iPhone programming

calendar Apr 28, 2008 · 3 min read  en blog-objectsrootcom  · ant apple bad book books build code developement development easy features good guide ideas interface iphone ipod java linux macosx make nerd news programming small smalltalk table touch trip ui vi war  ·
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iPhone is the brand-new Apple product which has changed the way Apple thinks. Because of iPhone, Apple strip the word "Computers" from its brand name. And because of iPods and iPhone products, Lepoard developmenet slip a bit, blurring the focus on pure technology.
To be true, I do not beat on  the iPhone success, but the product success is at least  bright this year. And the iPod touch has also added value to the iPods product catalog. But I am an IT-man, damn you boy! So I want to buy it to play with it, to program with it!

The iPhone Open Application Development, is a fresh book on iPhone Developement, edited by O'Reilly which come into play. The book has less then 280 pages, and is well organized. First of all, the bad news: the book lacks figures and tables (only one, and not so useful) and no Photo on it. Then breaking the iPod firmware is not a thing Apple likes a lot. As far as I know, it is NOT illegal, because Apple is opening the device too.
Anyway, breaking the iPhone firmware can prevent you to get the upgrades so, you must know what you are going forward to do.

And now the good news: the book is well written, and guide the user from the beggining to the end.  There are a lot of way to free the iPhone from the jail.

After that, you can also use Linux to program on the iPhone, where the Apple SDK seems only "PC Mac"-enabled.

The book is composed of 7 chapters. After unlocking the iPhone (first chapter), the author explain us how to write code for it, and what is Objective-C. Objective-C is a very nice idea developed by Brad Cox, in the 1980. It is a C++ language "ante litteram". I like the ideas of Objective-Ch because you get the power of C for fast tasks (like  you know, coding your quicksort or your perfect B-trees :) and you get a true dynamic O.O. language, like SmallTalk is. Objective-C was not so lucky, and there are only two major implementation: the GNU one and the Apple one, used to build the entire MacOSX.
I have no time to study it a lot, but I suggest you to code the iPhone in Objective-C.
Then the books start to explore iPhone features like:

  • Basic user interface building blocks
  • Graphic Services and animation effects. You get also a Coreflow-like animation in the Appendix
  • Sound Control
  • Deep integration. A nice thing is the way to make calls: you simply ask the emmeded Safari to open a "tel://" url

The code presented is always very compact, and the style is nice.
The Appendix give us a lot of code samples.

Programming a so riche device is not easy, but the good news is you have a full O.S. to work with.
Java midlets and J2ME are much more difficult to use, if you will find your way with Objective-C.
A very good book, for very nice techno-guys, and not (only) for nerds!