So I have an idea and I want to turn that into an iPhone app, how does it work?

You could of course advertise on Apps-jobs , but if you’re brave and fancy a go…

Before we start, here’s an invaluable resource for seeing what it’s all about:

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/

After sign up, there are lots of videos and resources to get you going.

I started with the “Introduction to the iPhone SDK” within the “iPhone Getting Started Videos”, poured a coffee and sat back.

It looks like there are four main development tools:

• Xcode – this is the main development tool, an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) which includes sample code, text editors, project management, etc to get the show on the road.
• Instruments – this appears to be a tool for sampling, tracing and profiling aspects of the application so that you can get it efficient.  Speed testing, that kind of thing.
• Dashcode –  an integrated envinroment where you can build your layouts and views, simplifying the graphical process and testing.  It also has handy debugging and testing aspects.
• iPhone simulator – implements the iPhone API allowing native testing providing a realistic preview of how the app will appear.

Quite a different approach to the development of the Android applications, but it makes sense after a bit of fiddling around.

For more information, have a look at the 101 Best iPhone Apps blog where one of our developers has been working through the process.