LockedList of iPhone app developers on forum

Sending a call out to the other iPhone app developers on this forum. I submitted my first app to the store on Saturday and have a laundry list of other apps I'll be making. Just want to get in contact with others in case we want to get together on some future projects.

My app is called Scripture Challenge and lets you create reading charts for scriptures. For example, challenge yourself to read the Book of Mormon in 90 days.

If you are out there, respond to this thread. Let's start talking.

The Church may have need of iPhone app developers for a projects that we are waiting on approval. This could be an exciting area!

Tom

tomw wrote:The Church may have need of iPhone app developers for a projects that we are waiting on approval. This could be an exciting area!

Whatever the project is, I hope the Android platform is included, too.

boomerbubba wrote:Whatever the project is, I hope the Android platform is included, too.

Android's got to make an impression on the market first.

I'm only joking, but in all seriousness that is a lot of work to write an app for one platform and then to rewrite the app in a completely different programming language and architecture for a different platform. It would almost have to be a completely separate project, in my opinion.

mkmurray wrote:Android's got to make an impression on the market first.

I'm only joking, but in all seriousness that is a lot of work to write an app for one platform and then to rewrite the app in a completely different programming language and architecture for a different platform. It would almost have to be a completely separate project, in my opinion.

I agree that Android has to succeed in the marketplace. I did vote with my own wallet and signed up for a T-Mobile contract this week on the new G1. I looked at iPhone first -- liked the device, not the closed environment. I think even Apple-blessed developers will be limited in what is possible there.

If I were a young Java jock, I would try to develop something for the Android. I have even thought of trying to build a general-MLS-helper-integrated-mapper app myself, but the base learning curve is daunting for me because I lack the Java experience. The platform itself has wide-open potential.

But then, I could have picked the wrong horse. I bought an Osborne 1 with a four-digit serial number in 1981, a few months before IBM released its PC.

Just started an iPhone app studio. We've got a couple apps coming out in the next few weeks - though not LDS related.

Very interested in LDS projects. We've got some ideas, but would love to hear from others and contribute however we can.

I counted yesterday 5 guys in my elders quorum that had iphones or ipod touch devices. I think it's exciting to witness this transition from paper to digital. I've downloaded several different scriptures apps, and they keep updating them, and they are getting better and better.

It's exciting to hear that the church is looking into app development for some of these platforms.

Just a note, I have not developed for iPhone, but I did watch an hour presentation when they first started doing apps for that platform, and I was amazed at the tools they had, and the ease at which they were able to create an app. Likewise from what I've heard, it's not too difficult to develop for the android platform as well.

Tom, can you comment on what the Church might develop or the direction they are heading with this?

I'll be announcing more details after the first of the year. Stay tuned!

Tom

Tomj wrote:I counted yesterday 5 guys in my elders quorum that had iphones or ipod touch devices. I think it's exciting to witness this transition from paper to digital. I've downloaded several different scriptures apps, and they keep updating them, and they are getting better and better.

It's exciting to hear that the church is looking into app development for some of these platforms.

Just a note, I have not developed for iPhone, but I did watch an hour presentation when they first started doing apps for that platform, and I was amazed at the tools they had, and the ease at which they were able to create an app. Likewise from what I've heard, it's not too difficult to develop for the android platform as well.

Tom, can you comment on what the Church might develop or the direction they are heading with this?

THE Iphone SDK is only available for MAC OS correct? and if so do you know of any MAC emulators for windows so a windows user can work with the SDK? Thanks

Enigma1 wrote:THE Iphone SDK is only available for MAC OS correct? and if so do you know of any MAC emulators for windows so a windows user can work with the SDK? Thanks

OSX will run on a standard Intel PC, which I am doing for testing.

awesome i'll look into getting my hands on a copy of osX Thanks

@Enigma1

It is true that there are a variety of ways to create a so-called "Hackintosh" and run OS X on non-Apple hardware. However, none of them are as straight forward as putting a copy of OS X in the DVD drive and installing. Like their name states, there is a fair amount of 'hacking' involved and often only yields mixed results.

That is to say nothing about whether or not there is any legal or moral obligation to Apple's EULA that bars installation on non-Apple hardware.

I recommend getting a Mac for iPhone development. I got a great deal with the Student Developer Membership. There are some good deals on Apple's refurbished page. Refurbished Macs have the same warranty as the new ones.

....And be sure to tell them I sent you - I get a commission. j/k

@tomw

Any word on those iPhone projects?

Josiah wrote:@tomw

Any word on those iPhone projects?

I'm putting together some functional specs. I don't want to talk in more detail about it until I have the specs done. But it should be soon.

