Chapter 1. Getting Started with the iPhone SDK
If you’re new to the Macintosh world, you might be surprised to find that applications don’t come in the form of .exe files. The excellent design for which Apple is known in its hardware and graphics extends to its software architecture as well, and includes the way applications are laid out in the file system. The same strategy used in Apple desktop systems has been carried over into the iPhone.
Apple has adopted the practice of creating modular, self-contained applications with their own internal file resources. As a result, installing an application is as easy as simply dragging it into your applications folder; deleting it as easy as dragging it into the trash. In this chapter, we’ll look at the structure of iPhone applications. You’ll also get up and running with the iPhone SDK, explore the Apple IDE known as Xcode, and learn how to install applications on your iPhone. Finally, we’ll introduce you to the Objective-C language and enough of its idiosyncrasies to make an easy transition from C or C++.
Anatomy of an Application
Apple came up with an elegant way to contain applications in their operating system. As OS X is a Unix-based platform, Apple wanted to make it adhere to basic Unix file conventions, and so the resource forks of olde were no longer sufficient (or efficient, for that matter). The challenge was to design a structure that would allow an application to remain self-contained while surviving on a file system that didn’t ...
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