SAN FRANCISCO, CA Collin Donnell wants app developers to learn from his mistakes.
Donnell, a full-time iOS developer since 2008 whose app credits include Pinbook for Pinboard, shared some tips to a packed room at AltWWDC, which we have been all over like an snuggle iPad case. He divided them into practical and philosophical, but they sort of blend together.
What do you get when you combine a highly anticipated iPhone app with a fascinating link to a senior executive at the most valuable company on earth? You get Mailbox and Adam Cue, a software engineer working on the hyped email app that’s going public soon. Cue works at Orchestra, the app development company behind Mailbox. You may recognize Adam’s last name because it also happens to be the last name of Eddy Cue, a longtime Apple senior executive who now oversees all of the company’s internet services, including email.
While this doesn’t mean that Apple will acquire Orchestra’s Mailbox app, it’s interesting to note the connection between the two companies.
Last week FileMaker launched a new campaign to encourage businesses to adopt the company’s flagship database product line as an app development platform for the iPhone and iPad. The move is unique and the idea of FileMaker as an enterprise development solution does have its appeal – creating FileMaker apps requires no software development knowledge or experience and it can deliver native performance and functionality that HTML 5 web apps can’t.
The U.S. federal government may not be where you’d expect to see mobile innovation or find good app development suggestions. While there’s still a public sector bureaucracy in government, a number of government agencies are beginning to develop new ways to connect with citizens and invest in mobile technologies for internal use.
Granted, most agencies are doing so because of requirements under the Obama administration’s 21st Century Digital Government Strategy. One of which is that every federal agency must make two high-value, customer-facing services available via mobile devices over the next year. Still, the innovation is happening and the agencies that have already taken up the challenge are good models for agencies that have yet to do so.
They’re also good sources of advice for any organization that is beginning to develop an iOS or mobile app strategy.
According a study released earlier this month, Apple’s iOS is becoming the most popular platform for enterprise app development – with 53.2% of developers picking iOS for corporate app development compared to 37.4% of developers standing behind Android. RIM’s BlackBerry, the old guard of enterprise mobility, came in a distant fourth behind Windows Phone with only 2% of developers supporting it.
That’s great news for Apple and the iPhone and iPad in business and enterprise environments. Apple even makes enterprise distribution possible outside of the App Store. Mobile App Management (MAM) and enterprise app store solutions provide efficient and effective distribution and update methods for enterprise apps.
Business to business (B2B) apps and solutions, however, present a different kind of challenge – one for which Apple has a solution, even if it isn’t a perfect solution.
Until now, it’s been relatively difficult to make an app for iOS without a considerable amount work learning how to write code. Mysterious Trousers, the developers of apps such as Calvetica Calendar and Dialvetica Contacts want to change all of that with a new tool they call TinkerLearn. In a nutshell, TinkerLearn helps you learn code with real example apps.
IT industry group CompTIA has announced the agenda for its upcoming Breakaway Conference that runs from July 30 though August 2 in Las Vegas. CompTIA will be offering a two-day/three-session training on mobile devices in the business and enterprise environments during the event.
The training, which CompTIA refers to as CompTIA Executive Certificate in Mobility (Foundations) Course 1, 2, and 3, will focus on three distinct areas – a session on the shift to a mobile workforce and the challenges that this poses for businesses, a session on locking down mobile devices using mobile management solutions, and a session on mobile app development.
Almost every major company has plans to develop a range of iOS apps (if they haven’t created some already). In fact, one of the reasons that enterprise app stores are becoming as popular as they are in business is that they fulfill two critical needs. One of those is to easily distribute internal apps to staff members. (The other is to point users to suggested or required apps from Apple’s App Store.)
One thing that every company developing an internal app needs to keep in mind is that users are becoming more tech savvy and comfortable selecting and using iOS apps. That can be a good thing for the whole enterprise app store concept. It let’s users choose and manage their selection of apps on their own without help from IT.
It also means that most iOS users are sophisticated enough to know when an app is poorly designed. That places an extra burden on anyone developing iOS apps, particularly if there are equivalent public apps that users can install as partial or complete replacements for a poorly built internal app.
Zipcar was one of the first companies to showcase the potential of iOS apps using location services. The company’s demo during Apple’s 2009 WWDC keynote was one of early harbingers of the ways that mobile devices and data have become integrated with our daily lives. Zipcar continues to have its finger on the pulse of what’s possible when local services are transformed by iOS and other mobile platforms.
Speaking today at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith spoke about how quickly smartphone apps revolutionized Zipcar and the ways it interacts with its customers and offered insights into the company’s success.
One of the surprising, and some might say disturbing, realities of today’s consumerized IT departments is that IT staff are being left out of the loop on technology projects. Nowhere is that more evident than when it comes to developing mobile app strategies, particularly customer-facing app strategies.
