Chapter 1Building a Real-World iOS App: Bands
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:
- A brief history of the iPhone SDK
- An introduction to the Bands app
- How to scope an app and define features
The idea of mobile computing has been around since the late 1970s. The first real mobile computer was the Psion Organiser, which was released in 1984, followed by the Psion Organiser II in 1986. For the most part these early mobile computers looked like calculators. Mobile computing began to pick up speed in the 1990s. That was when the Personal Digital Assistant, or PDA, began to catch on. The phrase Personal Digital Assistant was first used by the CEO of Apple, but not the one you may be thinking of. John Sculley became the CEO of Apple after Steve Jobs was forced out. He made the remark while talking about the Apple Newton, Apple’s first attempt at mobile computing. By most accounts it was not a success and was discontinued in 1998.
Through the rest of the 1990s and early 2000s, mobile computing continued to evolve. There were many popular PDAs such as the Palm Pilot as well as devices running Windows Mobile. They had their users, but they didn’t have an excited developer base.
Smartphones were also coming into their own during this time. They combined the features of a PDA with the capability to make phone calls. Palm and Windows Mobile along with the BlackBerry dominated these early days. That changed in 2007 when Apple announced the iPhone.
The original iPhone went on sale June 2007. ...
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