What is the state of non-Objective-C programming for iPhone?

Question

After spending three weeks learning Objective-C and Cocoa programming for my work, I\'ve been tasked with researching alternatives to it for iPhone development.

I kn

Answer 1

A web app is also a very good alternative if you want to make an app for your web site. A lot of hardware is exposed through some of the up-coming HTML5-APIs, and PhoneGap exposes some more for you.

You can avoid the Apple approval process if you want by only hosting it on the web, or you can add it to the App Store by using UIWebView to load your web app. PhoneGap can help you with this also.

There is another question that specifically asks about web application frameworks for iPhone, that lists a lot of good alternative frameworks: Available iPhone Web Application JavaScript UI Library/Frameworks

Since JavaScript is interpreted by WebKit natively on the iPhone, Apple also approves these apps (depending on quality). The browser on iPhone is one of the best browsers on a mobile handset right now, but they're not the only one. With a little extra work you can make your web app also work on multiple plattforms. Peter-Paul Koch has done a lot of research on the state of the browsers, and also regularly blogs about web development for mobile devices. Check out his scientific results on mobile browsers or read some of his rant (funny and informative): http://www.quirksmode.org/mobile/

I also like Jonathan Stark's book Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

You can even make the app available offline with the help of a manifest file: Safari reference - HTML 5 Offline Application Cache. This is also further described in Jonathan Stark's book so you automatically modify the manifest when a resource is changed. Since the browser downloads all resources specified in the manifest file, it could be compared with updating the app in the App Store. Except it's instant and no approval process ;)