43 iPhone Development Resources
Programming for the iPhone is still pretty new. It might be a bit tougher to find iPhone developer resources, but we found a bunch that will get you through building any iPhone app you might be starting on. Check out our list of our favorite developer books, blogs, podcasts, screencasts, open-source libraries, communities, forums, conferences, training, and more!
Books
Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK
This is the go-to book for beginning iPhone developers by Jeff Lamarche and Dave Mark. It takes you from downloading the SDK to creating your very own apps. The official page and support site: http://iphonedevbook.com/
Programming in Objective-C 2.0
This is the book to get if you’re just starting out programming. It assumes you have no prior programming knowledge before picking it up. It’s highly recommended for people who don’t know any programming and want to learn Objective-C. Not a lot of iPhone-specific stuff in this one, but a lot of this knowledge will carry over when you do want to create iPhone apps.
Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
This book assumes you know a bit of C/C++, and it’s a really good book for getting started with Apple’s developer frameworks. There isn’t a lot of iPhone-specific stuff in this book, but a lot of what you learn carries over into iPhone development.
Pragmatic Programmers iPhone SDK Development
This book is in beta still, so you can only get the PDF. It was originally scheduled to be released by now, but they are updating it to include iPhone SDK 3.0. It’s still worth it to get the PDF. I’ve gone through it, and it is fantastic. The book is now set to be released in September.
The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK
This book is full of code snippets that will help a lot of people with common tasks that Apple’s iPhone SDK doesn’t provide. There are some code blunders in this book, but luckily they’ve fixed the code and put it up here. They also have movies at this site that demonstrate what each mini-project does.
iPhone in Action: Introduction to Web and SDK Development
The iPhone in Action book covers both native and web programming in step-by-step tutorials. It’s a complete primer to iPhone development.
Blogs
Mobile Orchard
The best iPhone developer blog I’ve seen. It’s written by Dan Grigsby and Ari Braginsky. I recommend you start with the top posts on the right sidebar and go through all the archives. Pretty much all of the articles are gold.
iCodeBlog
This blog has some of the best iPhone app building tutorials on the web. They have newbie tutorials as well as multi-part advanced tutorials ranging from Hello World to game development. The “ToDo List Using SQLite” tutorial series is a good start for a new developer to learn a breadth of concepts.
iPhone Development Central
The meat of this site is the video tutorials. The videos are separated into different levels of complexity. Good site for audio/visual learners.
Dr. Touch
Dr. Touch gives us a mix of specific programming solutions as well his experiences with the App Store and his sales. The recipes section of his blog have really useful code snippets to help you build your app.
iPhone Development
Jeff Lamarche is also the author of Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK. He keeps his blog updated constantly with cutting-edge code and even a guide to surviving WWDC.
Keyvisuals iPhone Development
This blog isn’t updated as often as some of the others, but the articles that do come out are really useful. My favorite recent one is How to Detect Network Availability.
71squared
71squared has some great iPhone game development tutorial collections. It is updated quite often, and anyone interested in iPhone game development should check it out.
How to Make iPhone Apps
It’s a fusion of iPhone app marketing and coding. Most of the site is focused on marketing your app.
iPhone SDK Articles
This blog isn’t updated that much these days, but the articles are still useful. It’s 100 percent dedicated to code tutorials.
148apps.biz
Jeff Scott writes about various iPhone app marketing tips and analytics. The blog is focused on the business side of iPhone apps. It’s fairly new and looks very promising.
iPhone developer:tips
A how-to focused blog run by John Muchow. The posts are put together in nice bite-size pieces.
PrEV
Bill Dudney is an author/screencaster with the Pragmatic Programmers family. The books and screencasts he makes are good for beginners, but a lot of the stuff on his blog address more complicated coding issues and bugs in the SDK.
Podcasts/Screencasts
Stanford iPhone Application Programming Course
Stanford open-sourced its lecture, slides, and course material to the world. It’s available for free in iTunes. Watch the presentation by Loren Brichter of Tweetie fame when you get a chance.
Mobile Orchard Podcast
Awesome podcast series with iPhone app developers and their successes (and struggles) running iPhone app businesses. They always have A-list guests.
Pragmatic Programmer’s Screencast Series
If you’re more of a video learner, start with the Coding in Objective-C 2.0 and Becoming Productive in Xcode screencasts. Follow that with the five-part Writing Your First iPhone Application screencast. If you really want to get fancy with transitions and animations, check out the Creating a Compelling User Interface with Core Animation screencast.
