After the WWDC announcements last week, there is a lot to be excited about when it comes to developing for the iPhone. One thing that can potentially help applications run smoother and faster (especially when it comes to networking on the iPhone) is threading. Threading allows developers to run two or more tasks in concurrency. Apple makes this pretty easy in Objective-C and XCode.

Last week, we talked about frameworks in relation to developing for the iPhone. With iPhone OS 3.0, Apple has updated and added many frameworks, as well as other interesting tidbits for iPhone developers. For instance, push notifications will now be included into the operating systems and will allow developers to send updates to users without their app being in the foreground. From a developer standpoint, this creates a lot more functionality for an app. Furthermore…

A while back, we were discussing memory management and how that works when developing for the iPhone. This time, I will be talking about frameworks, which contain code that can make programming something easier, but isn’t necessarily needed in every program.

After discussing iPhone file types last week, we can move on to memory management. On the current version of the iPhone, there is only 128MB of RAM, which is far lower than the usual 2+GB we see on desktop and laptop Macs. iPhone developers must keep this in mind when they are designing their games and writing their code in order to reduce the number of crashes and give the user a great experience with their app.

Now that we’ve got beta testing out of the way, we can discuss the different file types found in XCode. When starting a new project, XCode allows developers to choose from a variety of different starting points for their applications. For iPhone developing, some of the options include Navigation Controller projects or Tab Bar Controller projects. These aren’t file types per se, but they do affect what files you start with.

After discussing APIs last week, it’s time to go over the importance of beta testing. When it comes to the iPhone, this is called Ad Hoc development, and can be great for developers who want to get excitement out about their product or just make sure it works. Beta testing allows applications to be run under a variety of environments that the developer may never have been able to product otherwise.

With the front end in the past, it’s time to talk about the back end of developing for the iPhone. More specifically, the API system that many websites are implementing to make developing applications for their sites easier and easier every day. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Google Analytics, and many other sites now have them and have been using them for a while to benefit everyone.

If you’re like me, you absolutely love coding the back end to apps, but you have very little design sense. To me, the fun lies in solving the problem, not necessarily in making a great interface (although I do know that it is just as important as the back end). Thankfully Interface Builder comes with the iPhone SDK developer tools and allows programmers to easily lay out and visualize what their interface will look like. When it comes to creating this part of the app, it would be a lot more difficult without Interface Builder.

This week I am going to talk about what it is like after you get your apps out there and into the world. This is truly where the real fun begins. First, there is the initial excitement of people out there enjoying something you have spent many hours on. It is great to see something you put your heart into during its development actually make it out into the real world. Then, you realize that although it can feel great, your job isn’t done.

This week I will be discussing some resources where you can find information if you want to get started or need help with developing for the iPhone. There are many places that can be found for this type of thing, and Apple provides developers with a plentiful amount of resources such as guides and what not. However, some are better than others.