While MIT was my favorite solution in education to make an APP it nows becomes problematic instead of better, and other solutions are pushing MIT APP INV away .
For new solutions like Remote control Arduino - RemoteXY it seems not difficult to use BLE and WiFi on both Android and IOS, so why MIT APP INV is struggling to make BLE work on IOS?
AppInventor does not officially support IOS yet. For now, it's beta testing and adapting the IOS version to be compatible with the Android version. it has been going on for several years. The next few years will be spent improving the components. if you don't have time to wait, you'll have to use other development tools.
They should be more professional and hire extra or better developers. It takes to long!
Even on Android BLE is problematic instead of getting more easy to use ...
Compared to other new solutions it seems to go the wrong direction.
The MIT is the university. This is not a company that hires programmers and benefits from AI2. They do it for us so that we can use it for free. You can always hire a programmer to write an app for you for money.
BLE is not a priority right now as AI2 is a learning platform for schools. Students learn the logic of programming and solving programming problems.
Then I suggest crowdfunding, if not get results faster MIT will dissapear which would be very sad.
I not need an APP, I speak for the millions of IT students that benefit from a good working MIT APP INV solution.
A temporary solution is to buy cheap Android devices to learn programming.
The list is so long, I even not find MIT APP INV research group on it ...
Now I understand there is not enough money to accelerate the development of MIT APP INV, to many options for the money to go to ...
If you are a developer, you can also contribute to faster development of AI2 here:
By solving programming problems, modifying components and improving the code.
I am not a developer, I was an enthousiastic promotor of MIT APP INV to all my students for many years...
I not understand why for example remoteXY seems to be able so quickly to add and use smoothly BLE while MIT can't. So I suggested to do crownfunding to get enough help before it is to late.
Can you make projects that work with external databases with remoteXY? Read and write files on your phone. Use the camera, scan barcodes, use sensors that are in the phone, e.g. NFC? Generate an APK file or its equivalent for ios there? In my opinion, remoteXY is mainly focused on communication with arduino and similar. It's a less complex environment, so it's easier to pass Apple approval. Ai2 allows you to create complex, advanced apps, which is why Apple is careful about it.
But of course I'm also in favor of adding BLE as a built-in Ai2 component. In my opinion, nothing stands in the way, especially since Mit has a refined BLE code as an extension. If BLE was a component in ai2 then it would also be available in ios.
Totally, totally agree with you Patryk.
I do have a branch where I've started the iOS implementation. We are hoping that one of our GSOC participants this summer will get it across the finish line.