How to Make an Iphone App

Here is the question I get all the time from people who want to get into making iPhone and iPad apps: where do I start? Luckily, it is very easy (and fun!) to start exploring iOS app development. Apple has made the experience of developing software as exciting as using their products.


Today I’m going to map out seven easy steps that you can follow to start developing apps for yourself.
Check it out!

Step 1: Get a Mac

The first thing that you need to do is get your hands on a Mac. This is one area where iOS development is different than other things you may be doing online: you absolutely need to have access to a Mac to get into this (sorry Windows and Linux fans).

Step 2: Download XCode 4

XCode 4 is a special program that you can use to make iOS apps. Just like you use Photoshop to make cool graphics, you use XCode 4 to make cool apps.

What is really nice today is that you can get a copy of XCode for only $5 on the Mac app store (software like this usually costs hundreds of dollars).

Step 3: Make Your Hello World! App

Hello World is the time honored way for programmers to get their feet wet. The idea is that you can create a simple app that just shouts “Hello World” to the universe.

With XCode 4, making a Hello World app is brain dead simple. In fact, you could actually do this yourself without writing one line of computer code.

Step 4: Do Some Programming

Web guys use HTML, JavaScript & PHP to power the web. iOS app developers use the Objective-C programming language to power iOS apps. Objective-C is an innovative object-oriented programming language.

This programming language was one of the first things that made me fall in love with iOS app development. If you are used to other more clunky programming languages, the time that you spend with Objective-C will be like a breath of fresh air.

As a developer you will want to get comfortable with this programming language. Trust me here, it’s worth the investment.

Step 5: Spend Some Quality Time With iOS SDK

Take a look at any iOS app and you will see many powerful and yet common features: tables, buttons, Google maps, location based services and the list goes on. All of this is available to you through the iOS SDK.

What you get with this SDK for free to implement is honestly amazing.
What is truly great about iOS SDK is the consistency in how everything works. Everything follows the same pattern so once you’ve learned how to use a table you will know how to do XML parsing or how to use the camera. All the stuff in iOS follows the same rules.

Step 6: Cook Up Your First App Idea

The key to mastering anything is to have a real world goal in mind. With iOS it is natural to have an app in mind that you would like to bring into the world. Think of this as your muse.
Having an app muse will give you some focus and motivation to go through this process. My advice is to think of a simple app idea that you can get behind and then make it happen by any means necessary.

Step 7: Make Your First iOS App

At some point you’ll be familiar with XCode 4 and iOS SDK and you have a simple yet compelling app in mind. Now is the time to put your head down and make your app work.
Building your first app is a truly exciting and engrossing experience. If you’ve ever played an immersive video game or got lost in a great book that you couldn’t put down then you have some idea of what it’s like to be in the zone when building an app.

This is the mindset that I work on helping my readers get into with Mobile App Mastery Institue – once you are here, building apps becomes almost effortless.

As an added bonus, something that sets iOS app development apart from other online business is that once you have the app complete you will have an audience of buyers. This is a huge advantage to iOS app development, you can really spend much more time focusing on getting the widget right instead of scrambling to set up a sales system, attracting website visitors and worrying about SEO.

To wrap this up – if you are at all interested in making apps what I recommend is to simply start playing around with the tools that I mentioned above. iOS development is really a fun thing to do and it will will even help pay some of your bills if you let it!