Before the cloud

If this book were written a year ago the content would be very different, and the difference is almost solely down to the emergence of cloud-based solutions. The chapters would still be the same; you would still be looking for beautiful interfaces (Chapter 8, Creating Beautiful Interfaces), functioning apps using the gadgets of the phone (Chapter 10, Sending Notifications), and spreading the word using social media (Chapter 9, Spread the Word with Social Media), but the solutions presented would be different. Back then if you wanted to use social media you would integrate a library, and similarly if you wanted to register for push notifications, you would plug in another interface. Not anymore. Since the introduction of cloud-based services, you can handle all of these requirements and more with one interface. A number of one-stop-shop solutions have come to the market with competitive rates for cloud solutions. Appcelerator have heavily promoted their own cloud offering...