Develop Reference

Develop Android App from iOS Code

I'm supposed to port an iOS app to Android. I have the iOS project in front of me but i do not have XCode to open it.
So I have some questions:
Is there a way to open the project on Windows? I DON'T need to build it or anything, I just want to see the correct file structure (because the file structure isn't the same in the project and on the hard disk).
How do you recommend to handle updates? The iOS app will always be updated first and my job is to update the Android app afterwards, according to the new iOS code. Is there a good software where I can see all the changes made to the iOS project? Or is this a stupid idea?
If you happen to know any good resources for android developers to understand the basics of iOS apps (not Objective C, more the structural aspects), let me know.
Thanks

In what format do you have it? You can use textedit or nano or vim or anything to open the individial .h and .m files.
Yes, have you heard of github? You can check the revisions. Additionally, if you know the high level feature overview of what you will be developing sometimes you may not need to see the other platforms code at all...
https://developer.apple.com/technologies/ios/cocoa-touch.html + google

Converting android app to ios

I have one simple question, that is can I convert my android .apk app into ios using any software? If yes, then please give me the name of that software. If any alternative method for that please guide me.

Google has a tool to convert the back-end, nothing for front-end though
http://www.xda-developers.com/google-tool-helps-developers-port-android-apps-to-ios/

There is a new startup that clains to convert the APK to IOS.
It's called MechDome.
The goal is very simple and attractable:
Reduce time to market by eliminating cross-platform development. Automatically convert your existing Android apps to high-fidelity, native iOS apps.

There is nothing out there that would convert apk into ios app. To my knowledge there is also nothing out there that could translate android code to IOS. The operation is simply too complex for a simple tool to manage.
However, there are tools you could use to make your apps (developed by you) work across multiple platforms. I'm sure there are more, but here are 2 of them I found in minutes (look into them if you are interested): Apportable, Phonegap (discontinued as of 2020/03. It was made obsolete by ProgressiveWebApps - PWA).
In past decade or so WebApps have been picking up for anything that is not too graphically demanding as they can run on anything that has a Web Browser. With this style devs pretty much open their website in a platform-specific executable and it looks like an app.
As for your existing app depending on complexity of your software you have to rewrite from a little to a lot of code to adapt to IOS APIs.
In short: No. Unless your app is build on multiplatform framework, converting means manual adaptation.

There is no known way to convert an android app to iOS. MechDome which is a Developer Tool that Automatically Converts Android Apps into iOS Apps seems to have stopped as of 30/03/2021. link
However if it is your plan to launch android and iOS app from one coding project, use Flutter which allows you to launch on both platforms simultaneously.
Flutter is Google’s mobile UI framework that provides a fast and expressive way for developers to build native apps on both iOS & Android, using a single codebase.
Get started here link

Is there an easy way to convert my apple apps into android apps?

I am an app developer and I use Xcode to develop all my apps, but seeing in today's market a lot of people now have non apple devices. So I guess I'm wondering if there's an easy way to take my code for my apple apps and convert it to android format so I can submit to both markets?
Also does Android have their own version of "iAds"?

I agree with Ben, I was in the same boat a few months ago since the only mobile development I had done was on Xcode and I was trying to find ways to convert my existing project but instead I opted to just build a new version using Android Studio. As Ben said, even if you convert the iOS app, some of the UI and design patterns are different when comparing an iOS App to an Android App (for example iOS uses tableviews and the cells can have disclosure indicators while on Android you would need to use a list view and not use a disclosure indicator since it goes against the design patterns for Android). I would suggest taking a look at the Android documentation, specifically the recommended design patterns as that will help give you an idea of how much you would need to change to make your code work for Android.
You can use your iOS app's code as a guide to your Android app since even though the language is different, the overall structure would be pretty close.

You could share some parts of your android application with iOs using j2objc which converts java to objective-c. However anything that relies on the android framework will not work (the same would apply if you found something to convert it obj-c to java).
You could use something like Phonegap or Appcelerator. You would write code in javascript, HTML, CSS and then it would create iOS and android applications for you.
However there is some things that cannot be done using these technologies. I know that to get around this appcelerator allows you to create native modules.
You will never get an app on both platforms for 'free' there is always a cost involved whether it requires more work or you loose some features on one or both the platforms.
You need to work out how complex your application is going to be and what parts could be separated into a shared module/library. You would also need to consider how you are going to visually represent your app, it would be easier to come up with some middle ground between android and iOS than it would be to create iOS visuals on android or vice-versa.
If your making a game take a look at unity

Blackberry Android runtime vs. NDK

I'm trying to repackage an Android app for Blackberry, as suggested here. The app has a native (NDK/JNI) library in it. When I try to build for the App World, I get several errors of the following kind:
uses-access-native:impact=5:com.myapp.MyClass
So on the face, it looks like NDK is not compatible with Blackberry, period. However, I could not find any official word on that. The list of known issues says that Google APIs are not supported, but not a word about NDK. What's the official line, please? Did anyone ever repackage an app with an NDK library?

There is a note here: https://bdsc.webapps.blackberry.com/android/apisupport
Under 'Unsupported Software Features'
•Apps that utilize native code bundled into their APK file

My understanding is that it's not possible to do this - as per the link paulkayuk posted, and also:
http://developer.blackberry.com/native/documentation/bb10/porting_from_android_ndk.html
However this story popped up in the news this morning:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/07/skype-blackberry-android/
which references:
https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA10251/is-skype-available-for-blackberry-devices?frompage=search&q=blackberry&fromSearchFirstPage=false
which says:
If you have a new BlackBerry smartphone powered by the BlackBerry 10
platform, you will soon be able to download and run Skype on these
devices. We are working closely with BlackBerry to ensure the Skype
for Android app runs great in the BlackBerry 10 environment.
My understanding is that Skype on Android has a big native library accessed via NDK, so you presume for this port to have happened they are in the process of opening up a way for Android apps running on blackberry to access native code. ie. sit tight and watch this space :-)

Does Titanium convert iPhone apps to Android?

I was talking with someone about iPhone and Android apps and they said there was something around called "Titanium" that could convert an iPhone app to an Android app and vice versa; being that they are written in different languages (amongst other nuances) I found this a little hard to believe.
I'm assuming he meant this
From what I can understand, you can't "convert" an existing app from one to the other, but if you build an iPhone app based off of this API THEN it can be converted to the other?
Am I right in my thinking?

You're almost right. In Titanium you build your app using JavaScript (and HTML/CSS for webviews - sort of webpages) and it converts it to native code for both platforms - Obj C for iOS and Java for Android. However you still need to write a significant amount of platform specific code because not everything will work right out of the box on both platforms. And yes - you can not convert existing apps using Titanium to anything.

The word "convert" is inaccurate in describing what Titanium Mobile does. You don't "build an iPhone app based off of this API", you write your app using the Ti API (which is based in Javascript/HTML/CSS), and when you compile that app you end up with both a native iOS app package and a native Android app package.