IPhone / IPad Development

                                  

    Creating IPhone and IPad applications is a fast growing field and this short primer will provide some details on  getting started.  Naturally, one of the obvious differences between IPhone and IPad apps is that IPad applications may need a larger screen resolution and this must be taken into account during development.  iPhone OS apps are mostly officially licensed and sold from the Apple Store although hacks are available to install unauthorized applications.

Figure:  iPhone OS technology layers

        IPhone, IPod Touch and Ipad applications run on the IPhone OS and can be developed using IPhone SDK and Objective-C, C/C++ can also be used - the SDK contains Xcode templates to help beginners get started.  Most User apps use the Foundation and UIKit frameworks at the top level Cocoa touch layer of the IPhone OS (above).  Other tecnology layers in the IPhone OS include the Media and lower level Core OS and Core services and require some more advanced programming.

Tips for Getting Started

• Visit the IPhone OS Developer site
• View the related iPhone iPad Programming guides
• Download the IPhone SDK
• Prepare your Objective-C or C/C++ programming environment.
• Make some simple apps with the Xcode templates.
• Move on the advanced tutorials.