Now that Apple has finally dropped their annoying NDA regarding iPhone development, things are definitely looking up. I had recently downloaded the "Getting Started" videos for the iPhone and you know what? They're not for "Getting Started."
It starts out with an intro to the iPhone SDK. I has nothing about actually writing an app. Hmm, maybe the next one which talks about getting started with the development framework? Nope. How about "Using iPhone features in your Application"? Nope. Lots of code snippets, descriptions of frameworks and overviews of the iPhone architecture, but trying to find a "Let's build a simple app" explanation? Apple seemed to have forgotten that bit. I suppose there might actually be something like that in one of the videos, but there are a bunch of them, most between 15 and 20 minutes long and my initial excitement faded pretty damned quickly. I became a teenager trying to fast-forward to the "good bits" after watching several of them describe -- in mind-numbing detail -- things I'd much prefer to get to after I have a basic understanding of how to build stuff, I just gave up. I want to do, not watch.
I thought I finally found it with their "Creating an iPhone Application" page on their Web site, but that just has you download an entire, pre-built application! Apple: shut the f**k up and code!
Fortunately, their elimination of the NDA has immediately improved this. A quick search on Google lead to a basic iPhone application example, complete with a video complement. It's not professional. It doesn't explain why everything worked. I loved it. It's quick 'n dirty and I had a complete application up and running in just a few minutes.
If Apple does have anything like this, it's buried somewhere on their site and I, for one, am more than a little annoyed. Anyone remember the "whirlwind tour" of Perl that was in Learning Perl? (I believe they took it out. Was it ever put back?) It was a quick and dirty introduction to tons of basic Perl in one application. It wasn't perfect and it glossed over a lot, but it was great (for me). Or you could give me glizty, professional quality videos explaining for hours on end how wonderful Perl is and I'll just hit Why's Guide to Ruby.
Update: I've now been working through these iPhone programming tutorials. They make me happy.
