Need to get up to speed on mobile apps

[Durbs]

You need Snow Leopard to run the latest version of the Developer Tools and the iOS 4/iOS 3.2 SDKs (which cover iPhone and iPad). Signing up to the iPhone Developer Program (which also covers iPad development) is £59, and if you need to upgrade a Mac from an older OS then Snow Leopard is £25.

Oh, and it has to be an Intel Mac - no PowerPC support any more.

I just got one of the last-gen 1.86 Core2 Mini's and then, as Nick says, its only a few quid to buy the Snow Leopard upgrade from Amazon and it runs XCode lovely.

As for the dev program fee, AFAIK you only need to pay this when you are ready to test on real hardware and release to the app store.

I'm half way through my first app and must say i've not found it easy at all being a .NET developer, its a VERY different coding environment and as my apps main function is to talk to web services am struggling with its seemingly poor support for these compared to .NET (unless i'm missing something which is probably the case!).

[eek]

I just got one of the last-gen 1.86 Core2 Mini's and then, as Nick says, its only a few quid to buy the Snow Leopard upgrade from Amazon and it runs XCode lovely.

As for the dev program fee, AFAIK you only need to pay this when you are ready to test on real hardware and release to the app store.

I'm half way through my first app and must say i've not found it easy at all being a .NET developer, its a VERY different coding environment and as my apps main function is to talk to web services am struggling with its seemingly poor support for these compared to .NET (unless i'm missing something which is probably the case!).

Use Appcelerator. Never had a problem talking to webservices with it.

Mind you I'm now suffering with websockets on the iphone side of things. Code works in ios 3 not in ios 4.

[TimberWolf]

What books did you guys buy to get to grips with programming for the iPhone?

[Durbs]

Use Appcelerator. Never had a problem talking to webservices with it.

Mind you I'm now suffering with websockets on the iphone side of things. Code works in ios 3 not in ios 4.

Is that Appcelerator think likely to fall foul of the Apple TOC changes to prohibit 3rd party dev environments i.e. Flash (not familiar with it but assume it falls within that sort of category?).

I'd started out using MonoTouch and that was good as i could use the .NET webservice classes which are really quick and simple to code against but then scrapped that in case they started banning MonoTouch developed apps.

Book-wise, i use "Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK" published by Apress and its pretty good.

[eek]

Is that Appcelerator think likely to fall foul of the Apple TOC changes to prohibit 3rd party dev environments i.e. Flash (not familiar with it but assume it falls within that sort of category?).

I'd started out using MonoTouch and that was good as i could use the .NET webservice classes which are really quick and simple to code against but then scrapped that in case they started banning MonoTouch developed apps.

Book-wise, i use "Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK" published by Apress and its pretty good.

You're out of date on the rules apple seem to be applying. The current rules seem to be if the tool directly uses Apple's api's its fine if not you'll have a problem. Javascript is explicitly allowed so Appcelarator doesn't seem to have any problems.

Have MonoTouch apps been barred as I have seen no evidence that appcelerator or unity3d ones have been?

[xoggoth]

Cheers.

Anyone any thoughts on Android? It appears it has outsold Iphone in the US and growing fast. Can develop on PC with free SDK and Google never seems to be a bad bet commercially. Have not looked very far into this yet but dev setup up looks to have much clearer guidance than the Nokia nightmare.

Or for Iphone, maybe just webpages using Safari. No Flash but I never use it anyway, jscript does most of any animation I want. Can do Safari extensions apparently, free dev kit.

[eek]

Cheers.

Anyone any thoughts on Android?

I don't trust those figures much. Android is growing fast but its not that big.

Don't forget that targeting iphones also covers ipod touchs which may be your real market at the moment.

either way Appcelerator does allow you to target everything. If you know Javascript its a tool I would at least look at.

[NickFitz]

What books did you guys buy to get to grips with programming for the iPhone?

• Head First iPhone Development by Pilone and Pilone (O'Reilly);
• iPhone SDK Development by Dudney and Adamson (Pragmatic Bookshelf);
• Beginning iPhone 3 Development by Mark and LeMarche (APress);
• Programming in Objective-C 2.0 2nd Edition by Kochan (Addison Wesley);

and a load of blogs, and Apple's own documentation, which is generally excellent - if anything, it's too detailed when you're just getting to grips with something, which is where those books come in. I'll tend to either follow one of the examples from a book or draw on the various books to create something of my own, then once I've got something working and understand why and how it works, I'll re-review the Apple guides to pick up on any additional aspects that may have been glossed over or omitted for clarity in the books.

Apple's sample code apps are also worth looking at, although they shouldn't necessarily be seen as code you can just cut & paste into your own apps, even though that's permitted. Very often their classes will be demonstrating how you can do the same thing using x different approaches, and obviously you're better off choosing the single approach that's appropriate for your app and only using that.

[TimberWolf]

• Head First iPhone Development by Pilone and Pilone (O'Reilly);
• iPhone SDK Development by Dudney and Adamson (Pragmatic Bookshelf);
• Beginning iPhone 3 Development by Mark and LeMarche (APress);
• Programming in Objective-C 2.0 2nd Edition by Kochan (Addison Wesley);

and a load of blogs, and Apple's own documentation, which is generally excellent - if anything, it's too detailed when you're just getting to grips with something, which is where those books come in. I'll tend to either follow one of the examples from a book or draw on the various books to create something of my own, then once I've got something working and understand why and how it works, I'll re-review the Apple guides to pick up on any additional aspects that may have been glossed over or omitted for clarity in the books.

Apple's sample code apps are also worth looking at, although they shouldn't necessarily be seen as code you can just cut & paste into your own apps, even though that's permitted. Very often their classes will be demonstrating how you can do the same thing using x different approaches, and obviously you're better off choosing the single approach that's appropriate for your app and only using that.

Cheers. Have a rep point on tic for that and other the info. The forum software won't let me rep people I've repped before yet.

[TimberWolf]

Cheers.

Anyone any thoughts on Android? It appears it has outsold Iphone in the US and growing fast. Can develop on PC with free SDK and Google never seems to be a bad bet commercially. Have not looked very far into this yet but dev setup up looks to have much clearer guidance than the Nokia nightmare.

Or for Iphone, maybe just webpages using Safari. No Flash but I never use it anyway, jscript does most of any animation I want. Can do Safari extensions apparently, free dev kit.

I didn't realise Research in Motion had the biggest market share. It'll be interesting to see what the share is when the dust settles after the iPad and iPhone4 sales figures are in.
NPD: Google Android Smartphones Outselling Apple iPhones | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD
UPDATE 2-Google beats Microsoft in smartphones -Gartner | Reuters