Google opens app creation to the masses with App Inventor

July 14, 2010

Google opens app creation to the masses with App Inventor
Google App Inventor for Android allows users to easily create their own Android apps. (Photo Credit: gailjadehamilton/Flickr/CC BY-ND)

Google App Inventor for Android enables you to create your own Android apps. App Inventor is a new tool in Google Labs that makes it easy for any person to create mobile applications for Android phones without knowing a stitch of code. App Inventor allows users to drag and drop the essential building blocks of smartphone apps to create unique Android functionality from scratch.

App Inventor blows lid off Android market

App Inventor for Android, Google said Monday, was launched because as smartphones become the computers that individuals rely on most, users should be able to create their own applications. The New York Times says App Inventor is another way for Google to broaden its technology to include all developers. Apple, Google’s arch smartphone rival, has notoriously strict rules about app development for the iPhone. Google’s strategy appears to be working in the Android/Apple battle. Android phones outsold Apple’s iPhone within the first quarter this year.

App Inventor freaks out the geeks

The strategy behind App Inventor is that if anybody can develop apps, Android will dethrone the iPhone as the dominant mobile platform. Geeks in the upper echelons of the programming world don’t like this part of Google’s Android/Apple market strategy. Tech Crunch calls App Inventor “ugly” and wonders if it is either a “gateway drug for Android app development” or “a Doomsday device that will muck up native app development on the platform.” Tech Crunch also compared App Inventor to the popularization of WYSIWYG HTML editors, which it said filled the web with garbage because it made web pages easy to create.

Brace yourself for a flood of useless apps

As stated by Larry Dignan at ZDNet, App Inventor crosses the threshold of a landscape where the quality of Android apps is mediocre to begin with. He said that numerous apps are simply useless on both iPhone and Android. But the fact is, “useless is in the eyes of the beholder,” and that is the ultimate beauty of App Inventor. What is really useless will be determined by the marketplace. Apple’s App Store, at the moment, has more than 225,000 apps for sale. With the introduction of App Inventor, AndroidLib estimates that the Android market will quickly have more than 100,000 mobile apps.

Get more information about this topic:

nytimes.com

techcrunch.com

zdnet.com

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