Warming up to iPhone
I'm on the startup path. One thing you realize when you set out to do a startup where you will initially do all the heavy lifting is that you don't know everything you think you know. For me, I've been training for this for a while, I have web stack burned in to my head and it just drips out of my fingertips. However, what I didn't have was enough mobile to get me by. I've done plenty of web-based mobile apps and mobile web sites but what I plan to do quickly outgrew that and needed access to the phone's hardware.
I have released 2 apps which served me well as learning tools and submissions to the San Diego App Challenge. Win or lose, I figured I'd do these two apps rather than any "hello world" book samples.
San Diego Transit
Available for iPhone, this app is the only native iPhone app that integrates mapping and realtime bus location data for all areas that San Diego MTS covers. I was shocked to learn that such an app didn't yet exist in San Diego, but multiple existed for all other major California cities. See the video below for a walkthrough.
Download San Diego Transit on iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/san-diego-transit/id518207969?ls=1&mt=8
What I learned doing this app:
- UIMapKit, iPhone's mapping framework
- Loads of strategies for doing databases that live on the phone via SQLite
- MonoTouch UI development
- Web service / data connection and parsing (iphone phone-home!)
Street Report
Simply take a photo, share your location, and alert the city to issues. The trick here was getting the data to the city, and using some HTTP POST magic, was able to auto-fill the city's own service request form.
What I learned doing this app:
- Photo taking / storing / manipulating
- Low-level HTTP work for iPhone
- Windows Azure cloud storage from iPhone
- Location, reverse geo-tagging
Download Street Report on iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sd-street-report/id518218814?ls=1&mt=8
The skinny on MonoTouch
Mono is an open source .NET implementation. MonoTouch, and MonoDroid are .NET libraries that allow for developing native apps in C# on iPhone and Android respectively. Because C# is also the language of the new Windows Phone 7 platform, I was intrigued by the possibilities of less code. I just stuck to MonoTouch
The short version:
I like it. It wasn't no-brainer by any means, but MonoTouch was just the right about of abstraction from Objective-C. I feel pretty confident I can cross-develop for all 3 phone platforms, re-using anywhere from 50 - 90% of the code, depending on the type of application.
The long version:
Since MonoTouch compiles right down to the native objective-c bindings, and it uses the XCode UI development tool, I really felt like I was developing iPhone the way objective-c developers do. In fact, I found I could talk to them and get tips / strategy, or follow along with solutions on Stack Overflow. The best benefit was writing it in C# and getting to use .NET framework pieces, like web service calls, JSON parsing, and a ton of other useful framework pieces we take for granted.
My second favorite thing was how easy MonoTouch can be to do real database work, using SQLite database development. An open source tool called SQLite-NET (https://github.com/praeclarum/sqlite-net). It's kind of like Entity Framework Code-First, for iPhone since it can generate the tables, and makes CRUD operations to that SUPER simple. It's a HUGE time saver and worked perfectly for large data sets / normalized data interactions
Let the fun begin
Now, back to these regularly scheduled programs. 2 Apps published, a ton of new development potential in the vault, and some exciting beta products coming soon.
***UPDATE*** 6/29/2012- Street Report Wins Grand Prize and City Innovation Award
I'm so grateful to the judges of the SD Apps Challenge for thinking so highly of this app. It won 2 awards, City Innovation ($5,000) and Grand Prize 1st Place ($15,000). The money is of course helpful as I work on my company, Small Steps Labs, but the recognition is equally appreciated. More info from the UT article: utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/29/tp-winner-fills-hole-in-city-app-market-winning/