The world is full of technology that has the ability to run software. In the past, you would expect this to just be limited to app development for restaurant, bank, hospital management, and other things of the same sort. However, in recent years software has progressed far beyond what it used to be. People rely on apps for almost everything now.
Where back in the day people would watch the news in order to gain some idea of what was happening in the world, as well as to find out the daily weather forecast perhaps, people in the current age simply use an app on their mobile phone to find all of this out without moving a muscle.
These aren’t the only ways in which people use apps. There are so many different functions that applications can perform. Case in point: Flappy Bird was a relatively simple mobile game that involved a very fragile bird. It went viral and became so addictive that the creator took it down. However, mobile apps for gym and fitness also exist alongside these nondescript video games and other apps. All of them are very specialized or generic, depending on the type of app.
For example it has got to the point where a developer will create an application that is basically a blank area on which to draw doodles in your free time. With the right kind of marketing and exposure this could become a huge hit.
The Development of a Mobile Application
Unlike PC applications where everyone gets the same experience regardless of the platform on which the application is used, mobile apps need to have a far more specialized form of development. In the world today there are three major types of mobile OS or operating system. These three platforms are widely popularized and are very different to each other. These are Android by Google, iOS by Apple Inc., and Windows Mobile by Microsoft. All three platforms are used extensively on different mobile phones, and each has a completely different user interface to the other.
The problem with mobile app development is that each app needs to be made with the design of the mobile UI in mind. You can’t design an app that looks and feels like one on iOS and upload it to an Android platform. The users will intensely dislike it. This can be evidenced by the recent Move to iOS application that Apple made for its Android app store. The application was made with an iOS design in mind, which led to the app receiving 17,000+ 1-star reviews and only 3,000 5-star reviews on its page in the store. Due to this, it is very important that the mobile UI be kept firmly in mind when designing an application on mobile.
Different Languages for different Systems
This is a major problem for the application developer who is trying to go global with the platforms in their apps. Not all platforms use the same programming language. As many people already know, there are tons of programming languages out there. Each language possesses varying levels of complexity depending on the app being developed as well as the language itself. For instance, the Android mobile platform uses Java for a majority of its programs, with a little C+ scattered throughout. However, iOS uses Objective-C and Swift. This means that a programmer would have to learn an entirely new language just to reach a target market on a different platform.
Testing the App Before Release is Important
This is actually something that a lot of developers fail to do properly. In their rush to bring the app to the public, they fail to test their new app in such a way that it is at least 95% bug free. Some developers understand the importance of pre-release testing and they release beta versions of their apps to the public so that the end users can give feedback on the performance of the app. The best way to test an app is to give it to the end users, but it needs to be specified that this is a test app. This is what companies like Snapchat do, using a special beta tester program to get the early release version of their application out to a select group of volunteers who will analyze the app release, find its faults and then report back to the company with their findings.
Mobile app development, and app development in general is really a tough field, but it certainly does result in huge benefits when an app is successful.