iOS App Makers

Hequn · 17 Apr 2014 at 23:57

I own a bar and I'm looking at trying to find a website that can essentially create a simple but nice looking app that has social integration so our events are automatically upgraded and I can send offers to the app or update the ones available...perhaps do a loyalty card scheme. I've found loads on google but most of them create quite ugly looking apps or are very expensive.
Are there any that fit the bill and use quite good looking templates that anyone knows of?

jsmoke · 18 Apr 2014 at 07:12

Unity is pretty popular, plenty of tutorials also. That's about all I know of.

Tilluss · 4 May 2014 at 12:38

jsmoke said:
Unity is pretty popular, plenty of tutorials also. That's about all I know of.

Unity is a games engine, it's not used for creating normal apps.

OP: There are a couple of cross platform solutions out there but you will have to code in all of them. The other solution is to advertise yourself on an already existing app like http://www.clubtables.com. Either that or pay a developer to make an app for you, but I'll warn you now that app developers are in high demand and can charge a lot of money (£40+ an hour) at the moment.

Pho · 4 May 2014 at 13:25

Rather than making an app, have you thought about designing a mobile friendly website instead, through jQuery mobile etc? Offers could be pushed out over email/SMS subscription. For most people I imagine this would be perfect.

Yes it's not as fancy as an app, but it'll be a lot cheaper and cross-platform; given Android has more market share than iOS you should really support that too, which is going to double your app costs. Windows phone is fast taking off too..

(I say this as a developer who has written a few internal Android apps for our business, I know the pain!)

jsmoke · 4 May 2014 at 17:13

Tilluss said:
Unity is a games engine, it's not sued for creating normal apps.

OP: There are a couple of cross platform solutions out there but you will have to code in all of them. The other solution is to advertise yourself on an already existing app like http://www.clubtables.com. Either that or pay a developer to make an app for you, but I'll warn you now that app developers are in high demand and can charge a lot of money (£40+ an hour) at the moment.

Disagree you can create any mobile type app in Unity, what you are saying is just totally wrong, why are people so ignorant?

cheechm · 4 May 2014 at 17:40

Have a look at PhoneGap: http://phonegap.com/

Tilluss · 4 May 2014 at 23:15

jsmoke said:
Disagree you can create any mobile type app in Unity, what you are saying is just totally wrong, why are people so ignorant?

I'm willing to be educated, can you show me any examples? But anyway, no need to start throwing insults around when it's neither constructive or adds value to a discussion.

GravyMonster · 5 May 2014 at 08:32

jsmoke said:
Disagree you can create any mobile type app in Unity, what you are saying is just totally wrong, why are people so ignorant?

While you can make an app in unity it will contain 50mb of unneeded bloat in the form of the unity framework which it wont need. Its using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut.

A responsive website sounds like a much better idea.

Caged · 5 May 2014 at 13:37

If you don't have five figures then drop the idea of an app completely, make a mobile friendly website and ensure your marketing emails render properly on mobiles. Nobody is going to install an app which exists so you can spam them with offers.

Then get your listings on Google Maps and Yelp sorted so that maps can find you.

Mynight · 6 May 2014 at 01:54

As long as you know what you want and it's not overly complicated I may be able to produce it for you(time permitting).

RageRiot · 6 May 2014 at 06:39

Actually Unity is very good at exporting and will dump most of the unneeded stuff.

Spunkey said:
While you can make an app in unity it will contain 50mb of unneeded bloat in the form of the unity framework which it wont need.

I've seen apps created with Unity < 5mb, so I've no idea where you get the other 45mb

One of the biggest problems you'll have is getting your app to the user's phone, the iTunes application process is long and tedious imo, and is it worth it? Would your customer's even use it? Really?

As said above, the best option seems to be a mobile friendly website.

Anyway, why would you leave out Android users? They're clearly better people

planty · 6 May 2014 at 11:45

Caged said:
Nobody is going to install an app which exists so you can spam them with offers.

This. A decent responsive website will be far more productive than an app.

Tunney · 7 May 2014 at 09:40

jsmoke said:
Disagree you can create any mobile type app in Unity, what you are saying is just totally wrong, why are people so ignorant?

Unity is great but very few non-game apps benefit from its use. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Native development will produce better, faster and smaller apps. Cross-platform HTML5 tools will create cheaper and better apps.