Building Mobile Apps

Want to get started with iOS development from the very beginning? Learning something new for 2017? Join the world of mobile application development by learning Apple’s new programming language Swift, and write your own apps for Apple’s App Store!

Follow this thirty minute video I created to get you up and running with iPhone or iPad app development on your Mac:

Welcome to BuildingMobileApps.com! Are you ready to get started with iPhone app development? There are a couple of things you will need to know before you start iOS development, so review this list before you start to dig in to the tutorials on this site.

First, you don’t need any programming experience to get going – we take an approach where you learn by doing, picking up the programming language Swift (Apple’s new programming language for iPhones, iPads, and Macs) along the way. If you’ve already written some computer programs or apps for other platforms (like Android), you’ll be a little ahead of the curve!

Second, you’ll need some patience. Computer programming isn’t like other disciplines. If you’re writing the first draft of the book, and you misspell a word, you don’t have to go back and fix the spelling right away – you can leave it and come back to it later. People can still read your first draft, but computers are a lot less lenient! If you make a mistake typing in some code – like using an upper case letter instead of a lower case letter, or forgetting some punctuation, you won’t be able to run the app that you create. The good news is that the computer can detect your errors, and even offer suggestions to fix it, but sometimes those suggestions are more confusing than the original error, especially for beginning programmers. So be patient, and double check your work. Especially as you start out, make sure that you use names consistently – things like uppercase versus lowercase matter!

Last, you will need a Mac – unfortunately, there isn’t any easy way to create iPhone apps from a PC running Windows. You don’t need the most expensive Mac out there, but you will need a relatively recent one. Apple supplies the software you need to create iPhone apps – XCode – for free, but the latest version uses a lot of resources. Go ahead and make sure you can download XCode 8 from the Mac App Store onto your computer. You may need to update the version of macOS on your Mac through the Mac App Store first.

The good news is that you do not need your own iOS device for most of these tutorials, and you also don’t need to pay Apple if all you want to do is run your apps on your own iPhone or iPad. You would need to create an account with Apple if you want to publish your apps on the iOS App Store so that anyone can download them.

Now that all the bases are covered, it’s time to get started with some App Development!