Programmer Books

Learning iOS Development [PDF]

Learning iOS Development

Preface

“Mobile is the future” is a phrase you hear more and more these days. And when it comes to mobile, nobody has more user-friendly devices than Apple.

You want to add iOS development to your set of skills, but where do you begin? Which resources do you need and choose? It depends on how you learn. This book is hands-on. The goal is to get you doing things as soon as possible. You start with small things at first and then build on what you already know.

The result is a book that gives you the skills you need to write an app in an easily digestible format. You can go as fast or slow as you wish. And once you are creating apps, you can turn back to specific parts of the book for a refresher. So find a comfortable place, have your Mac and your iOS handheld nearby, and dig in! What You’ll Need You will need a few things before you go any further in learning iOS development:

A modern Mac running the current or previous generation of Mac OS— As of the writing of this book, Mac OS X Mountain Lion (v. 10.8) is the latest version with Mavericks just around the corner (not used for this book). Before Mountain Lion was Mac OS X Lion (v. 10.7). Ideally, you want to use the latest OS, have at least 8GB of RAM, and lots of disk space.

An iOS device— Although Xcode includes a desktop simulator for developing apps, you will need to run your app on an actual device to make sure it works correctly. It is helpful to have the same kinds of units your target customers are likely to use to make sure your app works well on all of them.

An Internet connection— You will need to be able to download development resources. At some point, you might also want to test wireless app functionality. And of course, you will want to ship your app.

Familiarity with Objective-C—You create native applications for iOS by using Objective-C. The language is based on ANSI C, with object-oriented extensions, which means you also need to know a bit of C. If you have programmed with Java or C++ and are familiar with C, you’ll find that moving to Objective-C is easy. There is a short intro to Objective-C in Chapter 2, “Objective-C Boot Camp,” but a broader understanding will help you learn more quickly. You also need Xcode, the development tool, and some sort of Apple developer account, as discussed in Chapter 1, “Hello, iOS SDK.”


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