iPhone apps are gaining ground among business owners for several reasons for the last few decades. And out of all, one big reason is that the 2022 report shows the subscription income has grown up to $17.1 billion, where iOS was found accountable for 77% of that revenue.
That means if an entrepreneur considers developing a mobile app for their business, they are likely to pay attention to iOS apps first. But the question is, which programming language should you pick to make your dream business app, given that there are two native languages out there to develop mobile applications for the iOS operating system?
Should you be better off with Objective-C or should you choose Swift? To be frank, it makes sense to go with each depending on the reasons for your iOS app development. And today we are going to have a long discussion on this topic in this prose.
In short, we will throw light on Objective-C and Swift along with the advancement of iOS app development. So, let’s go further with:
Some statistics about iOS app development that you must grasp
- There are so many mobile programs out there and the Apple App Store has kept more than 1.96 million apps in its repository.
- Not less than 21% of millennials open a mobile program more than 50x per day. Additionally, 49% of folks open a mobile application more than 11 times each day.
- The app advertising industry mints a lot of money every year. In 2020 alone, global spending on mobile ads touched $276 billion in total.
- Individuals downloaded 8.3 billion mobile applications from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store registered 27.8 billion downloads. It shows clearly that iOS is better than Android as far as revenue generation is concerned.
- As per a survey carried out of late, more than 56% of mobile apps get removed from the phone within the first seven days of installation. Needless to say, there are a myriad of reasons behind getting so many apps uninstalled in such an early phase, such as – a complex registration process, security and privacy issues, annoying push notifications, and too much consumption of device storage.
Now if you are also planning to form an iPhone app that can generate a sizeable amount of revenue for your business, you must hire iOS app developers without reconsidering your decision.
What to know about Objective-C History?
Two intelligent persons named Brad Cox and Tom Love constructed the Objective-C language in the early 1980s at an establishment known as StepStone. This computer language was layered on top of C. And it means that extensions were added to C that made it feasible to create and manipulate objects.
What else a leading iOS app development agency further adds that NeXT Software licensed Objective-C in 1988 and built some libraries along with a development environment known as NEXTSTEP.
And in case you are uninitiated, we must tell you that the CEO of NeXT was Steve Jobs. Also, Apple Computer acquired the NeXT Software company in 1996, ensuring Steve returned as the CEO of the organization. What’s more? Their NEXTSTEP environment successfully became the foundation for the latest OS X platform.
Then, Apple assigned a new name to their development environment, i.e., Cocoa. This is a short tale of how Objective-C emerged to be the native programming language for Apple Development Tools, especially Xcode, according to an iOS app development corporation.
What to know about Swift History?
Chris Lattner commenced the creation of the Swift language at Apple in the year 2010. However, as far as outside developers go, they got their hands on the variant of this computer language on June 2, 2014, at the WWDC conference organized by Apple. Just so you know, Swift 1.0 was launched for Xcode 6.0 for the iOS operating system on 9th September 2014. Coming to Swift 2.0 and 3.0, they were unveiled in September 2015 and 2016 respectively.
Please remember, as per a renowned iOS app development corporation, the Swift language was originally the language of Apple. Yes, they were the proprietors of this language. But you will be surprised to know that Swift was made open source with version 2.2 launched in December 2015. Be mindful, Swift is developed specifically to work with:
- Cocoa
- Cocoa Touch
- Current Objective-C code written for Apple items
And the best news? This programming language tends to be safer and more compact than its other counterparts, such as Objective-C.
How did Swift and Objective-C evolve as per an iOS app development firm?
In case you don’t know, Objective-C is a compiler-based language which popped up in the 1980s. When it was acquired by Apple corporation, it became the chief language for making iOS and OSX-centric mobile applications. But when Swift touched the market in 2014, Objective-C became outdated to a certain extent because of its stable but long-running code.
Keep in mind, Swift is an open-source computer language that is widely popular for being immensely simple and clear, if the opinion of a premier iOS app development agency is to be believed.
And if you want, you can get a deep sense of both programming languages through the table shown below:
| Objective C | Swift |
| Slower | Faster |
| Mature | Young |
| Hard to learn | Easy to learn |
| Complicated syntax | Concise syntax |
| Limited functionality | Advanced functionality |
| Lower security level | Higher security level |
| Comprehensive documentation | Inadequate documentation |
| Support for previous version of OS | No support for previous version of OS |
Do not forget that Swift has a multitude of advantages over Objective-C due to its modern features. And those pros are:
- Generics and high-order functionalities that make the code reusable
- Type inference and options ensure the code is more secure
- Three-character-long keywords that help in making the syntax less complicated
Thus, if you hire iOS app developers for your iPhone app development, they will have to write less code when working with Swift compared to what they are required to do in Objective-C to accomplish the same results.
That’s not all! Swift can also minimize the number of crashes and upsurge the pace of development. Needless to say, why Swift is rising in popularity gradually across the globe and is included in the list of most-used programming languages in the world.
Wrapping-up
If you are able to get the hang of Swift and Objective-C completely through this piece of content and want to manufacture an iPhone app to cater to your targeted audience, hire iOS app developers from the finest IT corporation on the web.
Author Bio:- I am Michael Wilson, a mobile app developer with several years of experience in the field, and I’m working with one of the fastest growing Web app development Company, iWebServices. We are providing web app development services to convert your ideas into reality. We use the latest web development tools and technologies to create website that are fast, responsive, and user-friendly, and we are committed to delivering projects on time and within budget.