Objective-C for Rubyists
Peepcode is usually known for its Ruby resources, but it has a great screencast that teaches you about Objective-C. It’s edited by Scott Stevenson of great Objective-C resource, CocoaDevCentral.
The App Show
Great conversations about everything related to iPhone apps. The podcasts are about an hour or so long.
iPhone Alley
The iPhone Alley Podcast is a weekly roundtable with different iPhone app media peeps and creators. Each episode is very entertaining.
Schenk Studios
This site has some great video tutorials — and a lot of them, too. He’s made 25 of them, including a sneak peek at some new 3.0 features.
Open-Source Libraries
Joe Hewitt’s Three20 Open-Source Objective-C library
Three20 is a collection of iPhone UI classes, like a photo viewer, and general utilities, like an HTTP disk cache. Three20 is derived from the Facebook iPhone app, which is one of the most downloaded iPhone apps ever.
Bullet Physics Engine
Bullet is a free, professional 3D game multiphysics library used in some popular games in the App Store.
Cocos2d Framework
Cocos2d for the iPhone is a framework for building 2D games for the iPhone and iPod touch. There’s a great community around this open-source engine, so there’s plenty of support to help you get your iPhone game out there.
Matt Legend Gemmell – Cocoa Source Code
Matt Gemmell has some great code out there for the community, including MGTwitterEngine, the Twitter API used in iPhone apps Birdhouse and Twitteriffic.
Appsamuck
An open-source collection of 31 mini-iPhone app projects to get you up and running fast.
Communities/Forums
iPhone Dev SDK
The greatest iPhone developer community on the Internet. Chris Stewart’s site boasts nearly 6,000 registered users. The forums are very active. You’ll find yourself visiting this site at least once a day.
Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for programmers — regardless of platform or language. Every question asked on the site will almost always get a correct answer.
MacRumors Forums for iPhone Programming
Great community of developers on this forum. They even include some nice guides for getting started with iPhone development.
Conferences/Training
Apple Worldwide Developers Conference
WWDC is Apple’s official developer conference. All the cutting-edge programming topics are taught here. The 2009 one runs from June 8-12. WWDC is the Mac daddy of all iPhone conferences. Get it? Mac daddy? I’m here all night, folks.
360|iDev
360|iDev is the premiere iPhone, iPod touch developer conference in the world. The next one will be a four-day event and will take place September 27-30, 2009 in Denver, Colo. They have a call for papers right now if you want to make a debut as a conference speaker.
Pragmatic Studio’s iPhone Development Course
Here you will learn how to build iPhone applications from experienced iPhone developers Bill Dudney and Daniel Steinberg in this four-day training course. The next one runs August 4-7, 2009 in Reston, Va.
iPhoneDevCamp
iPhoneDevCamp is the brainchild of Raven and Dom. The event format is “unconference” or Barcamp-style, featuring content from the participants themselves. There are satellite events held all over the country. The next one is this August.
Game Developers Conference
This conference is for all game developers, and there’s an increasing number of mobile app game developers. If you’re a game developer or want to be one, this is the one game developer conference to go to.
StackOverflow DevDays
This is more of a general developer conference, not just iPhone developers. The beauty of this conference is that it’s in multiple locations and dates, and it only costs $99. Plus, you get to hang out with Joel Spolsky.
Other Collections Of Resources
Apple’s Official iPhone Dev Resources
The Apple engineers give us a lot of information to get started with app development. There are a lot of resources that Apple provides including documentation, how-tos, videos, code samples and forums.
iPhone Flow
This site is updated daily with the best iPhone developer links on the web. It’s driven by the community submissions, and all the links are top-quality here. The site is maintained by the Mobile Orchard crew.
XCake iPhone Dev Resources
MattJ’s collection of iPhone developer resources. A lot of good stuff here including our very own Create A Drum App tutorial.
The Flying Jalapeno Lives
Great list of iPhone development blogs written by Corey.
Those are my favorites. I’m not a human Google, so I may have missed some gems. What are your favorite iPhone developer resources?
Simon on June 1st, 2009 at 12:21 pm
I feel like Glyphish belongs here as well: http://glyphish.com/
Joe on June 1st, 2009 at 2:26 pm
This is a great list, thank you! A little surprised to not see any of Erica Sadun’s work mentioned here. Also, for open source iPhone source code projects, people might like http://open.iphonedev.com. Thanks again!
