The Hardware

The first thing you are going to need is an Intel Based Apple Computer running OSX 10.6.6 or better. Hackintosh computers have been know to allow you to develop on them however, they are not recommended as they require quite a bit of configuration. So, your best best is to develop on the real thing.

Besides that, who wants to use a Windowz box anyway?

The Account

To become a bonafide iOS developer, you must sign up for Apple’s iOS Developer program. It’s free until you are ready to submit your applications to the App Store. So, if you are just tinkering with iOS development and want to give it a shot, there is no risk.

Once you sign up, you will have access to the latest SDK, developer articles, sample code, documentation, XCode, and more! What are you waiting for? Sign Up Now!

Once you are ready to deploy your first application, you will need to upgrade your account for the low low price of $99. Also, you must pay this fee when you are ready to test on your own device. The free account limits you to using only the simulator for testing.

One cool thing this gets you (besides the ability to submit applications to the App Store) is you get to download all of the early iOS releases. As I write this post, I’m running iOS 5 beta on my device which isn’t slated to come out for another couple months.

The Software

In order to develop for the iOS platform, you must have the iOS SDK installed. Apple has nicely bundled their SDK up along with some other great tools such as XCode in order to make it super easy for you to install and get coding.

With the download your get quite a bit (from Apple’s site)

“This is the complete Xcode developer toolset for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It includes the Xcode IDE, iOS Simulator, and all required tools and frameworks for building Mac OS X and iOS apps.”

So even if you don’t have an iOS device (I didn’t when I first started developing AND BLOGGING on iCodeBlog), you can still develop and test your applications. One note on this however is, always test on a real device before submitting an application to the store. The simulator is a great tool to use while testing but is very misleading in terms of performance abd behavior.

Conclusion

Well, I hope that this post has found you well and you are now on your way to creating your first iPhone application. In the next tutorial in this series, I will be discussing the basics of XCode and setting up your iOS projects.

If you have any comments, questions, or things to add, feel free to post them in the comments section of this post.

Happy iCoding!

This post is part of an iOS development series called Back To Basics. You can keep up with this series through the table of contents, RSS feed, or Twitter.

As you know, a few things (to say the least) have changed since we first launched iCodeBlog in 2008 with the way we develop for the iOS platform. With that being said, many of my early tutorials are now quite dated with old screenshots, old (deprecated) code, and no knowledge of memory management whatsoever. I have also evolved both in development as well as writing. Since beginning, I have published many tutorials, written over 30 iOS applications, and even published a book.

A New iOS Development Series

All that being said, I am proud to announce my next tutorial series called Back To Basics. This will be an ongoing series where I will revisit some of the core iOS development concepts for n00bs and experienced developers alike. I will focus heavily on conventions, clean and clear coding, and really try to aid the reader in developing a solid foundation in iOS development.

Here is a rough roadmap of where we are going (obviously incomplete). This will serve as the table of contents as the articles are written.

• Getting Set Up For iOS Development
• Basics of Objective-C
• Hello iOS
• An Introduction To View Controllers
• Survey of Native Interface Components
  • Views
  • Table Views
  • Labels
  • Image Views
  • Pickers
  • Sliders
  • etc…
• Then we start the good stuff…). iOS Frameworks
• Image and Video
• Audio Recording and Playback
• Location
• Maps
• GameKit
• Game Center
• etc…

* Note that this list by no means is sorted or complete, it’s just to give you an idea of what I plan on working on going forward. At some point, I will have a formal method for submitting suggestions for tutorials to be considered.

But iCodeBlog Seems To Lack In The Post Frequency Department Lately

This is true, and I’m very sorry about that. Over the years iCodeBlog has gone through many transitions from being acquired by ELC Technologies to partnering with Velum Media. This has caused a lot of confusion and lack of motivation to create new content. We now have quite a few dedicated authors with some real incentives to write new content.

So make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed and stay tuned, because iCodeBlog is about to enter its best season yet.

Happy iCoding!

This post is part of an iOS development series called Back To Basics. You can keep up with this series through the table of contents, RSS feed, or Twitter.