As corny as it may sound, I’ve always wanted to get my foot in the door with my own $0.99 app in the marketplace. As my friends, family, and colleagues can testify, I’m a die-hard Apple fanatic! But there have been a few snags in getting my feet wet with iOS app development.
For starters, I do not own an Intel-based Macintosh, which is absolutely required for developing on the iOS platform. My latest Mac purchase was my Dual 2.7GHz PowerMac G5. It sports an amazing Motorola PowerPC processor. A few months after I signed away my first born child (err, I mean purchased), Apple had this ingenious idea to switch to Intel. And it’s been a pretty rough downhill ride with my PowerPCs from that point on.
So, I’ve pointed my direction into a different Mobile market. Powered by another one of my favorite tech companies, Google, the Android OS has been taking the mobile industry by storm. From phones to tablet PC’s, it’s continuing development at a rapid rate. So after accepting that I would need to learn a new programming language, since ObjectiveC wasn’t going to do me much good in a Java world, I started looking for easy ways to get started.
My initial thought was to make a web app. I already have an extensive background in HTML and CSS web development, so it would only seem logical to make a move in the direction. It would be platform independent since it would reside in a web browser, but I think that simple fact was my biggest turnoff. Web applications had a lot of restrictions when it boiled down to native device functionality. I also wanted a native application that I can publish into the marketplace. Something to make a little extra cash on the side, but also something that I would enjoy doing as a hobby.
My first find was Google App Inventor (http://appinventor.googlelabs.com). It looks very promising and, most importantly, easy to use! Practically no coding needed! And that’s exactly what became it’s downfall. It truly lacked a lot of the features I was hoping for (ironically the ability to publish the created applications in the Android Marketplace). It took a little bit of work to setup at first, but it was pretty straightforward once I was started. I was able to make a simple application called “time2eat”, which collected a custom set of contact numbers and allowed you to create a text message that you could send en masse to everyone listed (essentially letting them know it was time to eat). I don’t even own an Android phone, so I used my parents Motorola Droid X to test it, and I was happier than a kid with new puppy when I successfully sent myself a text message!
I felt almost like Charley Kline at UCLA sending the word “login” across ARPANET.
But, the victory was short lived when I discovered I couldn’t take this freshly created App and publish it in the Android Marketplace. Perhaps I’ll make another post someday explaining why, but maybe by then Google will have gotten their act straightened out and redesign this cool tool.
So, after this small bit of success, I wanted to dive into the Java pool and swim with the code! … Ok, so not quite in the literal meaning, but you get the idea. I found some awesome references, downloaded the Android SDK (http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html) along with the Eclipse IDE (http://www.eclipse.org/). I was able to successfully setup multiple Android Virtual Devices (AVDs) running practically every version of Android available from the SDK, and I was set to go! Or so I thought … By the way, I may make a tutorial about this someday, because documentation on the Internet about it seemed somewhat hard to obtain.
Java is a whole different world for me. I’m slowly learning the ins and outs of the overall development process, but it’s been quite the learning process to say the least. For anyone looking to get started, I could easily make a few suggestions and pointers.
- Get to know how Android works! If the terms linux kernel, Dalvik, Java, Activity classes, etc. scare the crap out of you, then I’d suggest knowing what they are before beginning.
- Learn and understand the Android Application Life Cycle. From onCreate() the whole way to onDestroy(). It is vital to understanding how Applications work with Android.
- Start small! Almost straight out of the gate, you should be able to make a simple Hello World app. Take tiny steps and learn how everything pieces together.