SohoInteractive on June 1st, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Great list. Bookmarked!
K.
Ken Seto - Endloop.ca on June 1st, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Killer list! Thanks!
Michael Johnston on June 1st, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Thanks for the shout out!
Josiah on June 1st, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Incredible head start. This is my go to guide. Thank you!
David Wilkins on June 1st, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Hi All at AppleBlog,
Mucho kudos for the bevy of AppDev resources, Guys – Wish I’d had your list a few months back to save a little scrounging for my fave site/books/forums… But hey, plenty of new stuff there for all. One piece not mentioned above is a freebie downloadable 70 page pdf book called “Become an Xcoder – Start Programming the Mac Using Objective-C” from the CocoaLab site (well worth checking, too) here – http://www.cocoalab.com/?q=becomeanxcoder. This is an absolutely brill guide to work through for those of us who either didn’t think they had a programming bone in their body or aren’t up with Objective-C & Cocoa… This blurb is from their intro –
“Several good books on programming for the Mac exist, but they (usually) assume that you already have some programming experience. This book doesn’t. It teaches you the basics of programming, in particular Objective-C programming, using Xcode”.
So, take a GeekPeek… Hell, if you wanna get busy with this app development thing, there’s not a lot holding you back! Thanks again, Guys, & Happy Trails…
David Sachs on June 2nd, 2009 at 1:43 am
I’d also like to add the iGames Summit (http://www.igsummit.com) as a resource of interest to iPhone developers. We had over 200 developers, entrepreneurs and investors at the inaugural summit in March 2009. Admittedly, we’re not as purely developer focused as WWDC, but we had great sessions on developing, marketing and monetizing iPhone games. We’ll have a podcast of the proceedings up soon as well.
kenneath on June 2nd, 2009 at 3:07 am
Awesome list!! Well done!!
Redsan on June 2nd, 2009 at 3:24 am
Awesome!!
Thanks !!!
http://www.twitter.com/redsan
chano on June 2nd, 2009 at 10:24 am
Thanks Henry.
This post alone has done more to add value to TAB than almost any other post in recent memory. Although my brain hurts sometimes, I persevere with C, C++, Objective C and Cocoa. You have eased the journey, and provided much food for thought and digestion here. Well done!! It is much appreciated.
Chandra Coomaraswamy
Sir Cake on June 2nd, 2009 at 10:30 am
Beginners and intermediates will also appreciate:Hot CocoaThe podcasts are free through iTunes, and the host, Kevin Vinck, is an excellent instructor.
Steve Zussino on June 2nd, 2009 at 10:37 am
This article hopefully apps, I am moving my website over to an iPhone app? Any good plan to move RSS feeds to an iPhone app.
andy matthews on June 3rd, 2009 at 5:15 am
Super surprised you didn’t mention the Stanford lecture series on iPhone development available for free via iTunes.
http://cs193p.stanford.edu/
Videos, slides, and assignments are all available fore free.
Matt on June 3rd, 2009 at 6:10 am
Wow! Awesome list. bookmarked! :)
dean on June 3rd, 2009 at 7:45 am
Nice writeup! Shame my iphone tutorial blog didn’t make it :-( check it out at http://dblog.com.au
Jason on June 3rd, 2009 at 10:06 am
Another great option is the upcoming iPhone Developers Course being held evenings and all day Saturday, June 23-27 in Sandy, UT. That’s just 10 minutes south of Salt Lake City. Izatt International has been teaching iPhone developer courses since January with former students now running companies of their own! Check it out: http://izatt.com/training/iphonesdk090623.html
Noah on June 3rd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
If your looking for a simple way to get a iPhone application for your blog or business I found Rhino Apps really useful. http://www.RhinoApps.com. They take your RSS feed and create an iPhone application around it. You design it with your own custom colors and logos. Worth taking a look at.
rzmota on June 3rd, 2009 at 3:36 pm
What about the CSS Galleries made for iPhone webdevelopment? I know only one page in web (cssiphone.com)
What else?
David Wilkins on June 3rd, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Again, Rockin’ Resources here, Gang,
Just checked fellow Aussie Dean’s “dblog” out (Comment #16), & see what he means… The site is great – it goes wide & deep, & looks like a SuperModel to boot!! Kudos…
Cam G on June 3rd, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Great post, and thanks for the list of useful resources. We are finding some customers are now wanting to consider business apps to the phone as well – this list resources are great
Ari Braginsky on June 7th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
While I appreciate the Mobile Orchard plug, I would also like to submit my ongoing Google Docs list of iPhone resources that I maintain:
http://iphoneresources.aribraginsky.com
Feel free to follow me on Twitter as well as http://twitter.com/lemonkey
Cheers!
