Comment from AP listserve on I-Phone development
If you have a Mac running OS 10.5.6 or higher you can load/download the
SDK for free (it's rather large at about 2.7GB). You'll first need to
become an ADC (Apple Developer Connection) member (it's free). There is
a slick iPhone simulator that comes with it, but loading it on an actual
device is a little more involved. You'll need to recompile with a
public/private key through Apple with a device UDID...they've really
locked things down. There is a learning curve that is difficult by
virtue of having so many facets to it. Xcode uses Objective-C 2.0 with
is a meld of SmallTalk and C, Interface Builder is the visual UI
software, and there are Frameworks that can be intimidating at first.
There are also "Instruments" which do runtime analysis. Analysis is
important since the iPhone has so little actual usable memory....brings
back memories of days when we were taught to carefully manage memory
allocation...garbage collection works for the Macintosh platform itself
but isn't a part of the iPhone/iPod Touch platform yet, so you have to
use either retain/release or autorelease pools. Memory leaks can be a
problem that manifests itself quickly. But it is fun to get an app up
and running. I just would advise doing it over an entire semester or
two. It is an beautifully well thought out platform.
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