iOS porting
Turn this teardown into a decision-ready prompt for ChatGPT, Claude, or your agent.
If you only have a few minutes to spare, here’s what investors, operators, and founders should know about Apportable (W11).
Apportable translated iOS applications into native Android builds. Founded in 2011 by Collin Jackson and Ian Fischer, it let game studios reuse Objective-C and C++ rather than fund a separate Java port. Games such as Osmos showed that the compiler could produce a commercial Android release.[1]
VentureBeat reported that Google quietly acquired the team in March 2015 as an acqui-hire. The result was less a product exit than a talent and technology absorption: the founders joined Google, not every employee was retained, and the standalone platform disappeared.[2]
Collin Jackson had worked as a Cooliris consultant and Ian Fischer as a Webroot software engineer before they founded Apportable in 2011. Their premise matched a visible mobile-market asymmetry. Successful iOS applications often reached Android late because the platforms used different languages, frameworks, interface conventions, and device assumptions.[2]
Apportable attacked the code problem directly. Instead of asking a studio to rebuild an iPhone game in Java, its toolchain read the Xcode project, compiled Objective-C and C++ for Android, and translated enough native API behavior to produce an APK. YC selected the company for Winter 2011.
The public record contains no accessible founder interview explaining how Jackson and Fischer met or the exact incident that produced the idea. It also contains no two verified founder quotations. The closest detailed operating account comes from a customer. Eddy Boxerman of Hemispherical Games wrote that the company had used Apportable to bring Osmos to Android and answered “Great!” when developers asked about the experience.[1]
Investors backed the compiler thesis. Google Ventures led a $2.4 million round in July 2013, with Salesforce.com, Morado Ventures, and others participating.[3] A further $5 million financing in February 2014 reportedly brought total capital to $7.4 million.[4]
Apportable's main product cross-compiled an iOS codebase into native Android machine code. The tool extracted project settings, compiled Objective-C and C++, mapped native API calls, and emitted an APK that could ship through Google Play. Developers kept one core codebase while handling the unavoidable platform differences around controls, services, packaging, and testing.
The approach was unusually valuable for games. Game logic and rendering often lived in C or C++, and the visual experience did not need to mimic every native phone control. Hemispherical Games said its Osmos port used Apportable's compiler and reached Android with the quality expected from the iOS release.[1]
The company broadened the stack with SpriteBuilder, an open-source game-development suite around Cocos2d and related projects, and Tengu, formerly Apportable Indie, for sharing Swift and Objective-C while retaining native interfaces.[2] This split reflected the central product tension. A compiler could reuse code, but a durable cross-platform environment also needed libraries, editor tooling, runtime compatibility, debugging, and maintenance as Apple and Google changed their platforms.
Apportable targeted iOS-first developers, especially small and mid-sized game studios with proven titles but no Android team. The buyer already had working code and wanted incremental Android revenue without funding a second implementation.
No reliable customer count, compiled-app count, or revenue figure was located. The opportunity grew with Android adoption, but raw device share overstated the obtainable market. A port still needed testing across devices, Android-specific services, store work, support, and enough expected sales to justify the effort.
Read the complete post-mortem, the rebuild playbook, and the exact reasons Apportable is still worth studying now.