Developing Iphone Apps

terabyte · Mar 30, 2009

I'm an Iphone developer wannabe.

Last month, I purchased my very first macbook, a 13' 2.0ghz alum unibody specifically for programming in Xcode.

I've been a C#/VB .NET developer for almost 5 years and I'm now trying to get out of my comfort zone by first learning Objective-C so that I can develop applications for the Iphone... and fingers-crossed, earn some moolah from the app store along the way

For the past few weeks, I've been reading up on a couple of Apress books related to Objective-C and Iphone Development (Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK & Learn C on the Mac). So far, I've created my first Iphone application, a simple Hello World app, and it felt really good to see my first app run in the Iphone simulator. I had a lot of fun tinkering with the Interface Builder as I learn how to implement the various user interfaces for the Iphone. I know I have a long way to go but I can't wait for the day when I'm finally a bonafide Iphone developer with an application or two uploaded in the App Store.

But for now, I still need to keep my day job as . NET developer while I learn Iphone development on the side.

Any fellow Iphone developers here in philmug? I'm interested to hear how you got your start as Iphone developer and what you had to go through before you got your first application in the App Store.

cyberathlete · Mar 30, 2009

still saving up for a macbook..

java developer for 5yrs and 4yrs of them on j2me.. also did some j2me games so game dev concepts are not that new to me.. although my C is pathetically rusty.. also reading up on iphone dev and hoping i can get a mb or mbp when iphone 3.0 comes out..

cheers and goodluck to all the devs out there.

piedad · Mar 30, 2009

Check out the iPhone Developers Forum Philippines: ifoneph.com.
We are only a few, though. Also, set your expectations right about earning money from the iPhone Appstore - it aint that easy.

Shinrai · Mar 30, 2009

I'm a true blue newb in this but studying. i think my only programming was in school several years ago and a few meddling with php which i find similar.

Been reading this book Programming in Objective-C 2.0 2nd Ed. Very good for programming toddlers like me.

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-O...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238417399&sr=1-1

Still saving up 99USD to enter the program after I learn a bit more and get my chops.

xtiand · Mar 31, 2009

Can you show some samples?

mgmJUAN · Mar 31, 2009

@terabyte - where were you able to purchase the "Beginning iPhone Development" by Dave Mark book? I'm thinking about buying it from Amazon but I'm not sure as to how much the shipping cost will be.

terabyte · Mar 31, 2009

@mgmJuan
My cousin, who's in the states, purchased it from Amazon and just brought the book when he went here for vacation.

mgmJUAN · Mar 31, 2009

@terabyte:

I see. Just saw from Amazon that the shipping alone would cost me almost $20! And I think there's no alternative for it here. It's not being sold in NBS nor Powerbooks. Tsk tsk tsk.

piedad · Mar 31, 2009

You can try this out: http://www.pragprog.com/titles/amiphd/iphone-sdk-development
There is a version as PDF download.

Shinrai · Mar 31, 2009

What I do is a work around: buy Amazon GC and buy the Kindle for iPhone version if it has one. Got the book I mentioned that way.

Saw the ebook version here from the publisher:
http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430216263

n0fx · Apr 27, 2009

Stanford is having an iPhone developer course and is making all the content available online. You can follow along with the lectures:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10218654-233.html

terabyte · Apr 28, 2009

@n0fx
thanks for this! pretty nice of Stanford for providing these lectures for free.

terabyte · May 4, 2009

How to become an iPhone developer in 8 easy steps

1. Buy a Mac
You'll need one with an Intel-based processor, running the Leopard version of MacOS X. It doesn't have to be a top of the range model, though. Ethan Nicholas wrote iShoot on a banged-up old MacBook with 1GB of memory, knackered Wi-Fi and an Ethernet port that needed to be wiggled around to get it to work. The machine did however, afford him the maneuverability he needed: "most of my available development time involved holding a baby on the couch so my laptop was better suited to the task."Peter Scott, CTO at Connect2Media suggests Mac Minis, "they are more than powerful enough, small, easy on desk space when you already have PCs, three LCD monitors and a bunch of devices. They are also easy to move round, developers can take them home at the weekend if they want to continue to work."

