My talk at St Paul's School.

1. iOS Dev Story

2. • Why making mobile apps?
• How to make an app?
• How to get started?
• Resources

3. about:me
• I’m Anh Quang Do
• I make mobile apps
• I run quanganhdo.com

4. Why making mobile apps?

5. It’s fun!

8. Profit

9. Writing Kit = Text editor +
Researching tools
http://getwritingkit.com

10. Numbers
• 1 developer
• 1 year in the making
• 1 month on the App Store
• New & Noteworthy iPad Productivity app in 8
countries
• 1/2 rating

12. Idea
• Who?
• What?
• When?
• Where?
• Why?

13. Font choices
Gestures
Bookmarks
Auto-save
Formatting tools
Snippets
Document outline
Web browser Preview
Reading list Word definitions
750+ search engines
Ad-blocking
Sharing tools
Image uploading

15. Problems
• Complex
• Many points of failure
• Time-consuming

16. How I solved it
• Break down into 2 components: editor +
browser with researching capability
• The editor alone isn’t really special, while the
browser is
• Work on the browser (Cyberspace) & ship it
• Work on the editor (Writing Kit) & ship it
• Continue to refine & release updates

17. Cyberspace Writing Kit
the browser the editor

18. Successful app = Idea + Design + Code + ...
Execution

19. The most important thing is shipping products

20. Design
• Pen and paper
• Wireframes and prototypes
• Show them to friends!

23. Code
• Be motivated!
• Practice makes perfect
• Don’t hesitate to ask for help
• Friends
• StackOverflow
• Twitter

24. Last 10%
• Promote
• Words of mouth
• Website
• Advertising
• Support
• Twitter
• Email

25. So, how to get started?

26. Build something.

27. Resources
• Tapworthy: Designing great iPhone apps (Josh
Clark)
• iPhone app development: The missing manual
(Craig Hockenberry)
• App savvy: Turning ideas into iPad & iPhone apps
customer really want (Ken Yarmosh)

28. More resources
• The C Programming Language (K&R)
• iPhone Programming (The Big Nerd Ranch Guide)
• iTunes U
• Developing apps for iOS (Stanford)
• Advanced iPhone development (Madison Area
Technical College)
• WWDC 2011 (Apple)

29. Even more resources
• StackOverflow (http://stackoverflow.com)
• Hacker News (http://news.ycombinator.com)
• reddit (http://reddit.com/r/programming)

30. Questions?