Beginning iPad™ Application Development

INTRODUCTION

ON JANUARY 27, 2010, APPLE ANNOUNCED a magical and revolutionary product: the iPad. The iPad is a tablet computer that is based on the iPhone OS. What this means is that overnight, there were instantly more than 150,000 applications that can run on the iPad. Programming on the iPad is very similar to programming for the iPhone, with the addition of a few new features specifically designed for the iPad, including the following:

1. The introduction of the new Split View-based Application template and the new Popoverview, both of which are covered in Chapter 4.

2. The new Gesture Recognizers, covered in Chapter 12.

When I first started learning about iPhone and iPad development, I went through the same journey that most developers go through: Write a Hello World application, mess with Interface Builder, try to understand what the code is doing, and repeat that process. I was also overwhelmed by the concept of a View Controller and wondered why it was needed if I simply wanted to display a view. My background in developing for Windows Mobile and Android did not help much, and I had to start working with this concept from scratch.

This book was written to help jumpstart beginning iPad developers. It covers the various topics in such a manner that you will progressively learn without being overwhelmed by the details. I adopt the philosophy that the best way to learn is by doing, hence the numerous Try It Out sections in all the chapters, which first show you how to build something ...