Google App Inventor- Now anyone can make an Android App

R28

http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

Have to say I'm quite excited to try this. Even people like me with no programming skills will be able to play around with developing their ideas for apps. I can see it being a great introduction for people wanting to develop apps or for kids learning about it in school.

Zagato

On the downside it's probably going to lead to tens of thousands of utterly rubbish apps, which will make browsing the market more frustrating

I guess it's a way for Android to catch up on the Apple AppStore

R28

Zagato wrote: »

On the downside it's probably going to lead to tens of thousands of utterly rubbish apps, which will make browsing the market more frustrating

I guess it's a way for Android to catch up on the Apple AppStore

I have to disagree. I think it's going to be a great way for people to come up with useful apps that programmers themselves may not even think of.

This article in the New York Times about it gives some good examples. The nursing student who creates an app that notifies a carer if someone falls over is something which is a)useful enough to others that I can see at least some people wanting to download it and b)is an idea which may not have come about if that nursing student wasn't given the tools to do it like this.

So a parent of a child with autism could themselves develop an android equivalent of the Grace iPhone app for communicating with their child (except maybe more useful as it's more customizable for their needs).

Of course there may be a problem with crap apps flooding the market. But 90% of the apps that are out there now are probably crap, so I don't see it as much of a change. Perhaps a way around it would be to have a seperate market within the main market for the apps developed this way.

Inquitus

Zagato wrote: »

On the downside it's probably going to lead to tens of thousands of utterly rubbish apps, which will make browsing the market more frustrating

I guess it's a way for Android to catch up on the Apple AppStore

It costs $25 to register to put your apps on the Android Market, I can't see many people developing what will largely be crap apps bothering to pay the money to put them on the market tbh. I don't think it will have any impact at all tbh.

People will write personal apps for them and their friends, I don;t see them troubling the marketplace.

Inquitus

Any idea when it will launch? I can only register my interest at this time.

JohnK

I think it looks pretty cool and I'd be interested to try it out. While I agree there is a bit of a risk of the market being flooded with crap theres always the chance of something good coming out of this.

conor.hogan.2

This is good news, there is already a lot of muck in the market anyway.

00sully

This is great news - Even for developers especially those not into Java - we have a greate platform to build on with this - then can edit the code directly for more enhanced/powerful functionality. This will aid in some rapid protoyping too for noobs and pros alike!

a typical scenario will be a non developer being able to build a working prototype for presentational purposes to sell or market an idea. I think this is great

Zagato

I don't disagree (sorry about the double negative), I'm sure that this will lead to their being more creative apps, I just think it might flood the market. Probably the answer is to better design the market to make it easier to navigate

28064212

Zagato wrote: »

On the downside it's probably going to lead to tens of thousands of utterly rubbish apps, which will make browsing the market more frustrating

I guess it's a way for Android to catch up on the Apple AppStore

Meh, if anyone can sort through that amount of data and rank it and return relevant results, it's Google

Random

looks promising in theory, let's see what comes of it

JoePie

I've signed up for the Beta. Still waiting to get my acceptance email. I'm looking forward to it. Anything to get my Masters finished faster. I'm not the strongest programmer, so I hope, and I'm assuming, that I'll be able to view my source code and reverse-learn how to code for Android.

robinph

Zagato wrote: »

I guess it's a way for Android to catch up on the Apple AppStore

Quality not quantity is what we want though, just cause Apple have 500,bazillion apps on their store does not make it better.

JohnK

To be honest even if the market place does fill up with crap I think it’ll be a good thing in the long run. While I do agree with you on the quality verses quantity angle the fact is that for the average user who just doesnt know any better its all about quantity so the more apps we get in the marketplace the more people who'll be willing to buy an android phone over an iphone etc. And the more people we get using android the more likely it is that developers and app companies will start developing for android which will benefit us because we’ll then have a bigger selection of good professional apps to choose from.

...If we can ever manager find them that is :pac:

Abelloid

I think it's a great idea, I'd love to able to create my own apps... but I wouldn't want to inflict any on the market, there's enough rubbish on there already.

Ron DMC

Got an email this morning with access, cannot wait to get home and play with out this evening, looks like a very simple process to make them. Anyone else get an email with access yet?

EasyBoy1974

Still waiting ...

jimmycrackcorm

Watched some of the tutorial demos - it looks like normal programming with a colour coding scheme. You still have to apply programming constructs regardless. It remains to be seen whether the graphical block structure is sufficient to bridge the typical gap between developers low-level work and non-developers who deal with high-level functionality.

Ron DMC

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

Watched some of the tutorial demos - it looks like normal programming with a colour coding scheme. You still have to apply programming constructs regardless. It remains to be seen whether the graphical block structure is sufficient to bridge the typical gap between developers low-level work and non-developers who deal with high-level functionality.

Well it's perfect for someone like me who hasn't gone near programming in about three years and even then only did some basic c++ and java.

JohnK

Ron DMC wrote: »

Got an email this morning with access, cannot wait to get home and play with out this evening, looks like a very simple process to make them. Anyone else get an email with access yet?

Still no sign of it for me. Can you remember, what date did you sign up? And did you specify education etc on the form?