Tom

tomw,

Exciting to hear that the Church has something planned in this area. I've seen an explosion of iPhone/iPod touch devices among church members. It would be good to have some sort of Church-approved standard scripture app to replace EZ Reader, which "is the only reader that supports the official handheld version of the scriptures" according to LDS.org. One reasonable route to this type of app would be to contact Lee Falin, who currently produces the excellent free app "The Scriptures" for the iPhone. I'm sure he would love to be able to include officially-supported content such as manuals and the Hymnal to his app, which could serve as a starting code base for the Church app.

If an actual app isn't possible, having a mobile Webkit formatted version of LDS.org or scriptures.lds.org would be the next best thing (and would support Android and other Webkit-based mobile browsers such as the browser in the upcoming Palm pre).

It would also be great to have an app that supported FamilySearch.org (the new beta version). But I'm just dreaming now. I look forward to hearing more!

Ricky

Ricky wrote: One reasonable route to this type of app would be to contact Lee Falin, who currently produces the excellent free app "The Scriptures" for the iPhone. I'm sure he would love to be able to include officially-supported content such as manuals and the Hymnal to his app, which could serve as a starting code base for the Church app.

Ricky, we have been in contact with several developers of iPhone apps and will definitely include Lee in the mix.

Tom

I would love to participate in any iPhone app project for the Church. I may not be an experienced coder, more self-taught as a hobby (have the SDK and going through tutorials, etc), but I can also help in other ways, as needed. Documentation, testing, etc. I have been a product manager for web apps in the past and am currently a statistical programmer by day. Thanks - excited to see the Church consider this area. I am in a bishopric and 2 (soon to be 3) of us have iPhones.

Kyle

It sounds great about the mobile market.

It is great to hear how popular the iPhone is amongst quorum members but are there anybody who knows the numbers of iPhones out there versus the number of Windows Mobile devices and other devices? I am just curious for the reason to focus on one platform ie the iPhone.
In our quorum nobody has an iPhone but a Windows Mobile device exists with a few.

Are there any of the iPhone developers who can comment on if the iPhone SDK kit has been improved since it was first introduced? The very first version I saw it had a lot of things missing from it in particular on the animation side ie the Apple developed applications looked great with their support for multi-touch etc but it wasnt supported in the SDK, at least not in an easy way. BUT things might have moved on since hence why I am curious to hear what the current state is.

According to this report I read today, iPhone owns 51% of US smartphone traffic. http://tinyurl.com/bzvkhb

macsense wrote:According to this report I read today, iPhone owns 51% of US smartphone traffic. http://tinyurl.com/bzvkhb

Keyword there being "traffic," as this was only an analysis of people using their smart phones to browse websites.

But this does show the iPhone's stranglehold on the market.

I've been an Macintosh developer since 1984, I bought an iPhone the day they came out, and I am currently developing an iPhone application. One might even get the impression that I really like Apple products. I would love to lend my support, in any way, to any iPhone project that may come along. I feel there are some good examples of what can be done on the iPhone to support the scriptures. I believe that a product like the iPhone makes it possible to do some interesting things with linking and cross referencing. I also believe that while a scripture app for the iPhone should be reasonably flexible, there is also an opportunity to guide the user in meaningful ways to study the scriptures.

Chris

mkmurray wrote:Keyword there being "traffic," as this was only an analysis of people using their smart phones to browse websites.

But this does show the iPhone's stranglehold on the market.

I dont know how it works in the US but iPhone contracts here in the UK are expensive (compared to Windows Mobile and others) and therefore they will also have to include free web access which should explain the high traffic and give an indication actual market share is much lower.

On top of that the iPhone seems more popular in the US than rest of the world which made me curious about the focus in this area. To me it still seems like the mobile market is very fragmented.

Great product though.

dkjorgi wrote:I dont know how it works in the US but iPhone contracts here in the UK are expensive (compared to Windows Mobile and others) and therefore they will also have to include free web access which should explain the high traffic and give an indication actual market share is much lower.

On top of that the iPhone seems more popular in the US than rest of the world which made me curious about the focus in this area. To me it still seems like the mobile market is very fragmented.

Great product though.

From talking with Tom Welch, the impression I get is that the Church would like to start with an iPhone application and see how that goes. The hope is that the project is successful and the project branches to other mobile platforms from there.

Guys,

I'm currently going to start developing iphone apps and I'm wondering where do you get the LDS Scriptures in a data format for use in an iphone?

Thanks

John

KCSureShot wrote:Guys,

I'm currently going to start developing iphone apps and I'm wondering where do you get the LDS Scriptures in a data format for use in an iphone?

Thanks

John

Let me just warn you that the current iPhone apps that have been developed are either using the scriptures without license or they are using the Public Domain versions of some of the scriptures. There has only been one version of the Book of Mormon released under Public Domain, and that was back in 1920. However, Doctrine and Covenants nor Pearl of Great Price have ever been released under Public Domain. Any application using that content is most likely doing so without license from the Church. See the following thread from a Church employee for more information:

http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.ph ... #post23261

The good news is that the Church wants to provide an approved outlet for iPhone development by sponsoring a Community Project. The functional specifications are still being drafted by Tom and will likely be posted very soon to the Wiki. The Church will need volunteers like you for the project, so keep a close eye on this thread for when a link is posted.

