Jesse Feiler - iOS App Development For Dummies®

iOS App Development For Dummies

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Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013957974

ISBN 978-1-118-87105-8 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-87107-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-87110-2 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Chapter 1

In This Chapter

Figuring out what makes an insanely great iOS app

Discovering the iOS features that can inspire you

Understanding Apples expectations for iOS apps

Making a plan for developing iOS software

July 10, 2008.

That was the day the App Store opened. The next day, Apple launched the iPhone 3G, which came with the brand-new iPhone OS 2.0.1. Owners could choose from the 500 apps in the App Store to expand their phones power and features. You can find the latest numbers and versions in the App Store article on Wikipedia, which is updated regularly. I think its fair to say that no one in 2008 envisioned the world of apps that we have today.

This is a world that some people have dreamed of from the dawn of the computer age in the early 1950s. Its a world of computers that are highly portable, that boast terrific connectivity without wires and cables, and that do things that people find useful, such as providing entertainment, education, practical support, and information. Part of that dream was a world in which the ability to program computers is accessible to the largest nations and corporations on almost equal terms as it is to the individual developer or hobbyist.

April 3, 2010.

That was the day the first iPad was shipped. Its operating system was iPhone OS 3.2. iOS 4 was released a few months later, and, today, iOS and its development tools have been substantially rearchitected to make both the user experience and the development process easier.

Today.

Because of the App store and the new development tools, this is a great time to start developing for iOS. Welcome!

A great iOS app can be described simply: It helps people do something that they want to do; it does it well; it does it when and where people want to do it; and it disappears. Because you can leverage the power of the App Store, your app can be successful globally. Yes, that may mean millions of users for your app, but it also may mean that you can find the 100 widely scattered around the world for whom your app may become a necessity.

For the most part, choosing your apps topic and market is beyond the scope of this book, but you can find many articles on the Internet and in books and magazines. You can even study the topic in colleges.

What this book does focus on is the rest of that description building an app that works well, works when and where people want to use it, and has a user interface that helps people use the app but does not draw attention to itself. If people are thinking about your app when they should be thinking about a plot, a high score, or a trip to a store or another country, your app isnt great.

The nuts and bolts of making your app work well are described in this book. At the most basic level, they are technical and organizational, but the first step is understanding what your app is going to be and do. Before you write your first line of code, think through the app. Who will the audience be? What will the app look like?

For large app development projects as well as small ones, sketching out a wireframe sequence of your apps screens is a good idea. You may think its unnecessary in a one-person project, but it may even be more essential there. Show your sketches to friends who will be honest with you. You can search for ios wireframe on your favorite search engine to get recommendations for tools to help develop wireframes.

If your app delivers content, make certain that you have the content. If you have expertise in a specific area, that can serve as the basis for an app. If you have access to experts in other areas, see if they will advise you. If you go to the App Store and look at the reviews for apps, youll see that people quickly provide low ratings for apps that dont work or that dont provide reliable data.

Making your app work well is easier than ever before with Xcode 5. Powerful debugging tools are built in so that you can even watch your apps performance on real-time gauges. Compared to earlier versions of iOS, iOS 7 has a host of improvements for users and simplifications for developers. In my opinion, the milestone was iOS 5. Although significant changes occurred in the later releases, iOS 5 was the first to provide the concept of universal apps where you could write a single code base for both iPhone and iPad. That entailed making some changes to the APIs, but were over that hump and proceeding full speed ahead.