How to Start with iOS App Development

Apple has been one of the leading names in the mobile industry for its iPhone and iPad series. Since the iOS platform holds a major portion of the mobile market shares, enterprises both large and small want to deploy applications from the App Store. This is the reason why an increasing number of developers have to learn ways of building apps for the iPhone and iPad devices. iOS application development is not very difficult, say mobile market researchers. Below is a comprehensive guide on developing mobile apps for Apple's operating system which beginners in the industry must abide by.

1. Plan the Structure of the iOS App - Planning and sketching are the first phases of designing an iOS app. For this, the developer must understand what purpose the iOS application will serve and why would users want to download it. After the developer is aware of his/her app functionality, features should be planned in a way to enable fulfilment of all the app functions. This is the most important stage of iOS app development and getting this phase right will enable developers to save up on the trouble involved in iOS app coding. 

2. Pay Attention to the UI Bar Elements – The user interface of an iOS app must contain the status bar, toolbar, navigation bar, and tab bar. Elements such as the battery level of the device, the phone carrier,reception  bars, and 3G connection must be included in the status bar. The toolbar, which appears at the app bottoms, contains icons like download, share, delete, etc. The navigation bar comes in the form of a button usually on the left side of iOS apps. They are used for navigating between page hierarchies. The tab bar is used for switching from one view to another which appears in the form of a highlighted icon. Several iOS apps however do not have the tab bar since its function is similar to that of the toolbar. 

3. Use the Interface Builder – This is a tool commonly used in iOS app development for allowing building of app user interfaces visually. Using this tool the developer can drag built in objects like tab bars, buttons, labels, and sliders to the app UI and then configure them by tweaking panels and palettes. The Interface Builder is also used for connecting actions and targets and manipulating objects bindings and controllers.

4. Xcode – Mastering the Xcode is important for all developers of iOS apps. Xcode is the integrated development environment (IDE) that is used not only as a code editor but also in autocompleting support, making analysis of static codes, searching for bugs in the compiled code, and also debugging. 

5. Learn Objective C – This is the programming language used for the development of native applications that can run effectively on the iOS platform. Since Objective C is considered a superset of C language, iOS developers are also asked to be acquainted with use of the C scripting language. However, C++, PyObjC, MacRuby, and MonoTouch are alternative languages that software developers can use for creating iOS apps; though researchers are of the view that mastering C and Objective C are very important for successful iOS app development.

The app development industry is recruiting an increasing number of iOS developers since Apple's platform is used in most enterprises worldwide. The above tips are important to remember for both beginners and experienced iOS app developers.