2. Down the SDK (software development kit)
"Apple provides the free SDK for iPhone development from their Developer site," explains Stuart Varrall, Creative Director at Fluid Pixel. "This includes everything you need to get going, including the development environment Xcode, the iPhone Simulator for testing, performance analyzers, interface builders and the full documentation reference library."

3. Learn Objective C
This is the primary programming language for iPhone development. "It's an extension of C to include object-orientated principles," says Varrall. "It has scripting elements to it, so is easier to pick up than some languages and anyone with programming experience should be able to transfer their skills."
"Here's a short history of Objective C," offers Scott, "It was born out of Smalltalk which was a very early Object Oriented Programming language developed in Xerox PARC (where Window/Mouse computing really begun) and as a consequence was heavily adopted by Apple since as early as the Lisa. Smalltalk is very similar to C."
"Objective C was actually created by Next Computing owned by a certain Steven Jobs. When Jobs returned to Apple, he sold Next to the company and so Objective C became the main development environment for the Apple Mac. It is liked because in similar ways to Java, it deals with many of the problematic parts of programming…. It's nice, simple, hides the complexities of the hardware away from the developer and deals with (on the whole) the major cause of programming issues in C and C++ which is memory leaks."
All well and good, but what's the best way to actually pick up the language? "This really depends on where you are starting from," explains Scott. "If you are proficient in C/C++ or Objective C then the learning curve is in getting to grips with the APIs of the iPhone - the best place to start is the iPhone developer site. If you need to learn the programming languages themselves then the best place to start is a beginners book, actually the For Dummies series is very good for this. Also look at one of the many free tutorials online - Googleing 'objective C tutorial' throws up many places to get these.""The official Apple SDK has a wealth of detail along with examples of implementing various features," adds Varrall. "The Apple developer forum is rapidly growing to be the best place for specific questions or to get further clarification on something". He also mentions that iPhone supports Open GL ES which allows heavy optimization when working in 3D. So if you're thinking beyond a scrolling shooter or Tetirs clone, you'll need to look into that as well. Also, many professional studios write their games in C++ rather than Objective C, especially if they're planning to port the code onto other platforms such as N-Gage of Xbox Live Arcade.

