Why Developers Prefer Creating Apps That Begin As iOS-Exclusives? We Spoke To Two Developers Ahead Of WWDC 2021 – Mashable India

As we gear up for the 2021 edition of Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference or WWDC which is set to begin on 7th June, I wanted to revisit a question that's probably run through every young app developers mind - which mobile platform do I develop my app for - iOS or Android?

While the answer to that question is certainly not as straightforward as you'd assume, we do continue to see a lot of mainstream apps start off as iOS exclusives before trickling down to Android. Well, 2020 was the year for Clubhouse falling into that bracket, but there are a bunch of other apps too which may not have quite taken off like Clubhouse has but does show that there are a lot of developers who do prefer going the iOS-only route.

The debate as to why has been a battle that has egged on for a long time. While Android developers advocate for their platform with a claim that is more open an operating system in nature, developers who prefer iOS suggest that Apple's OS features users who are far more likely to spend on apps. While that's just one reason each to swing either way, there are a number of other factors too. But instead of drawing out a list for you to boringly scroll we spoke to the makers and providers of two iOS-only apps, in a bid to know why they chose iOS as their go-to option.

Meghna Saraogi and Akhil Tolani's real-time platform StyleDotMe founded their SaaS venture back in 2015 but mirrAR, their app on the App Store grew popular during the course of the pandemic.

In case you're wondering, mirrAR is a real-time virtual try-on application for the jewellery industry, bringing a wide range of jewellery options from across the country to consumers.

This app enables jewellers and designers to store their digitized inventory in the system with all necessary details and that can be shared directly with interested clients. Once the designs are shared, jewelers can keep track of the jewellery liked, opened and tried on by the customers and then coordinate with them accordingly over the chat functionality.

Speaking about the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on jewellers and how that's greatly boosted the adoption of Augmented Reality, the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of StyleDotMe, Akhil Tolani said, "As a capital intensive industry that relied on physical retail for revenue, the move to digital mediums wasn't easy but it was inevitable in hindsight."

He states that jewellers were quick to realise that "adopting an omni-channel approach and finding immersive, engaging & safe way to connect with consumers was the only option to keep their businesses afloat."

"Virtual try-ons proved to be a win-win, bridging the gap between retail businesses & their customers," he added.

So how's the process like for a jeweller trying to create a virtual catalogue?

Tolani explains that simplicity was of the essence while creating mirrAR since they knew they were catering to an industry that is very traditional at its core.

"The process of integration is as easy as taking a photo of products, drag & drop uploading on our backend and integrating 1 line of SDK code on the website/app, or sharing a link of the inventory with shoppers that they can access on their devices to virtually try-on the designs.The platform supports virtual try-ons of 2D, 360 or 3D products."

SEE ALSO: I Attended A 'Today At Apple' Session And I've Never Been More Pleasantly Surprised

So mirrAR's creation was well thought through, but why create an app for iOS?

"We chose iOS based on a variety of parameters which includes performance abilities, hardware & camera quality, AR & ML capabilities, etc," Tolani explains.

Speaking more specifically, the 3D face tracking capabilities of ARKit, rendering quality of RealityKit and fine-tuning of CoreML all core Apple tech were influential in mirrARs creation. "The level of quality we're able to achieve in mirrAR would not have been possible without these core functionalities provided by Apple," he says.

"LiDAR could be a game-changer"

Since we were discussing AR tech, I couldn't help but ask Tolani about LiDAR and what he made of it.

Tolani claims that LiDAR will significantly improve what he called "SLAM technology" - where a person can flip to the back camera and see a realistic rendering of 3D objects placed on surfaces like tables, floor, etc.

"We're also working on an experimental solution where jewellers will be to take a 3D scan of their products using LiDAR and integrate it into mirrAR. This eliminates countless hours of man-power required to recreate 3D files from 2D product images," he adds.

To change the narrative from an AR app that has powered a brick-and-mortar industry during the pandemic, I then spoke to Kushagra Agarwal who single-handedly founded and developed an app named Cone in 2017.

Cone is an app that lets you take a photograph and enables you accurately identify up to ten Pantone colors closest to the colors captured in the photograph. The app does all its processing offline and is an official Pantone licensee and keeps getting updated with the new colors as they are released.

Why would anyone need an app like that? Well, designers, digital artists and illustrators do need an app like that almost all the time. But that's not exactly how Cone came into existence. You could read more about the journey behind Cone here, but the TL;DR version of it is that Cone was created primarily for the colorblind community as an accessibility tool.

"While developing Cone, there were advantages as well disadvantages of being colorblind. The main disadvantage, mostly during the initial phase of the development, was that it was difficult to verify if the app was correctly identifying certain colors (due to my colorblindness)."

"So, to overcome this, I used to pester my flatmates with test builds all the time. This was very useful because I had missed adding Brown color to the library and it was showing up as either Yellow or Red. I had no idea!" says Agarwal.

"On the other hand, the advantage was that I could see the benefits of the app right away, and it was very important to me. Also, rather than doing guesswork, I could tailor the app to make it work exactly how a colorblind person would want it to work."

Being someone who identifies himself as an artist, Agarwal was also able to do a very tasteful job of the apps UI and UX. "I love designs that are minimal (no extra fluff), easy to use (just works), and delightful (brings joy to the users). I always design and develop my apps keeping those 3 values in mind, and they are never an afterthought," he says.

But why pick iOS as the platform of choice for Cone?

"I think Apple definitely knows what the developers want, and year on year, they have been improving the dev tools for existing developers while also lowering the entry barrier for new developers. This is something that I haven't seen with other platforms."

"For example, Apple introduced Swift UI with iOS 13 and it's one of the best developer tools I've seen so far. It makes it super easy for new developers to get started with app development," claims Agarwal.

"Another example would be the unification of the platforms which was introduced last year which made it possible to develop multi-platform apps (include macOS) with a single codebase - reducing both the development time as well as the effort required to learn the specific APIs of a new platform."

But that just core tech. Agarwal specifically lauded Apple's AVFoundation framework stating how much easier it made it for him to get access to the data stream straight from the device's camera.

"This made the live color identification in Cone possible, which is one of the best and most useful features of Cone."

As we wait for Apple to talks us through new improvements and introductions, Kushagra had a tiny bit of advice for the team at Cupertino too, based on a bit of hearsay of course: "In the future, the technology that I would love to work on would be AR. If the rumors are true, then I would jump on the opportunity to bring Cone on Apple's AR glasses. That would make the world so much better for people with color deficiency."

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Why Developers Prefer Creating Apps That Begin As iOS-Exclusives? We Spoke To Two Developers Ahead Of WWDC 2021 - Mashable India