Appcelerator lets devs build for iPhone and Android on one platform

09 June 2009 by Shane McGlaun

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Yes

+10 [12 votes]

The Apple App store is by far the largest and most successful of the application stores offered for mobile phones. After the success of the Apple App store Nokia, Google, and Palm launched their own app stores. A new development platform called Appcelerator Titanium has been announced that will allow devs to design for the iPhone and Android on one platform.

android-ui-091

The Appcelerator Titanium platform is set to release soon and supports development of mobile, desktop and web applications. Using the software building an app on one platform will allow it to run on all other platforms supported.

That means that a developer could build an app for the iPhone and end up with a version for Android at the same time. That should lead to a boom in Android apps is developers adopt Appcelerator Titanium. The application was released in beta form on Monday and is open source.

[via SFGate]

Join the Discussion (9 comments)

DaYuMu6ft7

06-09-2009 12:03 PM

WELL... It's about time, even though people won't be to happy because Apple plays a roll

But eh!
jiangsheng

06-09-2009 12:48 PM

I thought there is something called java... Maybe IPhone and Android do not claim to be compatible with Java for a reason.
VValdo

06-09-2009 02:29 PM

Here's a direct link:

http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-mobile/

W
storm14k

06-09-2009 02:59 PM

Well Apple does not use Java because of they wanted their own language and tighter control over the way their apps work. They do support Java in OSX however. I'm not sure the reasoning behind Google's Java offshoot but it isn't terribly difficult to port from Java to Android.

Either way it does not stop a third party from making a cross platform library.

ickyfehmleh

06-09-2009 03:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by storm14k

Well Apple does not use Java because of they wanted their own language and tighter control over the way their apps work. They do support Java in OSX however. I'm not sure the reasoning behind Google's Java offshoot but it isn't terribly difficult to port from Java to Android.

Either way it does not stop a third party from making a cross platform library.

lol, what?

Apple used Objective-C because that's what MacOS X uses for GUI stuff (commonly called the Cocoa layer). When NeXT took over Apple, all of NeXT's goodies came along with the deal -- including the very awesome OPENSTEP/Mach platform, which MacOS X essentially is. The iPhone OS is a slimmed down version of OSX with a touchscreen version of Cocoa called, perhaps coincidentally, CocoaTouch.

And yes, things can be "terribly difficult" to port from Java/Swing to Android because Android doesn't support Swing at all; entire UIs would have to be rewritten for Android using either XML markup or manually configuring a UI in code (which is rarely fun).

Neil B. Formy

06-09-2009 09:37 PM

It is very exciting to be a part of the Android community. When I hear news like this, it really hold my interest in this software. I was never an iphone user, but several friends and associates are. I was very impressed with the graphics that iphone apps had to offer. Now it looks like I will enjoy the same iphone apps, and be able to remain in the open source realm. For that, I applaude these devs for their genius ideas, and development! Keep up the good work!
Quadraphonic

06-10-2009 03:23 AM

Does this mean that Appcelerator is another 'layer' that will need to be converted, which will result in a slower performance?
JaceMan

06-11-2009 04:42 PM

This Appcelerator thing turns me on. This is news I like to hear about. I've always been a fan of cross-platform development with a single IDE.

RealBasic
Java
Qt 4
gtk

Dig it! Dig it deep!
danguyf

06-12-2009 05:59 AM

I was accepted into the beta. So I assume they're letting anyone in. ^_^

I'm finishing up an app currently, so I won't have time to play with this until next week.