KCSureShot wrote:Guys,

I'm currently going to start developing iphone apps and I'm wondering where do you get the LDS Scriptures in a data format for use in an iphone?

Thanks

John

We are just getting started with a community project to develop an official iPhone (and eventually other platforms) version of the scriptures. Search for "iPhone" on the lds Tech wiki.

Tom

tomw wrote:We are just getting started with a community project to develop an official iPhone (and eventually other platforms) version of the scriptures. Search for "iPhone" on the lds Tech wiki.

Tom

With Tom spilling the beans, I'll go ahead and post a direct link: https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/IPh ... pplication

I find that it is smart to be using the SQLite, because there are libraries all ready for Android for use with that. Now for a platform, since the Android uses Java as a platform and all the rest don't you can't really focus that way but if you where to use Webkit, which Safari and the Google Chrome and the Android browsers are based off, it think it would make it much easier for cross platform programming.

Good luck on it all.

splassle wrote:I find that it is smart to be using the SQLite, because there are libraries all ready for Android for use with that. Now for a platform, since the Android uses Java as a platform and all the rest don't you can't really focus that way but if you where to use Webkit, which Safari and the Google Chrome and the Android browsers are based off, it think it would make it much easier for cross platform programming.

I'm a fan of SQLite, but it is not perfect. One downside is the lack of support for string functions found in some other SQL implementations. That might make it difficult to build any text-search functionality into such an app. Perhaps there are workarounds. Overall, SQLite may still be the best choice.

Thanks for the information. I'll email Tom directly with details on my programming background and with questions on what I can do to get involved in this community effort.

John

mkmurray wrote:From talking with Tom Welch, the impression I get is that the Church would like to start with an iPhone application and see how that goes. The hope is that the project is successful and the project branches to other mobile platforms from there.

As an iPhone owner, one app I'd like to see ported is some form of the Church's Interactive Music Player.

However, I realize this would require some significant software engineering hurdles. The biggest on is that the current version of the Interactive Music Player relies heavily (exclusively?) on Adobe Flash, and Apple has been eschewing Flash in favor of open source alternatives such as CSS, Javascript, and Ajax. In fact, since 2007 Apple has removed most (if not all) of the Flash content from its website, and Flash is not currently and option for the iPhone, and might never become one.

Even so, the convenience of having the scriptures in my pocket has been so nice, I now am yearning for more church content. My first preference would be to able to add the hymns (and I mean more than just the texts), the Children's Songbook, followed by lots of lesson manuals.

There is a new mobile apps framework that was created by BYU-Idaho professor Lee Barney that is worth mentioning here. It's called QuickConnect, and it allows users to write a mobile application in Javascript, HTML, and CSS instead of - in the case of the iPhone - Objective C. Beyond that advantage, it allows users to easily compile it in a variey of other formats. Android, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Mac dashboard widgets, and soon Nokia and Blackberry are all supported. While there are some UI differences, the majority of the work is done once and then deployable to all these formats. I turned one of his iPhone app examples into a Mac Dashboard widget in around 5 minutes.

In the case of developing for the iPhone, QuickConnect installs a template in Dashcode to work with. Most UI and calls are done in Dashcode through JS, HTML, CSS. The Dashcode project can then be copied into Xcode for iPhone and/or Mac. It's pretty slick.

QuickConnect is free to use. The author also has a Google Groups page where he answers questions and, in some cases, codes examples for the curious.

My reason for posting this here is that I thought there may be some advantage is creating this scripture app through this framework. It brings down a lot of the language barriers (web vs Obj. C) and it makes porting the app to other mobile platforms (Android, Nokia, Blackberry (soon)) seem easier to achieve.

Just a thought.

QuickConnect blog: http://tetontech.wordpress.com/
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/quickconnectiPhone?pli=1
Wiki: http://quickconnect.pbwiki.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/quickconnect
Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/quickconnect/

TomJ

I know what you mean. I'm in a ward in the Plymouth Stake (England), and very small compared to a Utah or CA ward, but there are two & sometimes a 3rd iPhone/iPod touch in our quorum meetings.

I like my iPod, because I've got all the manuals in my app.-- I like how I can go to a scripture reference, and then back to the lesson manual.

Yes, very exciting.

Howard from Devon

mkmurray wrote:Please use only legal means to acquire Apple operating systems.

Uppsss, sorry... my bad.

Josiah wrote:There is a new mobile apps framework that was created by BYU-Idaho professor Lee Barney that is worth mentioning here. It's called QuickConnect, and it allows users to write a mobile application in Javascript, HTML, and CSS instead of - in the case of the iPhone - Objective C. ...

