iPhone Apps: Roll your Own ?

[John Teller]

Actually, I have been developing an iPhone (iPod touch, actually) app 
for the past month or so.  I had to buy a Mac Mini as the current 
development system isn't supported on their old Power Macs.  Signing up 
for the Apple Developer Connection is $99.00 a year - which is not bad 
considering that includes the development tools.

I've had a crash course (OJT) in Objective C and really don't understand 
why they didn't just use C++.  I suppose it's like Microsoft and C#.  
The development environment is actually quite nice, and except for the 
fact that the key press sequences I'm used to using in Windows and Linux 
are completely different in Mac space, I like it a lot.

For the most part the development is pretty similar to any other GUI 
based system.  The one new concept I did learn from this experience is 
the Model-View-Controller architecture the whole system is based on.  
It's a good system, and does a pretty good job preventing the code from 
glomming together like so much of the Windows code I used to work on.

And despite the draconian efforts Apple goes to in order to limit 
applications, there are plenty of alternate venues.

---JST