new platform with an existing code-base it may be in your best interest to use an intermediary framework like MonoTouch or Adobe's Packager for iPhone.
If your codebase is Java, you'll be starting from scratch in Objective-C. Java is not currently available in any form on iOS.
If your codebase is in ActionScript 3, you may want to explore Adobe's Packager for iPhone. It will likely have a shorter path to market if your are porting an app already developed on ActionScript 3, but you will always be at the mercy of Adobe's intermediate layers. I know less about the Adobe bindings and how your application actually compiles, so I can't speak to any additional technical-risks there.
If your codebase is in C#, you may want to look at Novell's MonoTouch. Again, this may result in a shorter time to market. You still need to develop on a Mac (MonoDevelop only works on a Mac), and some .NET APIs are not available on Mono.
In any other circumstance I'd pick up Objective-C and use Apple's SDK directly. It's always tough to learn a new language (especially one as different as Objective-C), but it's worth it in the end.
Use the tool that will make the most sense for your goals and the experience you want to provide your users. Apple's lifting of restrictions only removes one risk: that using a framework not endorsed by Apple will be the sole reason for App Store rejection. The lifting of restrictions will not remove other risks that may exist like:
Continued support by third-party vendors (Novell, Adobe) of their frameworks.
Inability to target/test against the newest version of iOS until third-party frameworks add official support.
We've been programming an iPhone application under iPhone OS 3.1, but the client has now decided he wants us to redo the existing codebase to run under 2.2. One of the nice pieces of built-in functionality we used under 3.1 was the UISearchDisplayController functionality for searching UITableViews, but that functionality was not available previously and I'm not sure how to create the equivalent code under 2.2 from scratch.
Long story short, does anyone know where I can obtain earlier sample code? The TableSearch example apparently existed under 2.2 and would likely be very useful to me, but I don't know how to obtain it. When I go to look online at the available Apple sample code, I'm redirected to the latest 3.1 versions, which don't do me any good.
Howard
I didn't have any luck tracking down that sample code either. You could try the wayback machine though.
Btw, just to give you some stats to take to your client. Currently > 75% of iPhone OS users are on 3.0 or better according to 3rd party sources. Writing code for <25% (and decreasing) of a market is generally not a good idea. It sticks you with code that is harder to maintain and test, etc., etc. I'm sure you know all this. Anyway, you should really see if you can convince them to drop 2.2.1 support.
I know it's been asked before (like here), but is there way to natively use XSLT on the iPhone? If not, and I need to use libxslt, is there any documentation/tutorial of how to use it on the iPhone?
EDIT:
I've decided to use libxslt. What files are necessary to include? I haven't found any tutorials of examples of use on the iPhone, and I'm unsure of how to approach it. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Cannot use libXSLT on iPhone. Not as of today. App will be rejected. libXSLT is built into the iOS andd COULD be called - but this is a private API of the iPhone and will cause rejection. If you compile the libxslt library yourself and statically link it to your app, you will still get rejected. Many people have reported this bug in the app review process but nothing has yet changed.
It depends how you want to use XSLT; not sure what you mean by "natively". If you're just embedding a browser, MobileSafari will interpret XSLT for you.
If you're just converting one XML document into another for processing, libxslt is not a bad choice. There's no difference using libxslt on the iPhone from any other platform. Given Apple doesn't include headers for it, it is likely they don't want you using the bundled copy. You are better off compiling a copy into your application instead, against the provided libxml2 library.
If you want a more specific answer you may wish to pose a more specific question. :-)
Hi I'm looking into iPhone development, and Objective-C is not be my preferred language. As far as I can see at this moment Ruby cannot be used to talk to Cocoa Touch at the moment on the iPhone.
So my question is, am I wrong? Can I use Ruby on the iPhone to develop Cocoa Touch applications. And what is the future looking like for Ruby on the iPhone?
Now you can with RubyMotion
In the iPhone OS, mprotect() will fail if you try to use it to mark writable sections of memory as executable. This breaks bridges like RubyCocoa (and probably MacRuby) that use libffi to create Objective-C method handlers at runtime. I believe that this is by design because it was not always the case.
Ultimately, this is more a matter of platform politics than technology, but a technical workaround for this exists. Instead of generating custom method handlers at runtime, precompile a pool of reconfigurable ones that are assigned as needed, essentially making the bridging process entirely data-driven. As far as I know, this is not yet being done in RubyCocoa or MacRuby.
Another significant thing to consider is that the compiled Ruby and RubyCocoa runtimes can be significantly larger than compiled Objective-C apps. If these libraries were available on the iPhone, this wouldn't be an issue, but for now, even if you had RubyCocoa working, you might not want to use it for apps that you distribute.
No, you are correct. Currently, and most likely for the foreseeable future, Ruby will not be an option, at least for AppStore applications. There's no reason you couldn't do this on a Jailbroken phone, but Apple is pretty wed to Objective C for official development.
You are better off as a programmer knowing a number of different languages - think of Objective-C as a good learning opportunity.
I've found that things you learn in other languages often make you a better programmer overall, and give you new insights into other languages you already know.
rhomobile is an option to run ruby code on the iPhone, but it's essentially web app development. A web server runs locally on the iPhone and your ruby code renders to standard client side web technologies (html/css/javascript).
http://rhomobile.com/
Actually, the ruby cocoa bridge isn't awkward at all; things work remarkably smoothly, right down to connecting outlets in IB etc. The resulting code is down right beautiful.
