AppPresser: One of the Best Plugins of 2014?

July 3, 2014

Have you heard of AppPresser yet?

I feel this is one of the most exciting plugins that has come out of the WordPress community for a past couple of years. Its core ambition is quite mind-blowing! AppPresser allows you to build iOS and Android apps using WordPress. Based on the reaction of community and press, it’s clear that this is an idea whose time has come. However, the success or failure of such an endeavor is all in the execution.

If the core developer Scott Bolinger and his partners in crime at WebDevStudios (Brad Williams, Lisa Sabin-Wilson and Brian Messenlehner) can pull this off and build a product that really works, I’m sure they will have a big winner on their hands for 2014.

I personally feel Scott’s decision to try and partner with WebDevStudio was clever and a very business savvy move. Without WebDevStudio’s backing, Scot would have had a very hard job promoting this product. Because of the plugin’s scope and its enormous ambition, he needed extra backing to lend credibility to the product.  With Brad’s and Lisa support, this is not such a problem.

Nevertheless, there is still the $100 question: “DOES IT DO WHAT IT SAYS IT CAN DO? The answer to this question can make or break AppPresser. The plugin really relies on some core technology from PhoneGap, an open source project that has a lot support and credibility in the larger mobile development community.

Obviously, you can’t beat a native built application if you have an app that has performance intensive elements. Nonetheless I would say that, for 85% of all the apps out there at the present moment, this is not the real problem. The real problem is time and cost of development, which makes app creation really frustrating and painful.

This is the strange situation that web/mobile development has found itself in 2014. On one hand, with modern web development platforms like WordPress and other mature CMS platforms (as well as the gradual demise of Microsoft Internet Explorer), web development has become slightly simpler and less frustrating.

Conversely, with the explosion of mobile devices using a number of different operating system platforms, we see developers forced to develop the same app in separate platform environments; this has made the whole process difficult, time-consuming and expensive.

Basically, you have to develop for three to four separate mobile platforms, each one having its own technical requirements and difficulties. Yes, we do have technologies like HTML5 and CSS3, and we can develop responsive websites. But if you wanted to use any of the native power and functionality of these mobile devices (like the camera, compass or accelerometer), you would have no alternative but to try and develop a native app.

This is the great potential that AppPresser offers. It gives business owners and developers the ability to try out new ideas on all the leading mobile platforms at an affordable cost, and then, if necessary, they can consider developing in the native language of the apps platform.  This is what I call a possible game changer to how the industry works at the present moment; that is what I call powerful and revolutionary ambition.

 

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