iOS App Development Portable Genius

Introducing iOS and the Apple Documentation

At first sight, the iOS documentation appears to be an intimidating jumble of documents. If you’re new to app development, the introductory page shown in Figure 2.14 includes an impressive collection of words you won’t have encountered before. You may feel that it’s not obvious where to start or how to find what you need to know.

Before looking at the documentation in detail, let’s look at iOS from a developer’s point of view. As a developer, you can think of iOS as a kit of ready-made parts that you can include in your apps. It’s up to you to select the parts to use and to “wire” them together with code so they exchange information with each other and with iOS itself.

2.14 Apple’s documentation includes all the details developers need to create iOS apps.

A few of the standard parts are obligatory. One obligatory part contains the app itself, and it must be included before other parts work.

A slightly larger number of parts aren’t obligatory, but they’re used in almost every app. For example, most apps include a part called a view controller that manages the visible elements in the app and responds to user actions. Many apps also include arrays and dictionaries that organize information used by the app.

Most parts are optional. For example, iOS includes a complete kit of parts for displaying and using maps. If your app doesn’t use a map, ...