Posted by Andrew Trice in {name}

In a press release last week, Apple did an about-face and stunned the general development community by changing their stance regarding restrictions on third-party development tools used to produce content for iOS devices.

At Universal Mind, we’ve been expecting this – it was never a matter “if”, but rather a question of “when” Apple would once again allow third-party development tools.

Many have been speculating as to why. Undoubtedly, many factors likely came into play for Apple to make this decision – including market share loss to Android-based devices, pressure from the development community, perhaps even government inquiries on anti-competitive business practices.

Regardless of the “why”, the big question now is: “how does this affect my business?”

The biggest impact is that you will now have a choice in how you produce content for iOS mobile devices. Simply put, you can now use the right tool for the job.

In some cases it may be easier to produce content with Apple’s own development tools, while other cases may find it beneficial to take advantage of Adobe’s Flash cross-compiler for iOS, Appcellerator, Unity, or even the recently released Unreal engine for iOS.

No single iOS development tool is perfect… but now you can make your choice based on what will best achieve your objectives, rather than having to follow a narrow set of development parameters.

“The right tool for the job” can mean different things to different people.

• If you have an ActionScript-based codebase that you want to expose as an iPhone application, you can now do so without the fear that your development investment will be wasted.
• If your development staff is a highly competent team of web developers, you can take advantage of Appcellerator or PhoneGap to produce native iOS applications with web-based technologies.
• If you are in the gaming industry and require the highest-level 3D engine performance, the Unreal or Unity options might be a better option for you.
• With the Adobe iOS development tools, a user experience and design team may be able to rapidly produce vision prototypes that can be used to validate business use cases or user interactions before taking the next step and investing significant development resources.
• If you have a seasoned Objective-C development team, you’ve been in the clear all along… but now you have more options to explore.

While Apple’s decision empowers us to use “the right tool for the job,” it also opens a Pandora’s Box of sorts. Cross-compiler tools greatly decrease the barrier of entry into the iOS ecosystem. Applications can be more easily developed that either do not follow consistent UI trends, are not performance optimized, or both. It is very likely that the App Store will see an influx of inferior applications, and it is important to understand the tools, user experience, visual design, and human-computer interaction paradigm accordingly so that your solution does not get lumped into that mix.

At Universal Mind, user experience and design, along with the appropriate use of technology, are the key factors to creating a quality product or solution. We welcome the recent change in Apple’s development terms and look forward to working with customers to choose the “right tool for the job.”

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