Developing iOS astronomy apps with Swift

iOS star gazing and astronomy apps are in high demand. The user experience with mobile phones and tablets allows you to “dive” into the universe, tour the night sky and travel outside the solar system.

The choice of technologies is a challenge for the development of astronomy and similar apps because of the large amount of data set contained. Consumers typically expect mobile apps to provide an immersive experience. Swift is a programming language for these apps that ensures easy code maintenance for updates or new, more complex features.

Swift is a new Apple’s open-source programming language

Swift dates back to 2010. Currently it is one of Apple’s newest programming technologies and is being rapidly adopted worldwide. This programming language combines the concepts of a vast number of proven technologies such as Objective-C, Haskell, Python, Ruby, and Rust, and it is easy to master.

Swift is being utilized with great success in the development of educational and training apps that deal with economics, analysis (social and mass media) and science and technology (astronomy, biochemistry, computing, and neuroscience). The demand for Swift is growing because it enables expressive code delivery, a fast development process and code error protection. In December 2015, Apple released Swift 2 to include more useful features.

Important benefits of using Swift:

• Convenience for coding and code maintenance (simple and clean code formatting)
• Fast code delivery and performance (highly efficient performance from a device without the loss of speed)
• Less code with better readability (this ensures the possibility of reusing the code for an update without hurting overall performance)
• Easy error-handling (Swift’s format structure lowers the number of app crashes)
• Interactive code testing (it is possible to test small portions of code before app development is fully completed to get testing results immediately)
• Open-source programming language (may be deployed on non-Apple operating systems, such as Linux)

Developing at Alternative Spaces with Swift  

As an early adopter of modern technologies, Alternative Spaces is always looking for ways to make app development faster and more flexible. Swift is a powerful and interactive tool that allows developers to reimagine product development and create iOS, OS X, watchOS, and tvOS apps.

This technology has been successfully utilized for the development of Solaris, a new iOS app that runs on Swift. It provides a mobile astronomy calendar that keeps you informed about nearing celestial events and other occurrences in the universe. The app keeps you up to date on hundreds of changes in the night sky and provides hints whether any additional equipment is required to view the event.

Solaris Sky Calendar provides the following features:

• Timely notifications about upcoming events, informing a user when an event is about to begin.
• Hundreds of unique celestial events are displayed in a schedule mode with hours listed and adjusted to a user’s geographical location.
• Events happening overhead with additional information and videos.
• Nighttime stargazing-friendly designs ensure easy navigation and a convenient user experience.
• Control over types of events allows viewers to select the events they would like to follow on their calendar.

iOS app development with Swift does not compromise an app’s performance and ensures an innovative approach to development of features. You can find out more about other iOS technologies at Alternative Spaces by visiting this page.

Content created by our partner, Onix-systems.