2nd
iPhone dev thoughts
We’ve moved this blog to a new server (it’s hosted at Tumblr now, which cuts down some admin work for us).
Since the last post in 2008 I’ve been doing a lot of work aimed at Blackberry and iPhones. I’ve also done some iPhone app development (my first app is for Helipad and has been stuck in app store limbo for 6 weeks since submission).
I used to be a C programmer, and trained in C++ at uni. That means the iPhone’s language and API’s (Objective-C and Cocoa) is relatively comfortable for me to use. If you haven’t done much C prepare to feel like absolutely everything is way more work than it needs to be.
In fact it reminds me of when I got into Mac programming: Apple were heavily criticised for the lack of documentation on their APIs, so they kept adding more over time, along with great example programs.
iPhone documentation was relatively strong off the bat and continues to get better. This is great, but the documentation upgrade process in Xcode always makes my computer slow down.
Instruments is a real gem. I can track down all my memory leaks and other nasty spectres relatively quickly.
Submitting an application isn’t too bad. Apple’s web interface looks dated and feels awkward, and also times out which can make you have to do the entire thing again. Woe betide you if you need support, though. I’ve been waiting since the 17th of December for their “contract processing”. I had to actually post some sort of US legal crap. Honestly it’s really more painful than it needs to be.
