Last updated 08/02/2010
:: Books :: Blogs :: Podcasts & Screencasts :: Conferences, Training & Tutorials ::
:: Communities/Forums :: Other Resources ::
384 page book written by Erica Sadun. One thing to note is that "it is quite useful in getting up to speed, but also moderately frustrating. The author deviated from the file layout and program structure favored by Apple. The style of the book can make apples-to-apples comparisons between example projects in the book and code one encounters in the wild a little tricky."
iPhone Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide
I know a couple people that use this book and have thought it was pretty good. This book leads you through the essential tools and techniques for developing applications for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. In each chapter, you will learn programming concepts and apply them immediately as you build an application or enhance one from a previous chapter.
This is the book to get if you’re just starting out programming. It assumes you have no prior programming knowledge before picking it up. It’s highly recommended for people who don’t know any programming and want to learn Objective-C. Not a lot of iPhone-specific stuff in this one, but a lot of this knowledge will carry over when you do want to create iPhone apps.
Fantastic book that many developers have chosen to be their one and only resource.
This is a freebie downloadable 70 page pdf book from the CocoaLab site
eBook
This is the go-to book for beginning iPhone developers by Jeff Lamarche and Dave Mark. It takes you from downloading the SDK to creating your very own apps. The official page and support site: http://iphonedevbook.com/
This book assumes you know a bit of C/C++, and it’s a really good book for getting started with Apple’s developer frameworks. There isn’t a lot of iPhone-specific stuff in this book, but a lot of what you learn carries over into iPhone development.
The iPhone in Action book covers both native and web programming in step-by-step tutorials. It’s a complete primer to iPhone development.
Pretty long list of iPhone development blogs.
The best iPhone developer blog I’ve seen. It’s written by Dan Grigsby and Ari Braginsky. I recommend you start with the top posts on the right sidebar and go through all the archives. Pretty much all of the articles are gold. HOWEVER, before you start, you should read his April 9, 2010 posting... it is the home page of the blog site; it is his last iPhone blog; and you can't miss it.
This blog has some of the best iPhone app building tutorials on the web. They have newbie tutorials as well as multi-part advanced tutorials ranging from Hello World to game development. The “ToDo List Using SQLite” tutorial series is a good start for a new developer to learn a breadth of concepts.
Dr. Touch gives us a mix of specific programming solutions as well his experiences with the App Store and his sales. The recipes section of his blog have really useful code snippets to help you build your app.
Jeff Lamarche is also the author of Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK. He keeps his blog updated constantly with cutting-edge code and even a guide to surviving WWDC.
This blog isn’t updated as often as some of the others, but the articles that do come out are really useful. My favorite recent one is How to Detect Network Availability.
71squared has some great iPhone game development tutorial collections. It is updated quite often, and anyone interested in iPhone game development should check it out.
It’s a fusion of iPhone app marketing and coding. Most of the site is focused on marketing your app.
This blog isn’t updated that much these days, but the articles are still useful. It’s 100 percent dedicated to code tutorials.
Jeff Scott writes about various iPhone app marketing tips and analytics. The blog is focused on the business side of iPhone apps. It’s fairly new and looks very promising.
A how-to focused blog run by John Muchow. The posts are put together in nice bite-size pieces.
Bill Dudney is an author/screencaster with the Pragmatic Programmers family. The books and screencasts he makes are good for beginners, but a lot of the stuff on his blog address more complicated coding issues and bugs in the SDK.
Podcasts & Screencasts top
These are a group of fairly extensive videos directly from the horses mouth (will open in iTunes once the link is clicked).
Apple's WWDC 2010 Videos
This is a grouping of all the presentations at the WWDC 2010 conference (will open in iTunes once the link is clicked).
http://www.squidoo.com/sqlitehammer
http://www.squidoo.com/sqliteprogramming
http://www.squidoo.com/sqlitedatabasedesign
You can also download the app for free from the iTunes AppStore.
This site isn't always showing content, but is a good "bookmark" for computer science courses on the iPhone. Stanford open-sourced its lecture, slides, and course material to the world. It’s available for free in iTunes. Watch the presentation by Loren Brichter of Tweetie fame when you get a chance.
A podcast series with iPhone app developers and their successes (and struggles) running iPhone app businesses. They always have A-list guests. This is a sub-section of the blog mentioned above. You should read the home page as the blogger - Dan Grigsby - has stopped writing for the iPhone due to philosophical reasons.
If you’re more of a video learner, start with the Coding in Objective-C 2.0 and Becoming Productive in Xcode screencasts. Follow that with the five-part Writing Your First iPhone Application screencast. If you really want to get fancy with transitions and animations, check out the Creating a Compelling User Interface with Core Animation screencast.
Great conversations about everything related to iPhone apps. The podcasts are about an hour or so long.
Communities/Forums top
Great community of developers on this forum. They even include some nice guides for getting started with iPhone development.
Apple's very own developer forums for those of us that are out developing in the world of Apple.
Conferences, Training &Tutorials top
Good tutorial on HTML5 and the iPhone
WWDC is Apple’s official developer conference. All the cutting-edge programming topics are taught here. The 2009 one runs from June 8-12. WWDC is the Mac daddy of all iPhone conferences. Get it? Mac daddy? I’m here all night, folks.
360|iDev is the premiere iPhone, iPod touch developer conference in the world. The next one will be a four-day event and will take place September 27-30, 2009 in Denver, Colo. They have a call for papers right now if you want to make a debut as a conference speaker.
Here you will learn how to build iPhone applications from experienced iPhone developers Bill Dudney and Daniel Steinberg in this four-day training course. The next one runs August 4-7, 2009 in Reston, Va.
iPhoneDevCamp is the brainchild of Raven and Dom. The event format is “unconference” or Barcamp-style, featuring content from the participants themselves. There are satellite events held all over the country. The next one is this August.
This conference is for all game developers, and there’s an increasing number of mobile app game developers. If you’re a game developer or want to be one, this is the one game developer conference to go to.
Other Resources top
The Apple engineers give us a lot of information to get started with app development. There are a lot of resources that Apple provides including documentation, how-tos, videos, code samples and forums.
This site is updated daily with the best iPhone developer links on the web. It’s driven by the community submissions, and all the links are top-quality here. The site is maintained by the Mobile Orchard crew.
Apple's WWDC 2010 Code Samples
The collection of code samples from the presentations and training at the 2010 WWDC conference.