iPad Application Development For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Introduction

There’s no doubt about it that the iPad was a game changer when it was introduced in 2010, and it still is today. iPad “clones” have come and gone as manufacturers have (unsuccessfully) tried to capitalize on the popularity of the iPad and its user-experience-centered functionality.

While a lot has changed since the first edition of this book — the introduction of the iPad 2 (and maybe soon the iPad 3), a broader and deeper Software Development Kit (SDK), and a new version of Xcode (4.3) — a lot has stayed the same. The very first iPad dramatically changed the publishing industry, people’s ideas about applications, and the mobile device industry, period — and those changes are still with us today.

With iOS 5, and — more importantly — with Xcode 4.3, the nuts and bolts of application development for the iPad has changed even more dramatically. Xcode 4.3 has added much more functionality to the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with which you develop iOS applications, especially when it comes to writing syntactically correct (and bug-free) code that’s better able to manage memory. Storyboards, one of my all-time favorite new features, allow you develop applications in a new way, with much less code and a better idea of what the flow of the application (and subsequent user experience) will be. Of course, for all this new functionality, you pay a price: more complexity. But after you get the hang of working with Xcode 4.3, writing applications becomes much easier ...