Were to start with Apple programming?
I am wanting to become a Apple developer and wanted to know what people recommend were to start? What books are the best to teach you or is there any other resources you would recommend? I am currently getting ready to get a macbook to start writing code because my G5 wont cut doing the new stuff. Thank You for all your recommendations and please have a great day =)
Register as a Mac Developer and download Xcode and GCC. And learn UNIX: Apple has quite a few programming tools practically out of the box because it is a BSD UNIX:
http://osxfaq.com/Tutorials/LearningCenter/
http://developer.apple.com/internet/opensource/opensourcescripting.html
http://aplawrence.com/MacOSX/macosxshell.html
Your G5 certainly cuts it for the basic stuff. If you wantt to develop for it iPhone or iPad you want to learn cocoa and Objective C. BE WARNED about Java. I’m an Open Source kinda guy, and in fact I’ve been playing with Objective C on Linux since the nineties. It got its start on NeXT Computers which Jobs was doing when he was forced out of Apple, since he used the GNU Tools in NeXT Step technology (which became Mac OS X) it crossed over in something called GNUStep, there was a little unpleasantness butt he showed that while he is no friend of open source and doesn’t like it much he understands the obligations and is willing to live with them when it suits his purpose.
The whole Oracle vs. Google thing is an attempt to monetize Java at the expense of Open Source and Oracle’s relationship with Google. It’s NOT well thought out. Jobs doesn’t go for that sort of thing. There are other things Jobs doesn’t go for (bad coding drives him up the wall) which Oracle has been doing. He’s been suggesting he’s going to deprecate Java even on the Mac. While that’ upset quite a few people it’s surprised almost no one. I frankly think people are wasting their time making hackintosh systems for machines which aren’t engineered for it when they could be making a dream operating system out of the Darwin Kernel which doesn’t infringe on Apple’s copyrighted material — but which would certainly run on Apple’s machines. Aside from Linux you have FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. All of which are free OSes. Once you know something ab out UNIX and programming you might look at the Linux Live CD dyne:bolic which is one of the best use of Apple Open Source technology I’ve seen — and doesn’t infringe.
Apple sells a hardware/software combination which it’s worth swallowing whole. It’s targeted towards high end consumer and artistic and humanist worker — it’s optimized for presentation graphics. It also builds on the stable number-crunching technology of UNIX which most computer science evolved on, and it’s worth understanding that as well if you want to develop for it.
Writing my next book, on an Apple IIc