Can VUO be used to make, or be used in, an actual app for iPhone?
I see lots of tools for prototyping, but not anything where you can use them as apps, or in apps.
ps. I’m not saying for everything, but just for fancy UI stuff.
If you have example of a fancy UI component made in Vuo and how it was used in an iPhone app, that would be great.
No, Vuo is not yet able to make compositions that run on iPhone or iPad.
This is something we intend to do in the future, but haven’t figured out exactly when. There’s a feature request for it open for voting: Deploy compositions as iOS apps. (There’s also a feature request for prototyping: View and interact with compositions on an iOS device connected via wifi/USB.)
Right now, Vuo can export apps that run on Mac OS X. Also, a Vuo composition (e.g. fancy UI widget) can be embedded inside a Mac app.
To be able to export apps or widgets to iOS, we’ll have to make some changes to Vuo’s compiler and nodes. For the compiler: When you hit the Run button in Vuo Editor, the composition gets compiled (translated) to the language of your Mac’s processor. Since iOS devices have different processors, Vuo’s compiler would have to translate to a different language. For the nodes: Vuo’s nodes for display and user interaction so far have focused on the desktop as opposed to mobile devices. They can take mouse input and render to a Mac OS window, but they can’t yet take tap input and render to an iOS view. So that’s another problem of translation to be solved: adding new nodes and/or enabling existing nodes to support iOS.
The only Vuo-like tools I know of that can make stuff to run on iOS are Max/MSP+Gen and Pure Data. I haven’t used these myself. From reading this and this, I gather that they don’t export entire iOS apps, but can give you pieces that you can use inside an Xcode project. If you google for “app builder ios”, there are a ton of tools for making iOS apps. I haven’t tried any of these, so I don’t know if any would be suitable for making fancy UI components.