Ron DMC

JohnK wrote: »

Still no sign of it for me. Can you remember, what date did you sign up? And did you specify education etc on the form?

Sorry man, I have absolutely no idea what I said in the application for it. It was absolutely ages ago, like the day it was announced I think. I'm sure yours will be along shortly.

él statutorio

just got my mail there, I gave them the bare minimum of info on the form and signed up about 2 or 3 weeks ago

JohnK

Interesting... pretty sure I signed once I spotted this thread so fingers crossed I get an email soon

Krusty_Clown

Got mine last night, again with minimal info, so they must be going main-stream.

ceejay

Got my confirmation last night also, I signed up the day it was announced.

partyatmygaff

Damn, still waiting for my email. Signed up on the first day as well

Professey Chin

Me too
I've been here since the G1 you backstards! :mad:
/shakey fist

*wanders off to harass google*

Idleater

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Damn, still waiting for my email. Signed up on the first day as well

Try going to the more section on your Google account. I did and found the app dev section. Logged in with my id and off we go, create application name.
This may be a different section of course- got no email about access yet.

jwcurtin

Im in!:D:D:D So long suckers:cool::D:D:D




Couldn't resist!

Inquitus

nereid wrote: »

Try going to the more section on your Google account. I did and found the app dev section. Logged in with my id and off we go, create application name.
This may be a different section of course- got no email about access yet.

Thanks, I just went to http://appinventor.googlelabs.com and it asked me to accept the TOS and then I could create projects, I had applied on day 1 but have yet received no email, but I do have access.

EasyBoy1974

anyone fancy sharing out the file required on the qt

Inquitus

EasyBoy1974 wrote: »

anyone fancy sharing out the file required on the qt

You build your apps in the google cloud, no invite, no app inventing unfortunately.

ronano

didn't get an invite

really annoyed

JohnK

Inquitus wrote: »

Thanks, I just went to http://appinventor.googlelabs.com and it asked me to accept the TOS and then I could create projects, I had applied on day 1 but have yet received no email, but I do have access.

I tried going there but it just took me to the signup form again

partyatmygaff

Nothing yet for me.

jimmycrackcorm

Interesting review here: http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/12/android-app-inventor-demo/

From What I interpret it will still only suit "programmer" types but of the visual basic sort. meh - I'll be ignoring my invite after all.

EasyBoy1974

Anyone else still waiting for this? I thought i signed up pretty quickly after the announcement ...

JohnK

Yeah I'm still waiting too

Professey Chin

Still nothing
*Grumble*Grumble*Grumble*

Idleater

I got mine last Friday after a prompt application at the beginning from this thread.

I quite like it, no way as in depth as the actual SDK so for "proper" programming it's probably no good.

Going through the hello world tutorials so I get a basic idea on what I can do with the device. The SDK development will be a step after this.

You won't be writing ROMs or getting to CPU internals with it, but you will be able to create any number of "iPhone" like applications

What I mean is you'll be able to do a fart counter, moving sprites games, dialing numbers, checking websites, etc. etc. I'm only scratching the surface.

EasyBoy1974

nereid wrote: »

I got mine last Friday after a prompt application at the beginning from this thread.

I quite like it, no way as in depth as the actual SDK so for "proper" programming it's probably no good.

Going through the hello world tutorials so I get a basic idea on what I can do with the device. The SDK development will be a step after this.

You won't be writing ROMs or getting to CPU internals with it, but you will be able to create any number of "iPhone" like applications

What I mean is you'll be able to do a fart counter, moving sprites games, dialing numbers, checking websites, etc. etc. I'm only scratching the surface.

You had me at "fart counter"

TheDoc

giving this a try myself to see if anything neat can come of it.

Blizzard recently launched their "realid" system, and I imagine its a matter of time before they have an application to chat to friends on your phone, similar to the likes of googe talk.

But if I can get there first, wincakes

Trevor451

Got into the beta a couple of days ago and Its fun to create apps but its also very limited E.G. you cant create multiple screens and you cant use the menu key to create a menu . That said this is still in private beta and they seem to add more features with every update

Ron DMC

The lack of multiple screens really annoyed me.
You can get around it though by creating a definition that makes every object invisible, and then making the objects you want on the next 'screen' visible.

jimmycrackcorm

I just got my invite so I'm going to give it a try to see if it can create a specific app i have in mind

johnp

Can you view the source that's generated?

Ron DMC

johnp wrote: »

Can you view the source that's generated?

You can yeah, so it's fairly easy to create a basic app and then edit the source to make it more advanced.

Fresh Pots

I wish they'd hurry up with my invite, Its been atleast three weeks.:(

partyatmygaff

squared wrote: »

I wish they'd hurry up with my invite, Its been atleast three weeks.:(

Try logging in anyway, it should work.

EasyBoy1974

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Try logging in anyway, it should work.

didn't work for me

JohnK

squared wrote: »

I wish they'd hurry up with my invite, Its been atleast three weeks.:(

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Try logging in anyway, it should work.

Its the same with me but if I just go to the page and log in I get the signup request form again. I've fill it out twice since the bloody thing was announced but still nothing