iPhone Development Reloaded
Northern Ireland Technology and New Media industries are definitely thriving and recently a two day iPhone development course took place as part of the Trans Urban Arts Academy. Hosted by the Infurious team and supported by Digital Circle one DigMo! reader even flew in from London to attend.
Ross Chapman of Skysoclear tells his story of how he discovered the course and what he gained from the two day techfest.
I actually heard about the course on DigMo! (article here) I was initially disappointed however, finding that the course was in Belfast, and not in my local London! However, discovering that the course was a mere £25 sparked my interest, and with the nearest course in London coming to over £1000, it made sense to book flights and hotels. All in all, the whole trip cost me a fraction of what I could have paid in London.
Structure of course and what were the highlights?
The course started early on Saturday, with Philip Orr introducing the course and its objectives. What was important from the outset was that this wasn’t a programming or an Objective-C course – otherwise it would have spanned a week or two! No, this was an introduction into developing apps for the iPhone – just what I was after!
The room was crammed full of workstations equipped with the new iPhone 3.0 SDK and Philip walked us through our very first app – essentially a basic animation app. It served as a great introduction to Xcode and Interface Builder, whereby the user would touch a button and an image would animate – exciting stuff! I needed to learn more!
Our second app was a bit more complex and something we could really get stuck into – a music app, with buttons to tap to play sound effects and instrument selection made on the flipside. This session stretched on to the Sunday morning, using NSStrings, UIButtons, NSIntegers etc. All new to me, but great to see what we could achieve within such a short period of time.
All in all, Philip did an excellent job at showing us newbies what’s possible in Xcode and Interface Builder. It was also a great opportunity to meet other developers, see their creations (notably, the iSnort app! and talk about the possibilities with the iPhone platform.
Future Development
I’ve certainly learnt a lot so far, and plan on getting myself an Objective-C book and ploughing through that. I think the best course of action for me is to start work on an app. Whether it sees the light of day is another matter, but I think that learning through doing is one of the best ways to learn.
One thing I did learn though, is anything learnt in developing iPhone apps can be passed on to the Mac, so it means that anyone developing for the iPhone can also develop for the Mac! Brilliant!
Recommended Reading ?
I’d certainly recommend the course to anyone interested in developing iPhone apps. Every attendee had differing abilities (there were even a couple that were new to the Mac).
In terms of further reading, Big Nerd Ranch and the The Pragmatic Bookshelf came highly recommended, and there are plenty of Objective-C and developing for the iPhone books available from Amazon.
About Ross
Ross Chapman runs skysoclear, a digital design and video studio in London, specialising in web design and development, mobile web design and video production for the web. Follow Ross on Twitter.
