Inside my AppDev toolbox

Swiftly does it (most of it)

Oct 10, 2021

(Here’s a fancy web version of this post.)

This post identifies the hardware and software tools I use to develop my mobile apps and why. The AppDev skills unmasked blog covered the importance of technical and commercial skills plus drive.

Tools

Hardware

I’m developing apps for iPhone and iPad, initially, which requires the use of an Apple Mac. It is highly desirable to be able to test apps on physical devices. Hence, in addition to a MacBook Air, I have an iPhone 11 and iPad Mini.

App development software

Apple developers use the Xcode IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and the iOS coding language Swift. Free Swift training materials are at Hacking With Swift. Additionally, I use the SpriteKit 2D game framework for Scarper, my grid based game. Apple Developers pay a £99 annual subscription which allows them to launch apps onto the AppStore. 15% of revenues are taken by Apple.

For Android development I plan to use Android Studio and code in Kotlin.

Graphics software

To develop graphics, including the app icon and web logos, I use Inkscape which is free. I start with an app icon template, design my icon then save a .png version at 1024 x 1024 pixel granularity. I drop this .png graphic into an App Icon Generator which creates icons at all the different sizes required by Apple and Android. Here are Apple’s icon design guidelines.

Web site software

Websites vary massively in type and complexity. The basic requirement of a website associated with a mobile app is to share your Privacy Policy and Support materials, plus provide a way for potential users to find your app.

I use the following to develop my websites, including PlayScarper.com:

Domain name registration: Names.co.uk (£17.99 for 2 year registration of a .com domain)
Website hosting: Fast2Host.com (from £3.85/month)
Coding text editor: Atom (free)
File transfer (between laptop and website hosting server): FileZilla (free)
Web development code: HTML (Markup for web site), PHP (Scripting language), JSON (data interchange format), Javascript (website interactivity), Bootstrap (responsive design library). (all free).
Database: MySQL (from fast2host)