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revMobile: write iPhone and iPad apps without knowing Objective C


One of the biggest barriers to entry for people who want to develop their own iPhone apps is the requirement to actually know how to program in Objective C. Runtime Revolution (AKA RunRev) has been developing and marketing a HyperCard-like development environment since 1997. To quote the company's site, "Rev uses plain-English words and phrases for most of its operations, eliminating the obscure symbols and complicated structures required of other programming languages. Rev is easy to learn and use, requires 90% less code, and can deliver a 10-fold increase in productivity over traditional languages."

What does this have to do with developing for iPhone and iPad? The answer is simple -- the company is stretching the development environment to the mobile computing market with a new product, currently in pre-alpha, called revMobile. For developers who want to market their products to the widest possible range of mobile devices, revMobile not only supports the iPhone and iPad world, but Nokia's Maemo platform and Windows Mobile 7 as well. Since apps can also run on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, this represents a very robust development environment. The video at the top of this post shows a simple game being conceptualized, designed, and written in a little over 3 hours.

RunRev has always been compiled at runtime, but for the purposes of getting RunRev apps into the App Store, revMobile apps are going to be compiled at build time so that a single executable is available for submission. You can find out more about revMobile, including pricing and availability, at the RunRev website.

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One of the biggest barriers to entry for people who want to develop their own iPhone apps is the requirement to actually know how to...
 

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Ben Seven

An Update to the revMobile pre-Alpha news:

• We currently have a package of benefits on offer including free access to the Simulcast and DVDs from our Conference in San Jose this November, which are a great resource for getting to grips with the revTalk language and revMobile itself. These are only free benefits with revMobile until the 31st March.

• We have begun a series of video tutorials on using revMobile and the various iPhone features, which are a great insight into the ease of the language and product for iPhone development. These tutorials can be found on the revMobile site (http://www.runrev.com/products/revmobile/overview/) and also on our Youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/RunRevLtd

• Our iPhone pre-Alpha has reached its sixth release, adding bug fixes but also access to two new iPhone features, Core Location (GPS) and Mail sending, as well as orientation detection. These features will be covered in our video tutorial series in the coming weeks.

• We're running a competition to submit your best iPhone App or game built with revMobile, with the best App winning an Apple iPad - check out the details at http://www.runrev.com/products/revmobile/competition/

March 26 2010 at 10:46 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
scoobee

Another option, use Java : iSpectrum at http://www.flexycore.com

March 26 2010 at 5:17 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
eileen

For those app developers that don't know Objective-C and Cocoa Touch and don't want to outsource development, check out localbeacon (an iphone app builder) at www.bigforge.com. Full integration of Twitter and Facebook, multiple ways to add content into system, off-line access, robust infrastructure including a CDN for all rich content, ability to merge in audio/video and photo galleries, and push notifications. Great for those who want to build just one app or developers interested in white label.

Here's an example of one of our apps - L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival at http://bit.ly/9o2R6S

We would like the chance to earn your business.

March 15 2010 at 10:30 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
paul

Slight mistake in the last post... RevMobile is twice the price of Rev Enterprise...

March 07 2010 at 2:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jack

I use NimbleKit (nimblekit.com) and it is absolutely wonderful!

March 07 2010 at 2:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
paul

I wouldn't mind if all their other products were working properly before they came up with revMobile. On-rev is still in alpha after nearly a year, and mainly undocumented...
And revMobile is worth nearly four times as much as Rev Enterprise, their former premium product?

March 07 2010 at 2:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
chikako

Runrev is a great development environment - it goes way, way beyond HyperCard, with the ability to build n-tier business solutions, multimedia type projects and more - on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. You can now build 3D games too with the Franklin 3D game engine at http://www.franklin3d.com.

March 07 2010 at 1:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Lynn Fredricks

A $1,000 is a reasonable price to pay if it lets you bring a professional iPhone application to market quickly enough.

It really doesnt matter if a product is free or not. It is about the value of your time. If your time is worth next to nothing, then that certainly brings down the investment cost in making software.

March 07 2010 at 1:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dovemouse

+1 titanium.
amazing tool, anyone thinking about iphone development should check it out!

March 06 2010 at 2:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mike

Titanium: www.appcelerator.com
Javascript/HTML based and free.

March 06 2010 at 12:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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