Building Your First iPhone App
You have an idea that will lead to fame and fortune on the iTunes App Store. You decide to write an iPhone app. The first and most important task is for you to become comfortable with the tools used to build your products. A Chinese proverb says, “the journey is the reward,” and this chapter is all about the journey. In the upcoming pages, you’ll experience the entire application development process, start to finish. You’ll learn how to set up the software you need, and try your hand at building an app.
But what app? If you do a quick search of the App Store, you’ll find no shortage of flashlights. For many aspiring developers, this simple application is a rite of passage, so now’s your chance to join this illustrious crowd. Once you see how easy it is to create your own app, you’ll wonder why people pay 99¢ for them on iTunes!
Getting the Tools
You can’t build anything, including an iPhone app, without tools. Luckily, you can find everything you need on your Mac, or download it for free. Specifically, you need to download and install Xcode development software and the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) on your Mac. (And if you don’t have a Mac, see the box on page 2.)
Both the Mac and iPhone benefit from a rich set of technologies that have stood the test of time. The iPhone SDK is built upon the infrastructure created by NeXT in the 1980s. This company, founded by Steve Jobs, created a revolutionary object-oriented operating system called NeXTSTEP. ...
