evan's blog

MIT App Inventor for iOS Enters Beta Testing

evan — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 15:41:39 +0000

The MIT App Inventor team is delighted to announce that we’ve passed a major milestone on the way to providing App Inventor for iOS.

Apple accepted MIT App Inventor for iOS into the TestFlight beta testing program this week. This lets us begin beta testing with small groups of users. We have already sent out invitations to our first group of beta testers.

MIT App Inventor for iOS is fully compatible with MIT App Inventor for Android. If you are a teacher in classes where students have both Android and iOS devices, you should be able to use the same curriculum materials with both devices. The only difference will be which version of the App Inventor companion students run on on their devices: one companion is an Android app, the other is an iOS app.

Apple’s requirements limit the number of beta testers we can work with, and we need to register the iOS devices in the test program. So we’re able at this stage to invite only small numbers of users who will commit to sending us feedback and bug reports. We will be expanding the testing program over the spring and we hope of getting to full public release this summer.

If you are interested in beta testing MIT App Inventor for iOS in future testing rounds, please complete this form with a description about how you plan to App Inventor for iOS and we will contact you with further information and requests for details.

hAPPy Inventing!
Evan W. Patton, Ph.D.
On behalf of the MIT App Inventor team

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Trip Report: Computers, Privacy & Data Protection 2019

evan — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 17:47:56 +0000

I recently traveled to Brussels, Belgium for the CPDP 2019 conference. Privacy and data protection are important for MIT App Inventor, not only because we support educational outreach around the world, but because we want to ensure that people who build apps with MIT App Inventor can be compliant with local, provincial/state, national, and international law, such as the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). While attending this conference, I had an opportunity to discuss MIT App Inventor as a platform both as a computer science education platform and as a platform for developers to build mobile apps. The conference also raised a lot of questions too around some of the areas that we are looking into building extensions for, including health data and artificial intelligence. Internet of Things (IOT) was also a hot topic at this event, with many concerns raised about how these technologies can be used to monitor people's behaviors and potentially used against them in unsavory ways. At MIT, we have built our own suite of IOT extensions for App Inventor, released under the Apache Software License 2.0, to encourage people to interact with IOT in an open, transparent way. It will be great to see how app inventors around the world benefit from this approach versus a closed approach currently championed by tech companies.

With warm regards,
Evan W. Patton, Ph.D.
On behalf of the MIT App Inventor team

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MIT App Inventor for iOS Status Update

evan — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 15:51:51 +0000

We know many App Inventor users are looking forward to the iOS version of MIT App Inventor. We've been working diligently on a release, and we hope to make the iOS version publicly available in the first quarter of 2019. One feature of the release that will be especially interesting to teachers is the ability to use the same curriculum and teaching materials in building apps for iOS as for Android.

If you would like to check on MIT's development progress, please visit doesappinventorrunonios.com at any time. This site presents progress on implementing the specific blocks and components of App Inventor iOS.

Last week we submitted iOS App Inventor to Apple's TestFlight service for review and testing, as a first step toward making iOS App Inventor available in Apple's App Store. We will now begin working on the review with Apple, which could take a couple of months.

We will publish updates on our iOS progress as we achieve critical milestones.

Best regards,

The MIT App Inventor Team

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App Inventor for iOS is in progress

evan — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 18:33:42 +0000

Hello App Inventors!

We are excited to announce that we are implementing MIT App Inventor for iOS! Support for iOS has been one of the most frequent feature requests over the years, and we can't wait to see all of the great projects people will build for this new platform. We are aiming to make our Android and iOS offerings as compatible as possible within the constraints set by both platforms. There won't be a separate service--apps designed and programmed in MIT App Inventor will run on both platforms (some limitations may apply).

Figure 1: The MIT App Inventor Companion and an example of Hello Purr running on iOS.

MIT App Inventor for iOS will be released in two phases. Phase 1 will see the MIT App Inventor Companion launched in the Apple App Store. Anyone with an iOS device running iOS 9 or higher will be able to try out their existing App Inventor apps using this Companion. Phase 2 will include the ability to build projects for iOS as well as Android. Users will need to participate in the Apple Developer Program to publish built apps on the App Store, similar to joining the Google Play Store Developer Program. This will allow anyone building apps with App Inventor to run on both Android and iOS.

