iPhone development tools that work the way you do
You don't need to master Cocoa and Objective C to create killer iPhone apps. Rhomobile, PhoneGap, Appcelerator, and Ansca tools leverage standard Web technologies and still tap native features
By Peter Wayner
Contributing Editor, InfoWorld |
It's probably not worth arguing whether a byte code interpreter is truly a native application; that debate is best left to computer science theoreticians. They're certainly more native than Web applications running on the local browser. They usually behave with as much snap as a truly native package, so practical people don't need to worry much about this argument.
iPhone app dev tools compared
| Licensing | Mobile platforms supported | Native iPhone features supported | Pros and cons | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ansca Corona 0.3 | Free Early Adopter version available; pricing TBD | iPhone | Files only; camera and accelerometer are forthcoming. | +Uses Lua, a well-known language for building Flash animation and Flash games. +Adds some extra features to Flash to simplify some animations. -Some glitches common to beta implementation. -No support for 3-D yet. |
| Appcelerator Titanium Mobile 0.5 | Free Early Access beta program | iPhone, Android | Geolocation, accelerometer, local files including contacts and photos | +A nice collection of libraries makes it simple to whip up a stack of menus for browsing data. +Deep integration with the underlying Apple libraries produces more standards-compliant results. -Sometimes it's not clear what you do in HTML and what you do with Titanium's framework. |
| Nitobi PhoneGap 0.7.2 | Free under the MIT license | iPhone, Android, BlackBerry | Geolocation, accelerometer, contacts | +Just JavaScript and HTML; nothing could be more universal. +Porting your iPhone app to the Web couldn’t be simpler. -Some developers think that Apple hates PhoneGap. -Imitating server-side action requires recoding in JavaScript or Objective C. |
| Rhomobile Rhodes 1.1.1 | Free under GPLv3; commercial licenses, $500 per app | iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android | Geolocation, camera, contacts; accelerometer, SMS, push, audio capture, and video capture on the road map | +Ruby on Rails on your phone. +Deep cross-platform support. -Client library is missing some fat mechanisms like XML that developers often rely upon. -It isn't always a no-brainer to port things to the iPhone. |