Porting Apps
 

Deciding to develop an App but don't know which one I should develop for first.

Is it easier to develop for iOS and port over to Android or vica versa

I get people asking me this all the time, so I might as well post up something here.

If you're directly comparing the iOS SDK to the Android SDK (native) then it's easier to develop for Android. iOS uses Objective C which has a steeper learning curve than Java for Android and will be more difficult to get up to speed for most programmers. One warning - if you ever go to a website and read an article that says one is clearly better than the other for development, then you can walk away because they are obviously biased. Both systems have their good and bad points and anyone who claims one is "significantly" better is not someone you can trust for a proper opinion.

If you want to target both platforms there are a lot of things to consider. The biggest is what type of App are you developing. Is it something straightforward or is it computationally and graphically intensive? Is performance going to be a concern? Generaly speaking, more complex Apps would be better suited to be written natively while more "common" Apps could be written using many of the cross-platform tools.

You can use tools like Appcelerator or html5formobile which will let you develop Apps using HTML5/Javascript and then target whatever platform you wish. There are also higher-level tools like Marmalade or MoSync which let you develop using standard C/C++ (instead of Objective C that iOS uses) and then target multiple platforms with your single code base.

For me, I develop natively as my App is fairly complex and performance is a key issue for me. As such, I can't recommend any of the cross-platform tools since I haven't personally tried them. Unfortunately, there are a lot of such tools out there so deciding which one to use is going to take a bit of homework.

The last thing to consider is monetization. If you're in this to make money then there are significant differences between both platforms. If you're simply looking to make an App for your company (perhaps a support tool for employees or customers), then this wouldn't be an issue.

BTW, can you give any details of your App without giving away any secrets?

Edited: Forgot to ask. What is your programming background? What languages are you familiar with? What platforms have you developed for?

I know basics in c++ and java
learning curve shouldn't be an issue

The app is targeting youth and/or their parents.

Most of the target market uses iOS (iphones, ipads, itouch)
However a fair portion uses android as well

edit:
the app itself would not need a lot of computation, pretty basic.

Any help would be appreciated
Any good books to help?

Android has less strict guidelines.