NimbleBit Numbers

Introduction
Media coverage about iPhone development seems to be a bit bipolar. There is no shortage of stories covering the few big iPhone success stories - #1 apps that bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars for their developers. Lately there have also been a number of refreshing articles reminding everyone that the vast majority of iPhone developers don’t make enough to cover their costs. So who’s in the middle?

From the beginning, my goal (shared by NimbleBit as a whole) has been to earn enough to keep making fantastic games - not to get rich quick. It became apparent from the start that betting all your chips on a single game or app was a risky (increasingly so) strategy. Luckily casual games are a perfect fit for the iPhone, and I’ve been able to develop a polished casual game every month or so (sometimes with Dave’s help). While we have been fortunate with the success of Scoops (which never made it into the Top 25 Paid Apps) we still think building an entire family of quality games has many advantages. By using cross promotion you can build a brand name and build up a larger fan base. Success of individual games can also be shared by all to a certain extent. You can bring in fans of a particular title who have the potential to grow into cheerleaders for all of the rest of your games. This is certainly NOT an argument for pumping out shovelware. We try to make sure that every one of our games (6 so far) stand on their own and don’t consider them just more lottery tickets.

We’ve decided to release NimbleBit’s sales numbers as proof that it isn’t only rags or riches for small independent developers on the App Store. Hopefully it will give some hope to talented iPhone indies still struggling or waiting to take the plunge into iPhone development. It is my opinion that dedicated developers can survive on the App Store with minimal luck given the right approach and enough hard work.

The Numbers
We’ll start with a raw breakdown of each game. The “sales” numbers are total downloads of a game both free (during promotions) and paid. Most large figures are rounded to digestible whole amounts. The development time listed is a rough estimate and does not include time spent marketing, providing customer service, or developing updates. All revenue figures are after Apple’s cut, but before Uncle Sam’s. All figures are as of June 1st 2009.

Hanoi Plus
Developers: 1
Development time: 3 weeks
Age: 10 months
Sales: 26,000
Rev. (to date): $13,500
Rev. (last month): $380



Scoops
Developers: 1
Development time: 1 month
Age: 8 months
Sales: 170,000
Rev. (to date): $140,000
Rev. (last month): $19,000



Textropolis
Developers: 1
Development time: 1 month
Age: 4.5 months
Sales: 14,000
Rev. (to date): $18,500
Rev. (last month): $1,400



Kyper
Developers: 2
Development time: 1 month
Age: 2 months
Sales: 14,000
Rev. (to date): $880
Rev. (last month): N/A (now free)



Sky Burger
Developers: 2
Development time: 2 months
Age: 1.5 months
Sales: 56,500
Rev. (to date): $17,000
Rev. (last month): $11,400

Graphs
The resolution for some of these graphs gets pretty low in the earlier months, this is because I don’t have saved daily reports going back that far. Sharp dips are usually the result of setting a game to free for a short period.

App Revenue

We started tracking game launches with a news ticker in Sky Burger, in the last month it has been integrated into each of our games. Unfortunately we don’t currently differentiate which game the news ticker is being loaded from. We use the unobtrusive news ticker (usually on the main menu) to provide links to promotions we’re running, new games that have just launched, or just a friendly little message. You can see a large spike during our last Freebie Friday promotion.

NimbleBit game plays per day

Into each game we’ve also integrated a “NimbleStore” which allows players to browse all our games in a custom styled “App Store” launched in game (no kicking the player out to Safari). We track visitors to the NimbleStore using Google Analytics. You can see the same spike for the last Freebie Friday. Unfortunately we don’t currently track how many visitors follow links from the NimbleStore to the real App Store.

NimbleStore visitors per day

NimbleStore front page

NimbleStore game detail page

Conclusion
While we’ve had our moderate successes and failures alike, we still don’t have all the answers when it comes the the ever-evolving App Store. I’m certainly glad we kept going after our first game didn’t top the charts. Looking forward, the best advice we can give is to be passionate about what you’re creating, get involved in the iPhone community, and keep trying new things until you find something that works.