Instead many business and marketing managers are recruiting or contracting app developers directly, often bypassing CIOs and IT managers in the process. While this new trend is primarily focused on app development, it could easily be the start of a slippery slope that leads to more and more outsourcing of technology projects and management.
Mobile app management company Apperian announced two new features for companies looking to expand the use of iOS, Android, and BlackBerry apps as part of an overall mobile strategy. One feature aims to connect end users within a company with IT staff and developers for collaboration on new and existing apps. The other is designed to give employees an easy way to rate and comment on apps already in use.
Apperian provides app management and deployment services for business and enterprise customers. The company’s EASE platform allows IT to create internal app stores showcasing both internal apps and public apps that are available through the iOS App Store. The company also provides a range of related services including the ability to push out apps and updates to devices over the air.
There’s nothing worse then prepping your app for launch and then finding out you missed one crucial step to ensure it looked solid across all platforms. Keep in mind that just because you’ve “built” a mobile app, that doesn’t mean it is going to be ready for market. Without testing, your app’s not going to cut it. Not in the least.
Cult of Mac Deals has got a great deal on a video course put together by Robert V. Binder that will teach you ways to test out your software to make sure it’s ready for your audience. This video course is applicable for Android, Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, Windows Mobile, Palm OS and mobile apps using HTML5. And it’s available from Cult of Mac Deals for only $49 — a savings of $80 off the regular price!
But this deal is coming to a close…
There’s nothing worse then prepping your app for launch and then finding out you missed one crucial step to ensure it looked solid across all platforms. Keep in mind that just because you’ve “built” a mobile app, that doesn’t mean it is going to be ready for market. Without testing, your app’s not going to cut it. Not in the least.
This is why we’ve got a video course put together by Robert V. Binder that will teach you ways to test out your software to make sure it’s ready for your audience. The great part? This video course is applicable for Android, Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, Windows Mobile, Palm OS and mobile apps using HTML5. So you’re covered on all fronts. And no background in programming or software testing is required.
The even greater part? It’s available from Cult of Mac Deals for only $49 — a savings of $80 off the regular price!
If you’re looking to create some smashing iOS apps and want to get all the goods delivered to you in one comprehensive course, we’ve got a Cult of Mac Deals offer that more than fits the bill…but time is running out!
This is the most comprehensive iOS app development course we’ve ever seen, containing over 66 lectures and 11 hours of content. To get this kind of training in a live setting would cost you upwards of $3000 – but Cult of Mac Deals is bringing it to you in an on-demand capacity for only $89!
If you’re looking to create some smashing iOS apps and want to get all the goods delivered to you in one comprehensive course, we’ve got a Cult of Mac Deals offer that more than fits the bill!
Containing over 66 lectures and 11 hours of content, this iOS app development course we’re offering will teach you the fundamentals of Objective-C and a ton of the advanced strategies used by the pros. To get this kind of training in a live setting would run you in the neighbourhood of $3000 – but at Cult of Mac Deals we’re bringing it to you in an on-demand capacity for only $89!
Beyond the sheer number of devices sold, one of the biggest ways to Apple and Google try to position themselves as having the top mobile platform is by comparing the number of third-party apps available for users to download. Apple usually takes the number of apps available one step further when comparing iOS to Android by pointing out how many apps take advantage of the iPad’s tablet features such as screen size.
This is one of the reasons that an active and developer community is crucial a mobile platform’s success. Although Android entered the app race after Apple had begun to establish a successful developer community, the platform began to catch up quickly. All that seems to have changed over the past year, with a new report showing iOS developers are now creating three apps for every single new Android app.
Reading the news on the iPad is one of the absolute best experiences you can have on Apple’s magical tablet device. So when news hit yesterday that our two favorite iOS news reader apps came out with updates, we were pretty stoked. While you probably heard a great deal about the other reader app, we wanted to tell you about the awesome news reader you might be missing out on. It’s called Flud, and it was just completely redesigned yesterday.
Besides sporting a major facelift, what’s spectacular about Flud is its new ability to make reading the news a social experience. Rather than relying solely on an app to recommend websites and content to you, Flud users have the ability to see what their friends are reading in the app and share content back with them rather than spamming their Facebook or Twitter feed with the 15 news stories they’ve read throughout the day. Giving each user the ability to create a “news personality,” Flud aims to change the way we consume news much in the same way that Spotify and Rdio have changed the way we listen to music, by allowing users to inspire and be inspired by others based on what they consume.
Earlier this week we announced our newest Cult of Mac Deal – a $79 iOS App Development Course. To make things even better for our awesome readers, this weekend we’re having a giveaway for one free admission into the course so you can get started on turning your ideas into the next great app. This contest will run from today till Sunday, November 20th at 9PM PST. The rules for entering are incredibly simple; here’s what you got to do to enter.
