Developing for the iPhone (In the beginning).

In my last blog post I mentioned that I had recently purchased an iPhone and loved it so much that I decided to switch from developing software for Windows to writing applications for iPhone. Linking that idea to my blog is the thought that I cant be the first developer in the world thats decided to change development platforms and therefore I have decided I would try and capture that journey so if others want to follow I will have left a trail of bread crumbs.

So where do you start when you want to develop for iPhone, well Apple of course? Apple have a development web site that is free to sign up for and loaded with good information, videos, sample code and white papers on how to develop for Mac and now iPhone. The Apple Development Connection(ADC) is to Apple what MSDN is to Microsoft.

The first thing one needs to know when they want to write software is, what languages are available and what limitations and strengths do particular languages offer. The ADC will highlight those options and more, which lead me to the decision that I would take up Object-C which is the native Mac OS X and iPhone language. That and the fact that its a C based language which is what I prefer was a no brainer.

Now I was set on a language the very next thought was “What development tools and environment is available and how much does it cost?”. Here is where it departs from Microsoft development in that Xcode is the Apple development environment and its completely free. Its not a scaled down or reduced version of the core development environment, IT IS the development environment and is in fact the same set of tools Apple themselves use to develop Mac OS and iPhone OS.

Unlike Microsoft who want you to give up your first born to purchase Visual Studio, which to be fair they do offer free cut down versions of Visual Studio that allow a new developer to get started. However like Microsoft Office which is reaching the end of the road as the cash cow of old for Microsoft, I think Visual Studio costs so much, that it will eventually reach the end of the road as well. Due to the fact that Windows as an OS is becoming more irrelevant as time moves forward and therefore the applications and services will be the revenue drivers going forward. Getting developers on your platform will only become more important as the services and applications available spawn from them. No developers developing on your platform then the adoption is not going to be there.

I think the iPhone and the great Apple developer tools in XCode and all its supporting apps, with the iPhone SDK creates a compelling argument to draw the none geek user to the device and network delivered applications. The opportunity for a smart developer or developers to come up with a killer application and business model centered around the iPhone became a lot more tangible.