There are many professional, and powerful, tools for developing games on the Mac. These are the tools used to create many of the games you buy on the App Store (for either iOS or OS X) Godot 2.0. Appery is a cloud-based mobile app builder that you can use to create apps for Android or iOS, and it includes Apache Cordova (Phone Gap), Ionic, and jQuery Mobile with access to its built-in.
These days more and more would be entrepreneurs are taking the plunge by building their own apps, so it’s no shock that we’ve seen a ton of growth in two key areas:
It’s unlikely that you’d wind up on an article about how to create an app without some technical expertise, so let’s focus on the second area in this post, highlighting how some of these pieces of software can help you to develop an app using tried and tested frameworks.
In these cases it isn’t the technical side of things (such as having a bit of coding knowledge) that’s the most significant barrier to creating an app, but the prohibitive cost and time commitments. Here’s a shortlist of apps that address these issues.
Before You Create a Mobile App…
For all of you out there champing at the bit to build your brand new mobile app, the first piece of advice is this: slow down. It’s very likely that you’ve already asked yourself the following questions:
If not, ask them. And make sure you’re answering them honestly.
Originality isn’t necessarily the be-all and end-all of a great app, as long as you’re putting your own unique spin on something rather than cloning it outright, but knowing how to make an app is never going to be a useful skill for you if you proceed with an app that you can’t imagine anyone else using.
Brainstorming and research
Maybe you’re the type of person who can organize all of their thoughts in a sterile Word document or Excel spreadsheet. Or maybe you’re more like the average person, who associates creativity and innovation with the visual medium.
Using an app like iThoughtsX or XMind to generate mind maps can be a great way to get your thoughts down on paper and allow you to hop between threads without having to entirely abandon what you were working on previously.
Make Your Own Flashcards App For Mac
XMind prioritizes the visual and sharing aspects of mindmapping; it features two presentation modes and you can assign task information directly using its Gantt Chart view.
iThoughtsX, on the other hand, is a better fit for brainstorming projects because it’s so colorful and places more emphasis on planning and goal-setting. If you really want to use it for assigning tasks, it does offer a task management format that’s a little more straightlaced too.
Design and mockups
Choosing how to design an app is key and, in a world dominated by flat design and minimalist app icon designs, picking the right color is a big part of that! Like that paint sampling machine at your local hardware store, Sip allows you to upload or scan images with shades to find their component colors:
If Sip doesn’t offer up all the information you’d like to have at your fingertips then Aquarelo makes it easy to put a name (or at the very least a comprehensive color code!) to a face with support for up to 36 standard formats and 46 color profiles (21 RGB, 25 CMYK).
You can also these apps to build and manage your own custom palettes (Aquarelo in particular is great for this!) and pull them over to Photoshop, Sketch, Illustrator, Xcode, and so on.
Then, when it’s time to make sure that your beautiful new app actually looks the way it should, you’ll want to use something like iOS simulator in Flawless to check for any discrepancies between your design mockups and how the app will really appear.
Of course, before you can compare design and implementation you’ll need to actually build the app itself…
Writing code![]()
For a long time, Objective-C was the standard for the development of iOS apps. In 2014 Apple introduced Swift, calling it “Objective-C without the C,” as their coding language and (arguably) made life much easier for developers. Once you’ve picked up some knowledge of Swift, you’re more or less good to go!
When you do start coding, you can make your life easier with a tool like CodeRunner. Getting started is really easy:
Mac Make Your Own Application
In addition to being great for throwing together a quick PHP backend, this app allows you to write, run and debug code in more than 25 languages (including Swift and Objective-C) and boasts useful features like IDE-level code completion.
If you’re using Swift, PHP, or HTML for a project then it might be worth taking a look at TeaCode, which comes with over 70 built-in expanders. You can also create new expanders yourself if there are functions that you’re going to be using over and over (and over…) again.
