Monday, August 31, 2015

CSCI 351 – Mobile Applications Development

Developing Apps for IOS

The BasicsWhat is an app?

App is simply short for application. It is computer software written for a specific user task.

What is IOS?Originally iPhone Operating System, IOS is a

mobile operating system developed and distributed by Apple. It was released in 2007 for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. It was later extended for the iPad and Apple TV.

Over 43% of smart phone subscribers use an Apple phone. Current market share for smart phones: http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Market-Rankings/comScore-Reports-May-2015-US-Smartphone-Subscriber-

Market-Share

The BasicsAmericans used smartphone and tablet apps

more than PCs to access the Internet in January, 2014 -- the first time that has ever happened.

Mobile devices accounted for 55% of Internet usage in the United States in January. Apps made up 47% of Internet traffic and 8% of traffic came from mobile browsers. PCs clocked in at 45%.

The Basics

What is Objective-C?It is a high-level, object-oriented programming

language. It was the main language initially used for IOS and OS X application development.

What is Swift?It is a multi-paradigm, compiled programming

language developed by Apple for iOS and OS X development. Introduced in 2014, Swift is designed to work with Apple's Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks and the large body of existing Objective-C code written for Apple products.

Swift is intended to be more resilient against erroneous code. It is built with the LLVM compiler included in Xcode 6, and uses the Objective-C runtime, allowing Objective-C, Objective-C++ and Swift code to run within a single program.

The BasicsWhat is Cocoa Touch?

It is the user interface (UI) framework for building IOS applications. It is based on Cocoa, which is the application programming interface (API) for the Mac operating system.

What is Xcode?It is an integrated development environment (IDE)

containing a suite of software development tools developed by Apple for developing software for OS X and iOS. First released in 2003, the latest stable release is version 5.1 and is available via the Mac App Store free of charge for Mac OS X Lion, OS X Mountain Lion and OS X Mavericks users.

Registered developers can download preview releases and previous versions of the suite through the Apple Developer website. Apple routinely makes beta versions the software available to those of the public with Apple Developer accounts.

Developing Mobile AppsMore differences between developing

mobile apps and standard softwareIOS apps can read and write files in an area

called a sandbox. There is limited access to the rest of the device.

Programs need to open quickly and close down quickly. For example, If your app takes more than 5 seconds to give up control when the user hits the home button, the app may be killed.

Conserving memory is important in writing apps. A device (i.e., iPhone 4s, iPad 2) may have 512MB of RAM, but much of that is used for the screen and by other system processes.

Developing Mobile AppsIOS devices have features that many

Macs do not have:Determining geographic coordinatesBuilt-in cameraBuilt-in accelerometer

To develop apps for IOS, you will need:A Macintosh computerXcode softwareTo register as an Apple DeveloperTo run your apps on a device, you will need

an IOS device (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)