
Ask HN: What are some of the best Tutorials/Resources on How to Build an IPhone App? - mannylee1
What are some of the best Tutorials/Resources on How to Build an IPhone App?
======
mdakin
Assuming you already know a bit of C and that you like learning by tutorial
I'd recommend working through "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" 3rd Ed. by
Aaron Hillegass. You will get a good tutorial-based introduction to Objective
C, Xcode/Interface Builder and the design patterns used to build both OSX and
iPhone apps. (iPhone is not mentioned in the book at all but the general
patterns are the same.)

Be sure to understand the retain/release memory model as the garbage collector
is not avail. on the iPhone.

With the background you gain from Hillegass you'll find it very easy to pick
up the differences between OSX development (which uses AppKit) and the iPhone
development (which uses UIKit). There is a lot of good information found at
the iPhone Dev. Program's website which bridges the gap.

The tutorial approach is always a little frustrating to me personally as often
details are glossed over and the topics are not covered systematically but if
you supplement the tutorial with the information provided by Apple you can
resolve all the little annoyances as they come up.

Finally I recommend watching the videos Apple's prepared about iPhone
development.

Good luck and have fun!

~~~
watmough
I second this. The book is pretty relevant even to iPhone programming.

Coming mainly from a Windows background, personally, I've found the hardest
thing has been getting used to the OSX/iPhone memory management which can bite
in unpredictable ways when you get it wrong.

However, the iPhone SDK comes with many demos and working code which is great
for working through when you need a particular behavior. Don't discount Mac
examples either, as much of the foundation code still works, even on the
iPhone.

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adityakothadiya
Check this out - hope this helps -

[http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/iphone-application-and-
webs...](http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/iphone-application-and-website-
development-all-tools-and-tutorials-you-need/)

<http://icodeblog.com/category/iphone-programming-tutorials/>

~~~
cosmok
thank you for the links!

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ciscoriordan
Lecture notes from the iPhone App class at Stanford:
<http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/index.php>

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mjmoody383
A simple post from Flickr that I found here yesterday:

[http://code.flickr.com/blog/2008/10/27/lessons-learned-
while...](http://code.flickr.com/blog/2008/10/27/lessons-learned-while-
building-an-iphone-site/)

------
larrykubin
I've been reading the new Pragmatic Programmer book, which is still in beta
form. The final printed book will be released in December 2008. It's pretty
good, and walks you through step-by-step. I must admit, it's been difficult so
far since I had zero experience with Objective C, XCode, Cocoa, etc., but
hopefully the concepts will click soon.

<http://www.pragprog.com/titles/amiphd/iphone-sdk-development>

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rodmaz
I recommend you to enroll on the iPhone Developer Program (it's free if you
plan initially to develop for the iPhone simulator only). I recommend you then
to download Apple's documents under 'Getting Started Documents', including
memory management and play with the tutorials. Apple has plenty of resources
on their program, they did a good job supporting developers. Good luck!

------
petercooper
It's still early days, but myself and Dan Grigsby launched
<http://www.mobileorchard.com/> a couple of weeks ago.

We already have an iPhone developers' podcast (first episode is an interview
with Hampton Catlin, who's selling 1000 copies of his app each day) and are
trying to link to interesting iPhone developer related stuff over time. It's
getting better each week :) You can also follow us on Twitter at
<http://twitter.com/MobileOrchard>

As an example of what we have, try: [http://www.mobileorchard.com/9-places-to-
publicize-your-ipho...](http://www.mobileorchard.com/9-places-to-publicize-
your-iphone-app/) \- 9 places to publicize your iPhone app :)

------
geuis
This is a related post I put together earlier this month:
[http://www.trending.us/2008/10/08/11-places-to-get-
started-w...](http://www.trending.us/2008/10/08/11-places-to-get-started-with-
iphone-app-development/)

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fgimenez
The website is not that exciting, but the tutorial videos are amazing. I
suggest checking out the alpha slider tutorial.
<http://www.iphonedevcentral.org/>

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abijlani
<http://iphonedevcentral.org/home.php>

<http://www.iphonesdkarticles.com/>

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rksprst
Get Erica Sudan's ebook. It's worth it and you'll learn a lot. Then just dive
in and go for it.

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jemmons
Learn Cocoa. Seriously.