4. Start writing something!
Forget theory; forget mastering Objective C with your first attempt. Just set yourself a project and start working. "I knew nothing about Objective C, Cocoa, or OpenGL prior to starting iShoot. In fact I barely even knew C," admits Ethan Nicholas. "I hadn't really touched it in a decade. I was a Java programmer for twelve years and it was quite an adjustment moving from a nice safe language like Java to one where a single misplaced byte can instantly crash your program."
Nicholas' first aim – and this is more or less standard procedure in the development community when presented with a new platform – was to get something to appear on the screen. "The first thing I worked on was the ground. I wanted to create a destructible landscape with falling dirt. Since I had no idea how to load textures at that point, and had just grasped the basics of Objective C and OpenGL, my dirt "texture" was just solid white. So the first thing I got onscreen was just a white rectangle that represented the ground. My wife was fortunately tolerant enough to understand my excitement at getting anything, even just a simple white rectangle, on the screen.
"By day two, my featureless white rectangle had morphed into a properly textured landscape and most of the dirt-destruction code was working. By the end of the first week I had a tank on the screen firing shots randomly, blowing holes in the ground. When I finally got it on to an actual phone and not just the simulator, I found that it only ran at one frame per second, so I had some considerable optimization work ahead of me."
If you can't face starting out on an original project, however, Varrall suggests a couple of modification tasks. "The SDK actually comes with a whole host of sample projects that cover most aspects of development. So the best place to start would be to take one of those and reverse engineer it and work out how it has been constructed. You can then build on these by adding new features and create your very own game very quickly."
5. Sign-up as an official developer
If you plan on releasing your masterpiece at any point, you'll need to sign up with the iPhone Developer Program. The Standard cost is $99, and it involves agreeing to Apple's terms and conditions, and signing and returning the contract. Even if you're nowhere near completing the project, you'll need to sign up in order to test your code on an actual iPhone rather than an onscreen emulator. Once you're on the Developer Program you're sent a certificate, which allows you to pair up with an iPhone device.
6. Prepare for a few weeks of work…
Depending on the time available, and your level of programming knowledge, developing an iPhone game can mean as little as a couple of months' work. "Including learning Objective C, Cocoa, and OpenGL, I spent exactly six weeks on iShoot," says Nicholas. "The hardest part was adjusting to an unsafe language... after twelve years working in Java, it's very difficult to get back into the proper mindset for debugging crashes. I had one memory corruption issue where it turned out that literally only a single byte was being corrupted, and it didn't cause the program to crash until several minutes after the corruption occurred. It took me three days to find that one…"
The professional studios I spoke to provided similar time frames, though they involved teams rather than lone coders. "KamiCrazy took three months to develop part-time, so could be done in a month full-time," reckons Varrall, who used three programmers, one artist and a producer. "The programming was focused on the most part into making the robust engine that drives the game and included the level editor, allowing the levels to implemented with ease. This means that this technology can be re-used and future titles could be turned around in less time. The art took three weeks in total to produce."7. Submit your app to Apple
Okay, this is the big one. "Finished games have to be submitted to the App Store using the same interface as music producers use," explains Varrall. "It's a straightforward process of zipping up the file, uploading it with a description, a large and small icon, and screenshots. If everything is alright then it usually takes Apple a week to approve the content and it finds itself in the store. If there is a problem, such as obvious bugs or Lite apps that are mentioned as demos or aren't fully featured, then this can take longer to review and ultimately reject. In this instance you can fix the issue and resubmit as many times as you like."
"Any iPhone developer will tell you that the provisioning and code signing is a pain, but once I had that sorted out the submission process was trivial," agrees Nicholas. "Fill in the fields, wait a few days, eagerly anticipate your first sales report... and then watch everybody completely ignore your app as you sell fewer than 20 copies a day. iShoot wasn't exactly a resounding success in the beginning…"
8. Adapt, market and survive!
The work doesn't finish once you've made it onto App Store. As it's unlikely you'll have your own in-house QA department, some bugs and design issues may only surface when hundreds of gamers get their hands on the code. Consequently, it may be necessary to submit several alterations.
And as Nicholas mentioned, don't expect an immediate response to the release – App Store is an open market, featuring around 20,000 applications and 2,000 games. To get noticed, you'll need to build a buzz around the game: engage with the development and gaming communities, start a blog about the programming process, produce screenshots and mail out press releases to iPhone news sites like Pocket Gamer, Touch Arcade and FingerGaming. And, of course, utilise social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Bebo.
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jsg123 · May 4, 2009

Our company has an ongoing iPhone development event in partnership with Globe and Inquirer.net called iPhone AppStart in Ortigas: http://www.exist.com/iphone-appstart

terabyte · May 12, 2009

just sharing...

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Developers by John Powell

If you want to achieve your highest aspirations and overcome your greatest challenges, identify and apply the principle or natural law that governs the results you seek. How we apply a principle will vary greatly and will be determined by our unique strengths, talents, and creativity, but, ultimately, success in any endeavor is always derived from acting in harmony with principles to which the success is tied. This advice comes from Steven Covey in his best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you haven't read this book yet, you must. It's about effecting change from the inside out for success in both your personal and professional life by aligning your values with principles through practicing seven habits. Before reading this book, I felt like a passenger on a career freight-train. like something put in motion that I was powerless to control. What I was practicing in my career, my habits, was misaligned with my values, and my values were misaligned with unmovable principles. Although I was powerless over the career train, I came to realize I had the power to choose which train I was on. So here I am at a company that allows me to follow my passion: developing software.

The 7 Habits book is broadly focused, and it made me think about habits specific to my profession. What do those software developers that I consider effective (if not brilliant) have in common? What values drive their decisions and what habits do they practice that make them successful? Here are the seven habits that I think effective developers practice:

[Passionate]

The most brilliant people I've worked with are passionate about what they do. They aren't driven by money and fame and, I say this with tongue in cheek, if they didn't have families to feed, would develop software without compensation. If I had two candidates for a development position, I'd rather hire a less-experienced person with passion than a more experienced person without. If you aren't passionate about software development, find what you are passionate about and follow that path.