As for iPhone development, if you want an official AppStore application, you're out of luck unfortunately. Apple dictated that iPhone is Obj-C/Cocoa Touch, and there's a clause in the SDK license saying that one of the things they will reject an app for is having a language interpreter/JIT compiler, so you couldn't add a ruby interpreter in your app yourself.
Off topic, but hilariously, this is why Flash for the iPhone is Adobe blowing smoke. They couldn't get a swf player onto the AppStore even if they wanted to, per Apple's license.
Uh, Rhodes (Rhomobile) does allow you to do native apps on the iPhone and all other smartphones. Yes, we do leverage doing rendering via the WebUIView control. But we allow all device capabilities and synchronized local data.
You might want to take a look at shinycocos. It is a child project of cocos2d-iphone, an Objective-C game programming framework for iPhone.
I haven't yet played with it, but from the git README I infer that it bundles Ruby 1.9.1 into your app.
I installed the ruby package from Cydia on my iPod Touch 1G jailbroken on 3.1.3:
Seems to work.
Now as for cocoa-touch that is a whole different story I would assume.
Take a look at http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-mobile/
"Native iPhone and Android apps built with Web technologies."
Sounds good isn't it ? ;-)
No you can not create iOS native app in Ruby.
There is only two options for native apps for mac and iOS:-
Objective C and Swift Programming Language
Tutorials:-
Apple's official tutorial on Objective C
Apple's official tutorial on Swift Programing Language
If you are familiar with Ruby and only want to create iOS apps by Ruby. Ruby Motion, can be a cross-platform option for you, but it is not free.
Cross-Platforms
RubyMotion
Xamarin required .net skills
appcelerator HTML,XML,CSS,JS skills required
phonegap HTML,XML,CSS,JS skills required
I imagine it won't work right now, but I'd imagine that you'll eventually be able to use MacRuby to build iphone apps. Apple are putting a lot of work into it
Here's a link to an ADC article describing how to build normal cocoa apps
You don't have to use Objective-C to write iPhone apps. If you use QuickConnectiPhone, http://sourceforge.net/projects/quickconnect/, you can write it completely in JavaScript, CSS, and HTML and still have an installable application not a web app.
If you know ruby you are probably working with JavaScript already.
To see how to install it, run it, and other ideas go to tetontech.wordpress.com
There's an open-source Ruby-Cocoa bridge you might try to get working. But I gather that there's a bit of an impedance mismatch between Ruby and ObjC that makes it a bit awkward to use.
The Ruby Cocoa bridge probably will not work. Most of the bridges for dynamic languages need to generate executable thunks (either manually or with libffi). More limited bridges (for more static languages) may not have such issues.
In either event, bringing up a bridge is probably going to require becoming more familiar with the Objective C runtime than one would just learning how to write Cocoa Touch apps, which probably defeats the point of doing it in the first place.
Currently isnt true, Apple change their policies, take a look at ShinyCocos, is a ruby bindings for the Cocos2D-iphone game framework.
https://github.com/funkaster/shinycocos
One possible solution would be to create an application wrapping for example the rice library (google it) which includes a ruby-vm. I reckon you would be able to create c++ wrappers that you could expose to ruby, thus making an environment for iphone development with ruby. This probably requires a lot of work though ^^
The error I'm getting:
in /Users/robert/Documents/funWithFrameworks/build/Debug-iphonesimulator/funWithFrameworks.framework/funWithFrameworks, can't link with a main executable
Cliff notes:
trying to include framework
doesn't want to link
More detail:
I'm developing for a mobile device... hint, hint using Xcode and I'm trying to make my
own custom framework which I can include from another application. So far, I've done the following:
Create a new project; an iPhone OS window based app.
Go to target info-> under packaging, change the wrapper extension from app to framework
Go to Action->new build phase -> copy headers. Change roles of headers to 'public'
From my application, I add the framework to the frameworks group.
Apple clearly said that you can not use dynamic libraries on their mobiles. And a private framework is just this.
You can, however, use static libraries.
Egil, that's usually considered as one of the implications of section 3.3.2 of the iPhone developer agreement, which (in part) forbids plug-in architectures or other frameworks. The fact that they don't provide an Xcode project template for an iPhone-compatible framework tends to reinforce the idea, though of course it could just be an oversight or something they're discouraging without actually forbidding.
Whether this is the intended meaning of that section is something you'd have to ask Apple about, and possibly consult a lawyer, but this is where the oft-stated "no frameworks" idea comes from.
For those who have framework code they'd like to use in an iPhone app, an alternative approach is to use the framework code to build a static library. That then gets compiled into the application instead of getting dynamically loaded at run time. The fact that it's part of the application executable avoids any potential concerns about this part of the agreement.
Though dynamic libraries are not allowed, you CAN create a framework (using static libraries and lipo).
Check out: http://accu.org/index.php/journals/1594
I haven't tried it for so called mobile device, but I would guess its very similar to the method for a regular Cocoa application. Check out this tutorial:
Embedded Cocoa Frameworks