At the end of the day, anything you can do to make the process of coding a little quicker is worth doing. That’s even more true if you’re working on your app as a side project or are trying to bootstrap things. The quicker you can move, the earlier you can get the app submitted to Apple and move into beta-testing stages.
Building and extending your app
It might seem like running before you can walk, but it’s never too early to start thinking about APIs and making sure that your app can play nicely with others. If your app is popular enough, a paid or freemium API can represent an additional revenue stream that many developers leave untapped.
API development comes with plenty of potential pitfalls of its own, so it’s not something to be undertaken lightly, but an app like Paw is certainly useful for getting to grips with writing and testing parametrable requests.
If nothing else, considering how your app could make use of existing APIs (or how building one for your own app could benefit you) is a useful exercise because it prompts you to think about features that may be missing in your offering and help to dictate your future direction as you develop an app.
App marketing and more
We’d love to be able to tell you that, once you know how to make an app, that’s the hard part over. Unfortunately, as we’re sure you’ve already figured out, that’s not the truth. Successfully releasing and marketing your new app is the next step in the process, and it’s not an easy one.
When it comes to apps, building your product is just the beginning. Whether you’re seeking steady growth or instant virality (the first may be less sexy, but it’s also more sustainable!), you have a long road ahead. However, as we’ve seen above, taking the first step on that road doesn’t have to take months or cost the earth!
But with all the apps mentioned on this article being available for a free trial on Setapp, along with over 150 other top macOS apps, you can be all set and running towards creating your app within record time.
Jump Right In
Start Developing iOS Apps (Swift) is the perfect starting point for learning to create apps that run on iPhone and iPad. View this set of incremental lessons as a guided introduction to building your first app—including the tools, major concepts, and best practices that will ease your path.
Each lesson contains a tutorial and the conceptual information you need to complete it. The lessons build on each other, walking you through a step-by-step process of creating a simple, real-world iOS app.
As you make your way through the lessons and build the app, you’ll learn about concepts in iOS app development, gain a deeper understanding of the Swift programming language, and familiarize yourself with the many valuable features of Xcode, Apple’s integrated development environment (IDE).
Prerequisites
In these lessons, it is assumed that you are familiar with the Swift programming language. You do not need to be a Swift master to complete the lessons, but you will get more out of the lessons if you can comfortably read and understand Swift code.
If you are not yet comfortable with Swift, complete the Learn to Code exercises in the Swift Playgrounds app. Alternatively, you can work through A Swift Tour from The Swift Programming Language (Swift 3). Both give you a solid foundation in the Swift programming language.
About the Lessons
In these lessons, you’ll be building a simple meal-tracking app called FoodTracker. This app shows a list of meals, including a meal name, rating, and photo. A user can add, remove, or edit a meal. To add a new meal or edit an existing one, users navigate to a different screen where they can specify a name, rating, and photo for a particular meal.
The lessons are each accompanied by an Xcode project file that shows an example of how your code and interface should look at the end of the lesson. After you go through a lesson, you can download the project and check your work against it.
If you need to refer to the concepts you’ve learned throughout the lessons, use the glossary to refresh your memory. Glossary terms are linked throughout the lessons.
Mac Make Your Own ApparelGet the Tools
To develop iOS apps using the latest technologies described in these lessons, you need a Mac computer (macOS 10.11.5 or later) running the latest version of Xcode. Xcode includes all the features you need to design, develop, and debug an app. Xcode also contains the iOS SDK, which extends Xcode to include the tools, compilers, and frameworks you need specifically for iOS development.
Make Your Own Calendar Apple Mac
Download the latest version of Xcode on your Mac free from the App Store.
To download the latest version of Xcode
Mac Make Your Own App Free
Important
The lessons were written using Xcode 8.1, iOS SDK 10, and Swift 3. Try to use these versions while working on the tutorials. If you are using a different version, your screen may look different than what is shown in the screenshots. You may also need to make changes to your code to get it to compile.
Let’s get started!
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