As with App Inventor for Android, MIT will provide App Inventor for iOS free for use worldwide. Please help us keep it free by contributing to our App Inventor for iOS Crowdfunding Campaign.

Happy Inventing!

Evan W. Patton, Ph.D.
Director of Software Development, MIT App Inventor
On behalf of the MIT App Inventor team

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Upcoming Feature: Maps

evan — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 18:19:43 +0000

Hello App Inventors!

We are adding a new feature to MIT App Inventor: Maps! The Maps update will include seven new components you can leverage to build a wide range of geographically oriented applications, including finding the best places for pizza, favorite hangout spots, walking/hiking trackers, and more.

Map: Renders map content. It can contain special components (called Features) that are specific to the Map and behave similarly to sprites on a Canvas. The Map sports three different map types: Road, Aerial, and Terrain. App users can trigger many events on the map, including clicks and zooms.

Marker: Represents points on a Map. Markers can have custom images, are scalable by width/height, and styleable if Scalable Vector Graphic images are used. Markers can be made draggable and also have infoboxes to present detailed information.

LineString: Represents paths on a Map as a sequence of line segments. This can be used to render open paths and routes on a map. For example, combine a LineString with a LocationSensor component to build a hike tracking application, or use markers to indicate the start/end points of a navigation route.

Polygon: Marks a closed, 2-dimensional area. It can be used to draw features such as parks, buildings, or countries.

Rectangle: Bounds an area on the north, east, west, and south. This can be used for behaviors such as geofencing, where the app triggers an action if the user enters or leaves a designated region.

Circle: Displays a radius around a point on a map. Like the Rectangle, the Circle may be useful for geofencing applications to detect when a user enters or leaves the area around a point.

FeatureCollection: Provides a container for loading multiple features as a group, such as a group of polygons representing the United States (below). Each feature becomes its own component that can be edited in the designer.

In addition to the visualizations provided by these components, there are a number of behaviors provided so that you can build data rich, interactive applications. Features can be made draggable by app users, data can be shown using infoboxes in response to a user tapping on a feature, and the distance between features can be computed using blocks.

We can't wait to see all of the great apps you invent with these new components.

Cheers, and happy inventing!

Evan W. Patton
Director of Development, MIT App Inventor
On behalf of the MIT App Inventor Team

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Upcoming App Inventor Features

evan — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 02:52:47 +0000

Hello App Inventors!

We’re so glad you’re with us! We wanted to let you know that we are making some big changes to MIT App Inventor.

First, the next release of App Inventor will require Android devices running Android system 2.1 or higher (API level 8). We need to make this restriction in order for App Inventor to support new Android system features. We estimate that fewer than 1% of App Inventor users are using systems older than version 2.1, and we regret that we can no longer support the old versions: you’ll need to switch to a newer device.

We are also adding a feature that lets you customize the emulator. You’ll be able to change the size and density of the emulator screen, as well as add an external SD card to the emulated device. This will allow more flexibility when developing apps using the emulator.

We are also adding support for using Android themes in the apps you create with App Inventor. Themes let you customize the look-and-feel of apps by specifying things like things like font size, color, and padding uniformly throughout an entire application. This first release will focus on changing certain colors app-wide, with more granular control coming in future releases.

Finally, we’ve added a full palette color picker to App Inventor to make it easy to use more colors in your apps. When you choose a color, select the "Custom…" option from the dropdown list. This will open a color picker with a full range of color choices. After picking a color, click the "Done" button to finalize the change. Click "Cancel" to dismiss the picker and keep the existing color.

These changes also lay some groundwork for future improvements to App Inventor, so check back in the next few weeks for additional updates. For more detailed technical information on these changes, please see this document.

Cheers, and happy inventing!

Evan W. Patton
Director of Development, MIT App Inventor
On behalf of the MIT App Inventor Team

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evan's blog

MIT App Inventor for iOS Enters Beta Testing

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Trip Report: Computers, Privacy & Data Protection 2019

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MIT App Inventor for iOS Status Update

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App Inventor for iOS is in progress

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Upcoming Feature: Maps

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Upcoming App Inventor Features

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