To write your own iPhone apps “in-house” you’ll discover nearly every aspect of development is new: new equipment, new programming languages, new development environment, etc.

But its not impossible for your developers to learn everything required for iPhone development.

The physical requirements

Each developer will need an Intel Mac running the latest OS X operating system, Leopard. This is a requirement of the latest Apple iPhone developer environment “Xcode”.

Each developer will probably benefit from having an iPhone upon which they can test their applications. There is a free iPhone Simulator available with Xcode, but it can only simulate a fraction of the features of a real iPhone. When getting started you may be able to get away with using only the iPhone Simulator initially. Eventually your developers will need real iPhones.

In order to install and test iPhone applications upon real iPhones your developers will need to be registered members of Apple’s iPhone Developer Program. Currently it costs $99 USD for each developer. Alternately there is an Enterprise Program if you are creating in-house applications.

Prior to installing and testing your locally developed applications on real iPhones your developers can freely download the development tools, including the free iPhone Simulator, from the iPhone Dev Center.

The programming language requirements

Each iPhone application can only be developed in one of 3 programming languages: C, C++ or Objective-C. Although very few programmers already know Objective-C it is highly advisable to learn this programming language rather than use C or C++. Not only is it a more advanced programming language, but all the iPhone documentation and examples are in Objective-C. Your developers will have to learn it anyway.

So, the best resource for teaching your developers Objective-C is actually Cocoa Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition) Note that this is the 3rd edition, which is very new and hard to find in bookstores, rather than the old 2nd edition.

At Mocra, we can offer in-house training courses in Objective-C as well as iPhone development.

Please contact us to book us as soon as possible.