Write your own iPhone apps for fun and profit

David M Williams
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 18:25

Opinion and Analysis

The iPhone SDK is totally self-contained. You don’t need any programming language tools already installed or available. The SDK installer bundles in Xcode, which is Apple’s development platform for the Macintosh. Xcode is actually included on the MacOS disc itself, but I suppose Apple include it with the SDK to make a seamless disk-swapping-free installation, as well as make the latest version available.

The installation is effortless and trouble-free. Just click through the Continue prompts and accept the license terms if you agree to them. You will be asked which components you’d like to install; you can actually deselect the iPhone SDK here if you wish but that would be somewhat counter-productive. The description advises that this option “provides tools, header files, libraries, and documentation for iPhone OS application development.” It advises it will install itself within the Platforms folder within the Developer folder, and re-affirms that it requires an Intel-based Mac running MacOS X 10.5.3 or higher. Continue with the installation; you can use the default settings here or turn on the two de-selected items if you so desire. As the installation progresses you’ll see the package names as they are written to disk. You may recognise GCC as it flashes on screen.

Once complete, you can start your coding exploits by double-clicking on your boot hard drive icon on the desktop. You’ll see your familiar folders like Applications, and also a possibly new folder called Developer. Double-click the Developer folder to open it, then also open the Applications subfolder underneath. Locate the executable program called Xcode; that’s what you’ll use to write iPhone apps. Save yourself some trouble by clicking it once to select, then press the Finder File/Make Alias menu. Drag the newly created alias (aka shortcut) to the desktop.

Double-click Xcode whenever you’re ready. You’ll be greeted with a “Welcome to Xcode” window offering links to tutorials and help. Just close this for now, it will show again next time you start Xcode so you won’t miss out.

From the Xcode menu click File/New Project. A new window will display which may not be immediately clear. On the left hand pane you can choose the type of project you want to create. These are divided into two broad categories, namely iPhone OS and MacOS X. You can’t click on these category headings themselves. You’ll see many items listed under MacOS X, like Applications, Command Line Utilities, Java apps and so on. Each of these provides a different suite of relevant projects you can make. Under iPhone OS you just have one choice, namely Applications. Click the word Applications here and the right hand pane fills with the types of iPhone application projects you can construct. These are all pretty much the same project but with some starting points built-in to help you start off in a manner consistent with the official suite of iPhone apps that come on the handheld itself.

So, let’s do it! Let’s make our own app and then run it in the emulator.

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