Quote Originally Posted by busta View Post
Mobile OS Marketshare Approx:

80% Android
10% iOS
10% Windows

There's no excuse for developing things specifically for iOS.
I very roughly know iOS (took a class on it). It uses Objective-C; a pretty easy language to code in. BUT its all unique code to iOS... iOS and Mac use the same underlying programming language, Objective-C, but different code libraries. Just different enough to give you a real headache in moving around. Worse is that iPhone and iPad are something like 99.9% identical, and that 0.1% is sure to always trip you up somewhere you did not expect... especially as when testing it all out in xCode, the required IDE (development tool), things will work. Then you pop them on their respective devices and something will trip up.

I've not looked into developing for Android... but it looks like its mostly in Java, and that at least is a widely used language. However the real key is in the libraries unique to the devices. Libraries can make or break overhead for development.

However... these two things, Objective-C and Java, and their different libraries... mean an app made for one will not be easily ported to the other. Its not even as "easy" as making a program for Windows and Macintosh... Apple Mac may prefer Objective-C when it makes things in-house for Mac, but you don't have to... For iOS though, good luck not making your code 100% from the ground up for iOS.

Porting means completely re-writing, as if it was a brand new project. All you get to keep is your raw text copy, images / animations / sounds, and your notes/flowcharts from the user-interface, art, & design team...

People code for iOS first because its more newsworthy, and its smaller userbase is more commercially 'activated'.

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