Google is trying to bring iOS app developers closer into its fold with the announcement of iOS tools in the Google Cloud Platform.
For the uninitiated, mobile backends enable developers the opportunity to create connected mobile apps without writing server-side code.
Google’s offering for server-side development for iOS developers is its new Mobile Backend Starter for iOS and Objective-C client libraries.
The service offers the standard Cloud server-side development you would expect including stored data in the cloud that can be shared between users, device-to-device push notifications and continuous queries to notify devices of data changes. Developers can also authenticate users using Google Accounts.
The Mobile Backend Starter is a Google App Engine application with source code for the backend and Android and iOS clients available on Github, allowing for individual developer customization.
To try out the Mobile Backend Starter on an iPhone or iPad, developer’s provision their backend on App Engine, download the iOS client zip file (or clone from GitHub repository), and run the sample on a physical device (it will not run on the iOS simulator).
Use Google’s framework classes to interact with the deployed backend as if it was local to the device. The services will deliver scalable push notifications to iOS devices via the Apple Push Notification Service.
The same set of features exists for both Android and iOS, and the backend manages the platform specifics such as using Google Cloud Messaging for Android and APNS for iOS devices.
Our thoughts? The cross platform capabilities of one backend service for the two dominate operating systems (and maybe more in the future?) is an interesting item indeed, especially since Apple currently does not offer a similar opportunity.