iOS 7 app development essentials: developing iOS 7 apps for the iPhone and iPad

摘要

Developing iOS 7 applications is a desirable skill. The iPhone and the iPad are successful and influential devices: millions have been sold, and many people consider them essential. Portable computing, now centered on smart-phones and tablets, is here to stay, and the demand for applications that run on these devices will continue to grow. iOS developers have available, free of charge, two mature and sophisticated tools to work with: Xcode, which is an integrated development environment (IDE), and the iOS 7 software development kit (SDK), which is a framework. They work synergistically together; developers experience them as a unit. Developing iOS applications is a complex endeavor for several reasons: applications are expected to be powerful yet easy to use; the size of smart-phones inherently imposes a severe limitation and challenge for designing high-quality interactive screens; and Xcode and iOS 7 SDK are complex and multifaceted, so learning them requires considerable effort. One of a handful of languages can be used as the glue that puts things together; this book uses Objective-C, which is by far the predominant choice.