Another App Maker

Although I prefer just using the Android SDK directly (via Eclipse) for writing Android apps, regardless of the brand, the writing of iPhone apps is much different and (so far) not very impressive. So far it has cost me $25 to join the Google App store, and nothing for the development tools, since I use Linux for that.

I don't have any Apple machines to write software with, only the iPhone as a target device, but I do have lots of PCs, with lots of Microsoft running them. There is a product called DragonFireSDK which supposedly makes iPhone apps from Vs2005 written C programs, so I'll give that a try. The minimum cost so far is $250, without having written a single line of code yet.

Anyway, I have a program for my work that operates on their website directly, and then turns over stuff to the Android Web Browser (or whichever one you got installed.) I don't see a way to do that in quite the same way with iPhone yet, so that will be a puzzle.

Anyway, I've got most of the same functionality on iPhone as on Android, minus the Voice feature, and perhaps that can be arranged later, using iOS5.

Making Apps

I am doing OK, but not wonderfully, so far as my work with Android Apps is concerned. I didn't really expect too much more than that, although I was hoping I could jump in and build something unique before somebody else did. That is always a foolish hope, yet I did at least make some popular Apps (all the free ones do well).

I found a program library for Android/iPhone/WebOs/Blackberry called "PhoneGap" which purports to build apps for any environment, mostly using some Java or other lower level code in a library and HTML5 as the programming language for the designer.

This is somewhat OK, although since I know Android enough to directly code in the Java or C layers, it can be a RAD (rapid app development) tool for getting things out the door and then improving them for speed or fine touches later.

Since I only have a Droid (Droid 1, in fact, although sometimes I can use my wife's Droid X) there is not much I can do with the tools for testing in the other phones. It seems very bureaucratic to make iPhone apps, even if you have one. I can't speak for the others at all, but hopefully they would work at least as well.

To find this TOOL

Making apps with a RAD tool might work for you too.