My First iPhone App

I did it.  Three days ago I submitted my first iPhone app, Flip It!, to the app store for approval.

I’ve been primarily a Windows programmer for the last 12 years.  So how did I make the transition to writing iPhone apps?

About 5 months ago, I went to lunch with a good friend and former co-worker.  He was very excited about the fact he had recently purchased a MacBook Pro; which caught me a little off guard, since he is a hard-core Windows developer.  He then explained he was still doing Windows development but with Visual Studio running in VMware Fusion. He raved about the laptop itself and OS X, but also about how well Visual Studio ran under Fusion.  I was due for a new laptop myself, so I did a little research of my own and was surprised to see how many Visual Studio developers had made the switch to a Mac.  So I took the plunge, and I’m happy to report that both the Mac and VMware Fusion have lived up to expectations.

As any self-respecting geek would do, I wanted to learn as much as I could about the Mac and OS X.  I read some blogs and books, but knew I wouldn’t fully appreciate it until I started programming in OS X.  I started reading a little about Cocoa development and Objective-C, but quickly realized I needed my own project to work on and not just “Hello World” apps.  I already owned an iPhone and writing an app for it seemed like the logical choice.

It took about a month of nights and weekends (again, I’m a Windows programmer by day) to begin to feel productive in Objective-C and Cocoa Touch.  After three or four more weeks I had my app complete and submitted to the app store for review.

Now I get to wait and see how long the approval process takes…