I'm currently using RubyMotion to build a little Umbrella Advisor app. I've 
also done a bunch of random fiddling around with it and have quite enjoyed it. 
Previously I've used PhoneGap and found it super frustrating. As soon as I 
needed to anything they hadn't specifically implemented for me I had to drop 
back to Objective C and implement it, as well as a bridge to JS. It got much 
too complex much too quick.

The difference here is that your Ruby code is being compiled and run within the 
Objective C environment. All of the standard Ruby library also sits on stop of 
Cocoa. Plus you can do neat things like Reopen a Objective C class and monkey 
patch your own methods in there. Here's a little tweet of mine that did the 
rounds a while ago https://twitter.com/taybenlor/status/217082997516673024

The biggest downside is that you can't use the Xcode UI and Core Data tools. 
However on the other hand, you don't have to use Xcode. So I see it as a bonus 
:P

If you do end up doing some RubyMotion, check out the community projects here 
http://github.com/rubymotion some of them are really useful.

As for the Umbrella app, the site or app isn't live yet but, as a preview:  
http://cl.ly/0B3v2Q141Y4547192x2Y

 - Ben


On Friday, 6 July 2012 at 10:24 AM, Jason Kotchoff wrote:

> Has anyone out there given RubyMotion (http://www.rubymotion.com/) a whirl 
> yet?
> 
> It's in-built testing and inspection frameworks look really cool..
> 
> Here at ProjectProject, we built a bunch of apps in PhoneGap 
> (http://phonegap.com/) over the past two years but have recently migrated 
> over to Appcelerator Titanium (http://www.appcelerator.com/) (I think Aleksey 
> mentioned this earlier in the thread).
> 
> Our experience has been:
> PRO:  Both of these JavaScript based frameworks were useful in enabling some 
> of less technical graphics guys to modify apps without the overhead of 
> learning Objective C
> 
> PRO: Titanium allows you to get up and running super-quick and has a pretty 
> well documented API
> 
> CON: PhoneGap can perform perceivably slower then a native app given the 
> WebKit overhead
> 
> CON: Phonegaps CSS and window management can be really obscure and finicky 
> and sometimes leads to weird 'screen placement' bugs
> 
> CON: Apparently porting a complicated Titanium app to Android required a lot 
> of work (aleksey?)
> 
> Right now, we are building all our new projects in Titanium but this 
> RubyMotion definitely looks interesting.. Thoughts?
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, December 28, 2011 8:24:00 PM UTC+11, rgravina wrote:
> > Hello from Tokyo!
> > I've been living under a rock as far as Rails and the surrounding
> > ecosystem has progressed over the last couple of years while I
> > maintained a Rails 2.3 app enviously looking on as everyone played
> > with all the new cool toys. Well, I still have to do that next year
> > but may get some time to develop some smartphone mobile applications,
> > or at least front-ends for some Rails app... probably nothing too
> > taxing, maybe audio/video playback but that's about it aside from your
> > usual tap-process-change the UI stuff.
> > So, just wondering if any of you esteemed ladies and gentlemen have
> > used any of the mobile frameworks out there, like Titanium etc., and
> > can recommend any of them? Do you use HTML/CSS/Javascript
> > cross-platform, or do you develop two apps in plain Objective-C and
> > Java? Or Ruby compiled to something that runs on the phone? Or some
> > other setup that I've never heard of due to living under the
> > aforementioned rock for so long?
> > Some or all of these features would be nice (assuming that you use one
> > of the cross-platform frameworks):
> > * Being able to target iPhone and Android without rewriting the whole
> > application.
> > * Ruby or JavaScript-based development.
> > * Open Source
> > I guess that's about it.
> > Thanks!
> > Robert
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