Sean (The iPhone Developers) on June 8th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Stack Overflow has taken over irc freenode channels for me – the quality & speed of the responses are fantastic! Had a couple of major headache xcode issues resovled on there :D
Thanks for the heads up on Appsamuck :)
Rick171br on June 9th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Great list. Thank!
Vasco on June 19th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Awesome resources to help you start developing your own iPhone app!
Thanks
Boom on June 22nd, 2009 at 8:32 am
Great List!! W
Boom on June 22nd, 2009 at 8:35 am
This is a great list! We will be linking back to this as soon as our development section is operational
Thanks
Jay Godse on June 26th, 2009 at 10:27 am
This is a great list of resources. If you need resources on SQLite to complement these, check out my SQLite pages at:
http://www.squidoo.com/sqlitehammer
http://www.squidoo.com/sqliteprogramming
http://www.squidoo.com/sqlitedatabasedesign
Raj Singh on July 13th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Another cool site with some example code is: http://www.napkincode.com
Mark Johnson on July 24th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Screencast tutorial on memory management:
http://www.markj.net/iphone-memory-management-tutorial-video/
Carlos on August 10th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Under Communities/Forums, you need to add two that have been around for some time:
iDevGames.com for iPhone game developers and
iDevapps.com for iPhone app developers.
Katie on August 12th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Excellent resources. Great work Henry!!
Check out the latest news on the iPhone development, resources available for development on iPhone and anything that concerns iPhone Programmers at http://iphonedevelopmentbits.com/
Cheers,
Ivan Kolarov on August 13th, 2009 at 4:19 am
What about Mono and MonoTouch http://www.mono-project.com/MonoTouch ?
great article…
Stephen on August 20th, 2009 at 1:11 am
Great list, we recently found another blog: http://www.iphonedeveloperlabs.com/
bar-coders on August 30th, 2009 at 4:48 am
Nice job guys list is incredible keep up the good work.
Granny Coder on September 7th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Hello dears, very nice list! I bookmarked it for late reading, because now I have to go to the garden.
Alexander86 on September 8th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Very good. The list is for every iPhone developer :)
Jeff on September 11th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I keep an up-to-date handy database of over a thousand Cocoa tutorials, searchable by title, site, author and article content, for those interested: http://osx.hyperjeff.net/Reference/CocoaArticles
Jeremy Olson on October 7th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I would submit http://tapfancy.com/. Its a great place for iPhone app design inspiration.
I also feel my own blog is becoming a decent resource (but I just may be a bit biased on that one).
Matt on November 3rd, 2009 at 11:44 am
Great post I want to know what is the objective of Programming for the iPhone because I listen about it but I am not sure with this method, and I need to know about Make Money Affiliate Program because I want to start with this business.
Brian on November 3rd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Interesting post about this great things the iPhone is great and I need to know more about Health Promotion because this topic is very important.
iPhone app reviews - keyword on November 4th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Thank you very much for this post. I think i will invest in both the Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK, and
Programming in Objective-C 2.0. I have been looking to learn how to develop iPhone apps and this was very helpful.
Ben Reeves on November 11th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Nice list, if possible I would like to make a suggestion which iPhone developers might find useful. If your developing with XCode your probably using SVN and if you developing for the iPhone you’ve certainly got an iPhone. Shameless plug incoming…
iVersion is an svn client for the iphone, which means you never have to leave your code behind even when your away from your desktop
cipram1 on November 11th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
You miss one, “Easy iPhone Applications Development”.
Its an extremely easy to read eBook at http://www.lulu.com.
iPhone App Marketing on November 16th, 2009 at 3:21 am
I would cover ‘marketing and promotion’ aspect of iPhone development business as well. While there is not much information available on the subject online, our web sites high-lights steps required to take in order to promote the app to the top rankings. We’ve done that many times and have multiple apps reaching TOP overall and category rankings for own and clients apps.
Zac on November 18th, 2009 at 12:56 am
There is a site called mycodeteacher.com which is really good and can help beginners!! It really helped me get started…
Zac on November 18th, 2009 at 12:57 am
Sorry..that is http://www.mycodeteacher.com (Hyperlink didn’t work I guess..) :\