Building Apps for iPad

For September we're going to focus on building apps for iPad with a pair of technical talks from developers who've got some great experience to share, then we'll take a look at an HTML5-based platform that claims to offer "cross platform" mobile app development.

Steve Spry is the architect/designer/developer for the iPhone side of mFoundry, which licenses cross-device banking app solutions for the financial industry. Heard the buzz about taking a picture of a check then clicking ‘Deposit’? That’s Steve behind that. Steve will talk about building complex data driven (and server driven) interfaces, and how that changes with iPad.

Kevin Robertson, Lead Developer for PocketLabworks, will discuss three universal iOS applications (PocketSing, PocketRap, and PocketAmp) which were simultaneously released on August 15, 2010. The three applications share a common code base, using a combination of compile definitions, X-code configuration, and runtime checks to fully support iPhone, iPhone 4, and iPad with native screen resolution. Instead of using Interface Builder, Kevin demonstrates advantages of using custom UI helper functions to separate the view controllers from the view drawings. Time permitting, Kevin briefly discusses the concept of real-time audio processing and reasons why Android is not a suitable platform for music or VoIP applications. [Let's make sure time permits! - Tim]

Steve Tsuruda of appMobi will talk about developing cross platform apps with web tools and appMobi. From Steve: appMobi is a cloud-based, mobile apps development platform. Key concepts are to "virtualize" the native SDKs like the iPhone & Android SDKs, by putting them in the cloud. Developers, without knowing anything about Objective C or Android can then use tools they already know (anything from Dreamweaver to Notepad++) to write pure HTML5/JavaScript to create compelling native mobile apps. appMobi is foundationally a WebKit/HTML5/Cloud based technology stack.