This sounds similar to Apple's push to distance itself from Flash in favor of HTML 5, CSS 3, and Javascript (possibly via its contributions to SproutCore and adoption of SquirrelFish).

If you want to see a sample of what Apple has done with this without using Flash, you can download the public beta of Safari 4 and then use it to look at
http://www.apple.com/safari/welcome/

FireFox 3.5 is also supposed to incorporate support for HTML 5 (and CSS 3 I think). It would be interesting to imagine how the functionality of the LUWS might be extended using Safari 4 or FireFox 3.5.

dkjorgi wrote:I dont know how it works in the US but iPhone contracts here in the UK are expensive (compared to Windows Mobile and others) and therefore they will also have to include free web access which should explain the high traffic and give an indication actual market share is much lower.

On top of that the iPhone seems more popular in the US than rest of the world which made me curious about the focus in this area. To me it still seems like the mobile market is very fragmented.

Great product though.

The iPod touch can run all the same (or most) of the applications from the iPhone. That makes running applications much less expensive than owning an iPhone. Also, I currently run my iPhone on a "pay as you go" plan because I don't use the phone that much. It's not currently supported by Apple/ATT but I believe it will be in the near future as the Apple/ATT exclusive agreement expires.

Please add me to the list of iPhone developers. I have been a developer for more years than I would like to admit at this time. Obviously, not an iPhone developer for that long.

I am looking to hire someone to develop an iphone app. If anyone here is interested that would be great, or if anyone could send me in the right direction to someone who might be able to I would really appreciate it. The app would be pretty straight forward, nothing too crazy.
Thankyou,

Spencer England

SpencerEng wrote:I am looking to hire someone to develop an iphone app. If anyone here is interested that would be great, or if anyone could send me in the right direction to someone who might be able to I would really appreciate it. The app would be pretty straight forward, nothing too crazy.
Thankyou,

Spencer England

Spencer, you might find the LDS group at LinkedIn a better place to find someone.

http://www.lds.org/emp/network

dkjorgi wrote:Spencer, you might find the LDS group at LinkedIn a better place to find someone.

http://www.lds.org/emp/network

Correct, the LDSTech forums is really not intended to be a jobs board.

Thanks

Tom

tomw wrote:We are just getting started with a community project to develop an official iPhone (and eventually other platforms) version of the scriptures. Search for "iPhone" on the lds Tech wiki.

Tom

I've already made a program just for fun that works quite well on iPhone.

http://www.scripturebrowser.com

Jason

jwharton wrote:I've already made a program just for fun that works quite well on iPhone.

http://www.scripturebrowser.com

Jason

Thank you for freely sharing your work! I have it bookmarked on my iPhone and also on my desktop....

Another great and free site with even more . . . http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/

I am now an iPhone developer. When looking for cool apps, I couldn't believe there wasn't a Liahona app already available. So I learned Objective C and created it. I hope to work on more apps in the future.

rhoades20 wrote:I am now an iPhone developer. When looking for cool apps, I couldn't believe there wasn't a Liahona app already available. So I learned Objective C and created it. I hope to work on more apps in the future.

I couldn't believe you beat me to it, truth be told . Have you considered adding a feature that allows the user to specify a series of messages which appear when shaken? A lot of people I know would have a blast "scripting" the Liahona and sharing it with their friends, as a gag or otherwise. I hadn't thought of pointing to the nearest temple though, that's a great idea.

Responding to the original intent of this thread: I'm an iPhone developer too. My recent work includes YouLearn: U.S. State Flags and MyWard (and Stake).

I think there's a lot of opportunity for collaboration in the LDS iPhone market. You'll see what I mean when MyWard v3 is approved by Apple. Ah, the joys of the approval process.

Edit: Wow, Apple approved it within 17 hours! That's a record!

hiltonc wrote:I think there's a lot of opportunity for collaboration in the LDS iPhone market. You'll see what I mean when MyWard v3 is approved by Apple.

Oh wow, you guys integrated with the LDSScriptures app (which I already own)! Very cool to see you guys collaborating like this!

Thanks! We certainly had a lot of fun with it .

I attended some iPhone tech talks a few months ago, and the keynote speaker made some interesting remarks. He talked about how users enjoy having a lot of little apps that each do one thing well. They don't want to buy a platinum Swiss Army knife... they want to get the individual apps that they enjoy and use them together to accomplish their goals.

mkmurray wrote:Oh wow, you guys integrated with the LDSScriptures app (which I already own)! Very cool to see you guys collaborating like this!

Which scripture app is that? I have the one from StandardWorksApp.com

It's actually the one by LDSScriptures.com.

I sent a message to Standard Works through their website just over a week ago, they must not have been interested. I'd love to work with them though. Maybe it just slipped through the cracks?