In recent years, the technology of cross-platform mobile application development has gained great popularity. Many startups, small and medium enterprises use the potential of cross-platform development to create applications in a relatively shorter period of time, which is one of the main motives for adopting this technology.
There is no denying that a cross-platform solution is a boon for entrepreneurs who don’t want to invest in native app development or want an app to build quickly.
However, cross-platform development has problems and features that you need to know before starting a project.
Disadvantages of cross-platform development
Delayed and limited updates
Cross-platform development environments are slow to adapt to OS updates. Framework development tools are expected to adapt to new OS features and capabilities as they evolve, but this process is usually very slow.
Moreover, the cross-platform environment does not support all features of a particular operating system, or some features may not be compatible with a particular environment for smooth operation.
Poor performance
In terms of performance, cross-platform applications are not that impressive. There are many reasons behind this. Such products cannot interact with the device hardware as a native application does. Inconsistent communication between the native device and non-native components also affects the performance of the application.
Weak functionality
An application created using this approach still does not have full access to all smartphone features. You also depend on third-party code to integrate with a specific platform and must check for bugs in their implementation and work around them.
Bad user interface/UX
Cross-platform apps are also not suitable for apps that require rich UI/UX. Native apps should be the final choice in this case, as they are designed with platform-specific design guidelines in mind and can take full advantage of the device’s hardware. Unfortunately, cross-platform apps lag behind in this segment and therefore don’t offer a rich UI/UX.
Animation Issues
Modern design is already inconceivable without animation – it is liked by users and makes the application more understandable and responsive. Hybrid products, as a rule, support animation worse, most often it is completely abandoned. What projects are cross-platform applications suitable for?
Choosing cross-platform development
When a shorter time-to-market is required.
If the application is a fairly simple project.
For prototyping and MVP.
Summary
The cross-platform approach is good for simple products or MVP testing. Native development gives developers much more control over the user experience and also allows you to develop applications for easy maintenance. We believe it’s better to stick to the native interface and not sacrifice design elements that are unique to each platform.
How to choose a technology stack for iOS development
Over the past year, the mobile app market has made a big jump: from 197 to 250 billion downloads per year. It is obvious that the sector will continue to grow: more and more entrepreneurs are looking towards mobile development. Attractive and reliable software can improve branding as well as retain customers for a long time. But for the application to be such, it is important to choose the right technology.
The stack plays an important role in the application development process: the technologies chosen will determine what functionality the future product will pull and whether it will be possible to scale it in the future. Also, the rate of specialists and the time for development will depend on the stack.
Native app development
Native development is the creation of a product that is written in original programming languages created specifically for the chosen platform. The native languages for iOS are Swift and Objective-C. Such an application will only work on “its” platform.
Objective-C
Objective-C is a general purpose language that is developed on top of the C programming language by adding features from the Small Talk programming language, making it an object-oriented language.
Objective-C is used by Apple and has access to most of the standard libraries. An application developed on this technology will have a beautiful smooth interface and will work quickly.
Swift
Swift is a more functional language, it is easier to avoid errors in the code. In addition, applications in this language will be more productive, and Apple now also supports this technology.
At our YuSMP Group web studio, iOS developers use Swift because it offers powerful features with minimal code that can be easily maintained.
Other Technologies for iOS App Development
Flutter is a cross-platform development technology created by Google. Applications created on this framework will work on both Android and iOS. Flutter is flexible and widely used in YuSMP Group, but the choice of cross-platform technology will not always be optimal. About which development to choose, we wrote earlier.
Summary
If you decide to create your own application for IOS, then first of all you will have to choose between native and cross-platform technologies. The former are more expensive and better, the latter are cheaper and faster, but with limited capabilities. Then start from the budget, speed and competence of the developers.
Understanding what you want from the product now will help you make the right choice. Perhaps at the current stage it is better to get by with an MVP (minimum viable product), and not spray it on a complex application.
When choosing an iOS development company, think about the possible consequences and analyze them correctly to create a reliable mobile application.