[Able to Learn, Unlearn and Re-learn]

I believe that learning is an extension of passion, and effective developers operate in a continuum of improvement and innovation. They learn from their and others' mistakes and don't apply old solutions to new problems just because they worked before. Effective developers follow technology, but are careful to not let new approaches become solutions looking for a problem.

[Balance Principle and Practice]

Principle and practice are the Yin and Yang of software development. Effective developers don't design impractical solutions for the sake of principle and don't implement solutions without overarching values. They are willing to compromise based on time, cost, scope and quality constraints, but can also obtain compromise from others based on sound principles.

[Keep It Simple Software (KISS)]

Effective developers implement the simplest possible thing that will work while not painting themselves into a corner. They don't implement anything more than is needed right now, remaining mindful about what might be needed in the future. Effective developers know that the less moving parts there are, the less likely it will break and favor elegance and simplicity over convoluted cleverness.

[If You Don't Know the Answer, Know Someone Who Does]

Software developers aren't renown for their social prowess, but some of the most effective developers I know are excellent at networking. If you give a random 100 question test to a group of people, no one individual will score 100%, but collectively, with few exceptions, the group can answer all the questions correctly. There is so much technology, so many areas of speciality, you can only be an expert on one, maybe two subject areas. Effective developers know the limit of their knowledge, aren't afraid to admit when they don't know something and have many friends and colleagues in their network they can reach out to for help.

[Focus on Value]

Effective developers understand the forces driving the project, its stakeholders and their goals. Using this knowledge to guide their decision making, they focus on delivering tangible value to their customers over anything else. Effective developers prioritize work based on its value--the so called "bang for the buck," and avoid projects and features they don't believe in.

[Puts the Needs of the Many Before the Needs of the One]

I've seen small teams accomplish extraordinary things; it's amazing what "two guys and a laptop" can accomplish. Call it teamwork or synergy or whatever you like, when a group of people put common goals before their own, they converge like light into a laser beam. Contrast this with the arrogant, rogue and cowboy developers who go against team standards or design intents because "that's how I do it" or "that's how you should do it." The message they are really sending is "I am smarter than the team."

Conclusion

These seven habits give me something to work towards and keep me focused. I only had room for seven habits in this article, and I'm sure you can think of many more or define effective in your own way. The important thing is to take a value-driven approach to your software development career and do intentional things that move you towards your definition of success.
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notoryus · May 14, 2009

Are there any companies in Philippines which specializes on Mac or Iphone development?

Shinrai · May 15, 2009

notoryus said: ↑

Are there any companies in Philippines which specializes on Mac or Iphone development?
Click to expand...

There's MangoCode, maker of iManila. Though I read that the maker of the Gratitude List app outsourced work on the coding to India (where a lot of firms seem to have gotten to the app bandwagon) and just designed and did everything else.

wildflower · May 15, 2009

notoryus said: ↑

Are there any companies in Philippines which specializes on Mac or Iphone development?
Click to expand...

Hi! Our company, MRM Studios, Inc., already has several iPhone apps on the App Store - 2 cookbooks (Eat Rich Quick and Weekend Gourmet) and 4 comics (From the Dead, Realms Perilous, Passage of Love and Love is in the Bag). We're a mobile entertainment company, and we've branched to iPhone development.

filjedi · May 23, 2009

I just submitted my first app to Apple this week. I started learning Objective-C & Cocoa late last year, then went through iPhone & SQLite stuff this year. The closest I came to programming before that was HTML/CSS, not even JS, so it was a bit difficult at first. But, after a while, it became much easier. ü

den_lim · May 23, 2009

you can ask Powerbooks to order it. You have to pay in advance though

mgmJUAN said: ↑

@terabyte:

I see. Just saw from Amazon that the shipping alone would cost me almost $20! And I think there's no alternative for it here. It's not being sold in NBS nor Powerbooks. Tsk tsk tsk.
Click to expand...

Developing Iphone Apps

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