If you ever had an idea for an iPhone app but did not really have a clue about how you would get it working, your time has come. A new generation of simplified iPhone app development environments are about to reduce the technical skill required and promise to add fuel to the already explosive growth in the number of apps.
The current road to an iPhone app leads through Apple’s
(
AAPL -
news
-
people
) iPhone Software Development Kit, which is a collection of software, sample programs and educational material that provide the tools that are needed to create an app. IPhone app programming is based on a language called Objective C, which is a powerful language but one that requires a programming background to master. Most people who can create an HTML page without too much trouble wouldn’t know where to begin to create an Objective C program.
Article Controls
email
print
reprint
newsletter
comments
share
del.icio.us
Digg It!
yahoo
Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
rss
The new iPhone app developer toolkits vary widely in power and approach, and frankly, will lead to a lot of useless apps, something there is no shortage of now. But they will also unlock user-driven innovation on a massive scale, and this will no doubt lead to many success stories. Here’s the lay of the land on how these new toolkits work and what they can do for you.
First of all, it is important to separate the toolkits by their approach to creating iPhone apps. The two broad categories are template-based systems and those that provide simplified building blocks.
The template-based systems reduce the process of creating an iPhone app to a fill-in-the-blank process. To create an app, you choose a template that provides the basic structure and functions of the app. You then add assets such as graphics or sound files or links to the template, press a button and out pops a working app. Examples of such environments include Mobile Roadie, aimed at bands that want apps and AppBreeder, which has a number of different templates. Larger systems for content management like Kyte now offer ways of automatically producing apps as well.
The advantage of template app development environments is that they significantly lower the barrier to creating an app. You don’t have to hire a development firm to write Objective C for you. If you can manage to get graphics in the right form, you can get an app that looks quite good. The problem is that such an approach offers limited flexibility. If you want what is in a template, great. But if you want to adjust things in a way that was not anticipated, you are out of luck.
The building block approach is much more powerful, but demands a bit more thinking and understanding on the part of the developer. The building block approach provides the developer with a blank canvas. You then choose from a set of building blocks and place them on the canvas. The building blocks can be configured by filling in the blanks for certain types of assets and through configuration parameters. But the number of building blocks on the page, their size and how they interact is far more flexible than the template approach. Anyone who has done Visual Basic programming will find the building block approach familiar. But you must understand the building blocks (title of a page, map, buttons, lists, etc.) and how they interact, which is somewhat more difficult than filling in a template.
EachScape is the pioneer in the building block approach. EachScape was cofounded by Ludo Collin, cofounder of StarCut, a mobile Web site development house, and Bob Fitterman, the former CTO of Vindigo, a mobile local search service that was way ahead of its time. Other companies pursuing the building block approach may be out there, but I haven’t been able to find them.
“Template-driven solutions tend to produce apps that all look the same and have limited capabilities,” said Fitterman, who is now CTO of EachScape. “EachScape lets nonprogrammers create smart phone apps with all the hallmarks of a custom program: advanced user interactions, local data storage and even the ability to incorporate custom UI elements. Our apps each look unique because they aren’t confined to what the template lets you do.” For a look at an app created by EachScape check out TimeOut Magazine’sGuide to New York City.
Easy-To-Make iPhone Apps – Forbes
If you ever had an idea for an iPhone app but did not really have a clue about how you would get it working, your time has come. A new generation of simplified iPhone app development environments are about to reduce the technical skill required and promise to add fuel to the already explosive growth in the number of apps.
The current road to an iPhone app leads through Apple’s
(
AAPL -
news
-
people
) iPhone Software Development Kit, which is a collection of software, sample programs and educational material that provide the tools that are needed to create an app. IPhone app programming is based on a language called Objective C, which is a powerful language but one that requires a programming background to master. Most people who can create an HTML page without too much trouble wouldn’t know where to begin to create an Objective C program.
Article Controls
email
print
reprint
newsletter
comments
share
del.icio.us
Digg It!
yahoo
Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
rss
The new iPhone app developer toolkits vary widely in power and approach, and frankly, will lead to a lot of useless apps, something there is no shortage of now. But they will also unlock user-driven innovation on a massive scale, and this will no doubt lead to many success stories. Here’s the lay of the land on how these new toolkits work and what they can do for you.
First of all, it is important to separate the toolkits by their approach to creating iPhone apps. The two broad categories are template-based systems and those that provide simplified building blocks.
The template-based systems reduce the process of creating an iPhone app to a fill-in-the-blank process. To create an app, you choose a template that provides the basic structure and functions of the app. You then add assets such as graphics or sound files or links to the template, press a button and out pops a working app. Examples of such environments include Mobile Roadie, aimed at bands that want apps and AppBreeder, which has a number of different templates. Larger systems for content management like Kyte now offer ways of automatically producing apps as well.
The advantage of template app development environments is that they significantly lower the barrier to creating an app. You don’t have to hire a development firm to write Objective C for you. If you can manage to get graphics in the right form, you can get an app that looks quite good. The problem is that such an approach offers limited flexibility. If you want what is in a template, great. But if you want to adjust things in a way that was not anticipated, you are out of luck.
The building block approach is much more powerful, but demands a bit more thinking and understanding on the part of the developer. The building block approach provides the developer with a blank canvas. You then choose from a set of building blocks and place them on the canvas. The building blocks can be configured by filling in the blanks for certain types of assets and through configuration parameters. But the number of building blocks on the page, their size and how they interact is far more flexible than the template approach. Anyone who has done Visual Basic programming will find the building block approach familiar. But you must understand the building blocks (title of a page, map, buttons, lists, etc.) and how they interact, which is somewhat more difficult than filling in a template.
EachScape is the pioneer in the building block approach. EachScape was cofounded by Ludo Collin, cofounder of StarCut, a mobile Web site development house, and Bob Fitterman, the former CTO of Vindigo, a mobile local search service that was way ahead of its time. Other companies pursuing the building block approach may be out there, but I haven’t been able to find them.
“Template-driven solutions tend to produce apps that all look the same and have limited capabilities,” said Fitterman, who is now CTO of EachScape. “EachScape lets nonprogrammers create smart phone apps with all the hallmarks of a custom program: advanced user interactions, local data storage and even the ability to incorporate custom UI elements. Our apps each look unique because they aren’t confined to what the template lets you do.” For a look at an app created by EachScape check out TimeOut Magazine’sGuide to New York City.