Certain Hurdles Need to be Overcome while undertaking iPhone Apps Development
Minimum hardware requirement for iPhone apps development is to have an Intel-based Mac running Leopard (OS X 10.5.3 or later). Any Mac released since 2006, laptop or desktop, should work. Though it is not required, but if you have a solid background of Cocoa development - Apple's Objective-C framework with the xCode development on the Mac platform, developing iPhone Apps should be a seamless and beautiful experience. When one sets out to become iPhone app developer, following are some hurdles that one has to face:
- How to use the Mac and Leopard: If you are a die-hard Windows user, and you are all set to become an iPhone app developer, you need to learn how to operate Mac/Leopard OS X world. If you are not well-versed with this operating system, developing iPhone apps can be quite a frustrating experience.
- How to download and install the iPhone App SDK: For a beginner, to download Apple's software development kit is a bit difficult as .dmg files which are disk images explanation are not that usual. They can be downloaded with the help of Mac 101.
- Orientation towards objective language or object oriented programming: Software development company or independent iPhone app developer needs to have a strong orientation towards Objective C and Cocoa Touch languages. The reason is the only language through which an iPhone application can be developed is Objective-C and Apple's proprietary variant of Objective-C framework is called Cocoa. The specific part of the framework used for iPhone apps development is called Cocoa Touch.
- Need to Do Crash Course in OOP, Objective C and Cocoa: Any beginner needs to spend much of his/her time learning the basics of object oriented programming and Objective-C, and Apple's proprietary Cocoa. It also is important to learn how to implement the language in the real application development. Having mastered this language makes a lot of difference in creating ravishing iPhone applications.
- Taking eternal helps in the form of books and other sources: Before 2008, when Apple lifted its NDA restrictions, every iPhone app developer was a world unto him. There was practically nothing to learn and to share about his/her views regarding iPhone apps development. Now, there are myriads of books, on line forums, blogs and other stuff coming up to provide the developers a platform to share their views regarding the development and learn from them as well.
- Deciphering Cocoa tutorials and other learning material: Almost all tutorials expect iPhone apps developers to be well versed with Cocoa, xCode and Interface Builder. Now, if you directly access various iPhone templates, sample code and tutorials, that is going to be very confusing. Therefore, you can just use them to lean how to build a Mac App using the software development kit tools before taking iPhone apps test. Normally, the tutorial has model, view and controller design structure that makes the iPhone apps developer absolutely in control.