The iPhone SDK is Installed. Now What?

Once my system was all setup, and the iPhone SDK installation completed, the next logical step was to make the tools I needed to develop iPhone applications available from the dock. I added aliases for Xcode, Instruments, and Interface Builder from the Developer directory (or wherever you chose to install the SDK). If you're new to Mac, you can do this by dragging the icon for an application down to the dock in the position you would like for it to be.


Getting Started Videos

At this point, if you're anything like me, you're eager to crack open any one of the development tools and do something, anything. Well, not so fast. That didn't get me anywhere. First I took the high-road and spent a week reviewing the "Getting Started Videos" in the iPhone Dev Center. I would definitely recommend you do the same, as the videos are an absolutely necessary introduction to developing iPhone applications.

"Watch Apple experts discuss everything from getting started with the iPhone SDK, to using the development tools and technologies necessary to create applications for iPhone."

You will need to be logged in to view the content. It took me about 10 hours to watch and take thorough notes on all 11 videos. A very small portion of the material is redundant, but it's still worth watching all of them, in their entirety.


Getting Started Documents / Learning Objective-C

I got through the videos and I was pretty motivated to keep rocking, but not comfortable enough to open Xcode and take a crack at anything of my own just yet. The logical progression for me led to the next section of the iPhone Dev Center, which is "Getting Started Documents".

"Read about the tools, frameworks, development best-practices, and design methods for creating your iPhone application."

The first two documents (which are really just web pages) didn't introduce anything new, and I was a little disappointed. Then the third document 'Learning Objective-C: A Primer' finally shined some guiding light on the next step in the learning process. The third paragraph opens by saying:

"If you have never programmed using an object-oriented language before, you need to have at least a basic understanding of the associated concepts before proceeding."

As you learned in the introductory videos, Objective-C is the language you need to know to write Cocoa and Cocoa Touch applications, and I'm going to take a wild-guess that if you're reading this post you don't know Objective-C. Well, I don't either. I don't know any application programming language for that matter. I only know the basic principles regarding Object Oriented Programming. I needed a book on Objective-C; a damned good book.

I poured over Amazon for a few minutes, and after reading the customer reviews I finally settled on a book by Stephen G. Kochan titled Programming in Objective-C. I am pretty well into the book now (to be covered in my next post) and I would definitely recommend it if you're new to Objective-C and/or OOP. Click here to check out the book on Amazon.

Hopefully by now you have an idea of the basic work flow and iPhone SDK tools associated with developing iPhone applications. In my next post I will be covering my experiences with the book mentioned above, some general information on Objective-C, and finally a few useful Xcode tips that helped me along through my first few exercises in the book.