Day 2

Yesterday was a long one. I received my "Building iPhone Applications for Dummies" and spent a great deal of time perusing it way late into the night. Upon first glance, it does appear like a good book. But here's the problem, there are so many books and materials to study. Where is my time best placed for the greatest and fastest return?

I'm unsure whether I should read the books first or dive into building. I suppose I could do a combo thing where I read, watch tutorials and create an example app. Initially, I thought reverse engineering might prove viable. Jailbreak into my iTouch, after identifying an app that most closely reflects the one I want to create, and work backwards on the code by substituting the action code that would drive my app. This is not as easy as it sounds.

There is an article that discusses this approach for those of you who want to do it that way. http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/blog/2009/03/06/reverse-engineering-iphone-appstore-binaries

However, I've decided that this is not a practical approach and I've chosen the origination-to-creation process.

The continuation of my research at the Apple App Store proved enlightening. Seriously, two years ago when I bought my iTouch and became hooked on apps, I spent hours for weeks solidly reviewing and downloading apps for my device. (Dare I admit that I spent almost as much on apps as my iTouch cost! Thus, the app appeal and its economy summed up.) At that time, I DO NOT remember seeing any pornography (T&A) apps.

However, my most recent inspection has me concluding that at a minimum, 1/4 of all apps in the entertainment genre are porn! Why! I guess technology brings with it the good and the bad, including the seedy underbelly of the world's oldest profession always lurking to exploit new means of commerce.

Equally, there is burgeoning fetish market with such apps as armpit pics for those who want to get their fix. The cornucopia of apps available is mind-boggling and there seems to be plenty of room for all kinds. Many apps overlap with slight differences, but the vetting criteria at Apple seems to allow a plethora of apps to reach inventory status. And why not?

Apple has an vested interest to keep the production lines going. It receives 30% of sales for apps that are sold and the great seduction of the iTouch and iPhone is the wide range of apps to choose from. It is the crux of the business paradigm shift in the ether economy. "Create great open source (free) software and they will come" - to use a takeoff of the "Field of Dreams" great one-liner. Google has also created open source software for the same reasons. I'm sure there are others. Pranav Mistry is making Sixth Sense open source, including instructions on how to dissemble a cellular phone to build a Sixth Sense device for free! (check out TED.com at http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html and watch his presentation. Expect to be blown away.)

I recently read that the strongest, more robust and stable OS is Snow Leopard. For $29, I ordered the latest upgrade for my computer. Why? Because the recommendation is that Xcode 3.2 in Snow Leopard is the most user intuitive, user friendly Objective-C coding version out there. I currently have the Mac Leopard OS, so the upgrade was fairly inexpensive to get.

It is important to remember that you need to have Mac Leopard OS to build apps. It is further encouraged to have and be familiar with the iTouch or iPhone.