Learning the iOS 4 SDK for JavaScript Programmers

What You Lose

By and large, the full iOS SDK feature set offers your app designs far more flexibility and the ability to recreate the full range of user interface features you see on Apple’s own apps and apps developed by third parties. But there are costs—in monetary and toil currencies—to obtain those native app powers.

Except for apps designed for in-house corporate use, native apps that run on nonmodified devices—i.e., iPhones and iPads that have not been jailbroken (hacked to allow unapproved third-party apps)—must be distributed via the iTunes App Store. This is both a blessing and, for some, a curse for several reasons.

About Jailbreaking

When the first-generation iPhone landed in developers’ hands in 2007, quite a few programmers were put off by the lack of a publicly available development environment for applications. Apple granted itself the power to build native apps included with the phone, but the developer community was shunted to the web app world—with a Mobile Safari version boasting far fewer app-friendly features than today’s HTML5-empowered model. Some adventurous programmers, however, found ways to gain access to the same interior programming functionality that Apple’s engineers had and opened up native programming to third parties. Having pierced through Apple’s restrictions, they called the technique jailbreaking. To run one of these independent apps, an iPhone user had to “jailbreak” the device using a software-run process that grew easier and easier over time ...