Hello All. I thought it would be worth trying to revive this conversation about an iOS version of ODK Collect. Specifically, I'm interested in the following:
- From an Apple security standpoint, is an app like ODK even possible in an iOS environment? Since I'm a water resources engineer, I might be missing something here, but the way that ODK Collect pulls custom forms from an Aggregate (or other) server and submits finalized forms to the same seems like it circumnavigates the iOS security gateway of the App Store. Does this present a real challenge, or is an iOS ODK Collect version theoretically possible? The immediate context for this question is that I'm responding to a reviewer of a paper that we are publishing, and their question is "why does your app only work for Androids?!?"
- SmartPhones4Water (S4W) is a young researcher led citizen science project. In Nepal, where we got started in 2017, an Android only app wasn't (isn't) an issue. However, looking forward, we are starting work in the Netherlands this year and in the US next year. In these places iOS devices make up as much as 65 % of the market. Since we partner with young researchers and citizens to collect water data with their own phones, we are anticipating the Android only thing to be a big deal moving forward. We really love ODK as a robust, flexible, and easy to use environment, so we are not looking to jump ship, just hoping there are some other options out there!
Thanks!