CS 342: Mobile Application Development

Getting started with Xcode

Next up: getting to know the tools for iOS development.

• If you have a Mac, download and install Xcode. If you don't, you can use the version of Xcode (4.3.2) installed in the CS labs on the third floor of the CMC. (There's also the much harder road of getting VMWare to run MacOS on a PC, but you're on your own if you go that route.) As some of the online discussions note, a Mac Mini is cheap (where $600 list price or $350 on ebay is the definition of "cheap"), but that's certainly not necessary for this class.
• Create a new project and explore its contents. Build and run it on the emulator. Try it on both iPhone and iPad emulators.
• See if you can figure out to mimic our Android ButtonDemo and ListDemo projects. Nothing to hand in for this
• Collect your questions and bring them to class Friday for writing on the walls.

Apple's iOS tutorial is very good, so that's a great place to start.

You can also search for things like "objective c ios tutorial" to get lots of help. I find this one by Ray Wenderlich to be clear, to the point, and extremely extensive. However, with all online resources, keep in mind that the development tools and the platform change over time, so the online help can get dated. Wenderlich's tutorials, for example, appear to be using Xcode 4.5 or thereabouts--in any case, his stuff mostly predates iOS 7 and Xcode 5.X, so the look is somewhat different even if the content is about the same.