GitHub’s been on a hiring streak lately, first with fellow ex-Shopifolk Joshua Wehner, and now with Reg Braithwaite (and a lot of other folks, but I don’t know much about them). Reg is often called upon to explain tricky concepts, so his new position on the documentation team, where he’ll be improving GitHub’s Help, is going to be a blessing to a lot of programmers out there. Congrats, Reg!
The Story So FarSo far in this series on iOS 7 development for people new to iOS development, we’ve looked at:
At this point, you’re probably raring to go and start coding.
As I write this, only developers registered in the iOS Developer Program have access to iOS 7 and Xcode 5. These developers — of whom I am one — are under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) where they’ve promised not to share screenshots or any other information about iOS 7 until it’s out of beta and made available to the general public. We’re allowed to discuss iOS 7 and Xcode 5 within the confines of the developer forums inside the members-only Apple Developer site, and nowhere else.
As long as the NDA’s in effect, I can’t cover specifics about iOS 7 development in this series. What I can do is talk about developing for iOS 6, which should be good enough for the developer who’s new to iOS. Until iOS 7 is finally released and the NDA is lifted, this series of articles will cover learning developing iOS 7 apps by way of learning iOS 6.
Ray Wenderlich’s blog is the 800-pound gorilla of iOS programming sites, with almost 300 iOS and iOS-related programming tutorial articles as well as a number of great for-pay courses you can buy. I can’t recommend their four-part course, The iOS Apprentice, strongly enough. Spanning hundreds of pages, this set of extremely detailed tutorials teaches iOS development through the building of four different apps:
Each tutorial sells for $24 each, or you can buy all 4 for a mere $54.
Better yet, there’s a way to get the first tutorial for free! If you sign up for the Ray Wenderlich newsletter, they’ll give you the first iOS Apprentice tutorial, which will show you how to build this game:
AppCoda is a beautifully-designed blog devoted to the topic of iOS programming. They regularly post “how to” articles for developers, and a good number of these articles put together form a cohesive and free iOS development course. The iOS Programming Course listed on their Course page is currently made up of 28 tutorial articles, a good number of which introduce iOS development through the building of a recipe app.
Your First iOS App is an ebook created by Ash Furrow, creator of 500px’s iPad app and an iOS developer at the Toronto-based (and world-famous) design firm Teehan+Lax. Written as a book for people with experience programming but who are new to iOS development, the book introduces iOS development topics by walking you through the development of an app called “Coffee Timer”, from rudimentary program that simply displays a blank screen like this…
…to a fully-fledged app ready for submission to the App Store like this:
…and all in just over 200 pages. It’s well-written and explains iOS programming quite clearly. You can see for yourself; chapter 1 is posted online.
Ash raised the funds for writing the book with an Indiegogo campaign, beat his CDN$5,000 goal by raising $5,542, and published it on LeanPub in DRM-free PDF, ePub and Mobi formats. Your First iOS App is available at a variable price, starting at the low, low, low price of $9.99…
…with a suggested price of $14.99. I bought my copy at the suggested price to show my appreciation for Ash’s work.
Once again, I’m on vacation — with the same lovely lady as last time, even! — and will return with regular postings on Monday, July 8th.
Here’s a little promo that Pete Ashton found in the Yellow Pages. It explains two ways to get their app: via QR code or typing in an URL. Guess which one is simpler:
Click the photo to see the full-size original.
Pete calls it “the most damning piece of anti-QR code copy ever”, and I think he’s got a point. At the very least, you shouldn’t use a QR code when a simple, easy-to-remember URL is available.
Again, I remind you:
Apple’s been working hard on iOS 7 and its developer tools over the past little while, and the result is a couple of new versions of their beta software:
In this article, we’ll show you how to get both.
If you have the first beta on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you can get it the easy way: the built-in Software Update. Fire up Settings, choose General, and then choose Software Update. You should see a screen that looks like this:
Tap the Download and Install button to do just that, and follow the screen prompts.
Point your browser at the iOS Dev Center. If you’re properly registered in the iOS Developer Program, you should have the options of looking at resources for iOS 6.1 and iOS 7. Naturally, you should select iOS 7 SDK beta, after which the page should look like the screen capture below:
You can click on the Downloads link under the Resources for iOS 7 beta heading, or simply scroll down. Either way, you’ll end up in the same place, where you’ll see this:
Download the one that’s appropriate for your iDevice. I’ve included direct links to the available packages below:
The file that you’re downloading is a disk image. Double-click it to mount the image. You should see one file that looks something like this:
Connect your iDevice via USB to your Mac and start up iTunes. Let the sync complete. Click the iPhone or iPad button near the upper right-hand corner of the iTunes window:
The iTunes window should look something like this:
If you haven’t done so already, back up your iPhone.
And now, the important part of the process. I’m going to spell this out in large text:
While holding down the option or alt key on your keyboard, click the Restore iPhone… button. This allows you to choose a specific file to use when restoring your iPhone or iPod Touch. Choose the .ipsw file contained within the disk image you just mounted.
(That’s how you get iOS 7 on your iPhone or iPod Touch at this early point in the game: you’re restoring it from an image that has iOS 7 on it.)
Once you’ve done that, the uploading and installing process will take about 10 to 15 minutes. Your iPhone or iPod Touch will reboot once or twice during this time.
If you want to develop for iOS 7 Beta 2, you’ll need the latest version of Xcode 5 and the iOS 7 Beta 2 SDK. Here’s how you get it:
Point your browser at the iOS Dev Center. If you’re properly registered in the iOS Developer Program, you should have the options of looking at resources for iOS 6.1 and iOS 7. Naturally, you should select iOS 7 SDK beta, after which the page should look like the screen capture below:
You can click on the Downloads link under the Resources for iOS 7 beta heading, or simply scroll down. Either way, you’ll end up in the same place, where you’ll see this:
Click the Xcode 5 and iOS 7 SDK beta 2 link to start the download. It’s a .dmg file that’s about 1.7 GB in size, and when double-clicked, mounts a disk image and opens the window shown in the screen capture below:
It’s a straight-forward drag-the-app-to-the-Applications-folder-alias install, and you’re done!
Click the comic to see it at its source, Buni.
