Hey - Blake from Layer here. We're big fans of JSQMessagesViewController and a number of our early access developers built their UIs on top of it. The biggest difference between Atlas and JSQMessagesViewController at the moment is that Atlas is deeply integrated with the messaging services of Layer and the programming model exposed by LayerKit, while JSQMessagesViewController is backend agnostic. This translates directly into the amount of code that you need to write in order to get your UI and messaging fully wired. It's a trade-off -- with Atlas you write less code and have less things to coordinate within your UI, but you pick up a direct dependency on Layer. At this point there's a fair bit of overlap in functionality between Atlas and JSQMessagesViewController, but keep in mind that this is our 1.0 release. Looking a few months down the line, we'll be bringing a number of additional components and services online that will make the distinctions more apparent. We're also in the process of developing Atlas for Android and Web, which will share a similar API aesthetic. Hope this is helpful and you can find the time to give Atlas a whirl!
blakewatters|11 years ago