Process to Become an iPhone Developer

Becoming an iPhone developer can make you some decent money, depending on how much work you put into promoting your product, and how useful or entertaining your product is. Putting your iPhone product on the market takes a certain process and capital. The process might be simple or excruciatingly complicated, depending on where you are.

Required Operating System

1. Get your hands on a Macintosh computer. The computer does not have to be extremely up to date; a rudimentary "every-day" Mac will do just fine.

Apple Software Development Kit for iPhone Applications

2. To create applications for the iPhone, you need to have the SDK (Software Development Kit) for these specific applications. You can download the iPhone SDK from the Apple developer center (see "iPhone Development Page" in resources). This SDK will assist you in creating properly functioning iPhone applications through the Objective C programming language.

Learning to Code in Objective C

3. If you already know one of the "C languages," then all you have to worry about is getting used to the SDK and the Application Programming Interface (API). If, however, you still have not learned any C language, you have a long way to go. You should start getting acquainted particularly with Objective C, which is the language you will primarily be programming with. There are many Objective C tutorials online (see "Objective C Tutorial" in resources for an example).

Joining the iPhone Developer Program

4. To actually be able to distribute your software on the market using Apple's online application store, you need to join Apple's program for iPhone developers (see "iPhone Developer Program" in resources). As of January 2010, standard membership is $99 and gives you access to test your applications on an actual iPhone. This method is far better than using a simple on-screen emulator.

The Development Process

5. Your first projects might not come out so well. Submissions to Apple might get rejected because of many bugs in your code. This should not stop you. Everyone goes through this sort of thing in the development world. Debug and test your code to make sure that there are almost no noticeable bugs in your application. If you want to make some decent money, write an application that is highly demanded by the public. After some time, you will begin making applications very fluently and familiarize yourself with Objective C.