iPhone Developers to be replaced by Web developers ???

[MGunetileke]

Hi everyone..

I need help clearing up some questions regarding these several third party dev-support frameworks (e.g. ViXML, Titanium Mobile) which promise iPhone app development at lightning speed using Javascript and XML.

In general I'm looking to see if the hype is all real..

Q1) Are there any features possible on a regular Xcode dev platform that are NOT possible for someone creating an app using these frameworks? (simply put, can they do EVERYTHING that a normal developer can do)

Q2) Is there any real huge savings in money and time when working with these?
(some of it seems too good to be true)

It would be really great if there were any of you who have any experience in these frameworks, who can chip in with real life know-how.

Many thanks...

[tzm]

Originally Posted by MGunetileke

Hi everyone..

Q1) Are there any features possible on a regular Xcode dev platform that are NOT possible for someone creating an app using these frameworks? (simply put, can they do EVERYTHING that a normal developer can do)

Q2) Is there any real huge savings in money and time when working with these?
(some of it seems too good to be true)

It all depends on the type of app you want to make. But, for the most part, I would say there's no hype. It's for real and you can save time and money.

As an early tester for Titanium Mobile, I focused on rapid prototyping UI/UX, ideas, etc. I also have a seasoned Cocoa developer on my team, having authored an augmented reality app and several iphone apps for clients already. Funny thing is, I found that can hands down out perform my developer on time vs functionality. Surprisingly, it's pretty damn viable as a development platform.

Currently, I'm using Titanium Mobile to build a fairly complex app for a client that let's people find car parts and post alerts to thousands of salvage yards. I have over 30k trade leads coming in every month via network partners. I have access to over 10 million car parts in the db. The app is almost ready to push to the app store, all developed with TI mobile. Going through testing, debugging, etc.

Regarding functionality... Titanium, like all other frameworks, have limitations based on the availability of API to API mapping. So the type of function/feature that you want has to be mapped to the framework API (ie, javascript to Cocoa). You'll need to dig through the API docs to see if your framework supports the desired feature.

I chose this route because of the cross platform capability, standardization of API vocabulary / namespace and a common language (javascript) as a bridge. For cross-platform gaming I'll probably pick up CS5 and test it.

Hope that helps.