May Dev Of The Month: Noel Llopis (Snappy Touch)

MITCHELL WAITE could think of only one reason that Apple’s legal department would leave a voice message last February asking him to call back: he was about to be sued. Mr. Waite has a tiny software company bearing his name — it has no full-time employees — whose principal product is a field guide to birds called iBird Explorer, which runs on the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

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Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Mitchell Waite plays sounds from his iBird application for the iPhone to attract birds to feeders in his yard.

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Apple featured the app in a TV ad.

He called back and discovered that his life was about to change no less than if the lottery authority had told him he’d won the big prize: Apple had decided to feature iBird in a television commercial.

IBird was one of three applications that appeared in the spot, and while it got only about seven seconds, that was all it needed to become the No. 1 “reference” app in the iPhone App Store, a software star among the 35,000-plus applications now crowding the store’s shelf. The iBird Explorer is offered in different versions, priced from $4.99 to $29.99.

“I look at it like Apple paid me $10 million to show my application on every single major network, every major television show — no, I can’t even put a figure on it,” Mr. Waite said.

It’s a delightful story, not only because it does not involve a lawsuit, but also because it does not involve promotion fees. Apple does not accept money from companies whose products are placed in its commercials or in the other prime real estate, the “Featured” section of the App Store.

This has earned Apple applause from software developers and backers. “Apple doesn’t want the money. It’s a level playing field,” said Matt Murphy, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. If Apple likes the app, he added, “it doesn’t matter if you’re a one-person or a 10,000-person company; they’ll put it in ‘New’ or ‘What’s Hot.’ ”

A while back, TechCrunch covered yet another article complaining about the App Store being more of a Lotto than a marketplace. Setting aside the App Store’s numerous other issues, coverage of iPhone app developers has been divided into two extremes: reassuring yet unlikely success stories, or depressing yet much more likely failure stories.

The general question in all of these articles is: “Can an average guy become a successful iPhone developer?”. The answer depends on how you define success, and on that topic I can speak from my own experience.

If, to you, success means making a million bucks overnight you will most likely be unsuccessful. To me, success is defined as the return on my investment (both in time and money) on the project. In my previous article, I mentioned making somewhere around a hundred dollars a day on iLaugh. However, I didn’t mention how much I invested in the project.

The first version of iLaugh and its subsequent revisions took me very little time to create. I estimate that I invested between ten to twenty hours of my time to create iLaugh 1.0. At my asking rate of $100 per hour, that represents a $1,000 to $2,000 investment. The server running the first iteration of the iLaugh API cost me about $100 per month to maintain.

If you look at the numbers for iLaugh from previous months, I make over $3,000 monthly (for a total of over $8,000 so far). Thus, I consider it a success.

Many people, in response to my previous article, said that I too, was one of the lucky ones, albeit on a smaller scale. And while that may be true, considering the low quality of that first iteration of iLaugh, a more carefully crafted app would likely have done better.

I believe the potential for success is relative to the investment put into anything.

If you look at the familiar success stories, many of them involve reinvestment and good marketing. For instance, Tapulous hit the jackpot with their Tap Tap games. Being good friends with one of their employees, I know exactly how much work goes into their production.

Perhaps one of the most talked-about success stories is Trism. Its developer, Steve Demeter, made an insane $250,000 in just two months. What I believe is the key to Steve’s long-term success, is that instead of buying a fancy sports car, he reinvested his money into founding a sustainable business.

Part of reinvesting, and a facet of development often ignored, are things that a typical developer can’t do. Most importantly: design, copywriting and marketing. These are things that will most likely have to be outsourced. Developers are reluctant to do that, because it’s very costly, but in the end, ignoring it is going to cost them the popularity of their application.

I view iLaugh 1.x as a catalyst towards bigger and, hopefully, even more successful endeavors.

In fact, I have already put a big part of my (in comparison to the numbers above, quite mediocre) earnings into the second iteration of iLaugh. I’ve hired a bunch of people much more talented than I am in their respective fields, and iLaugh 2.0 is coming along really nicely. It will be entirely different and nearly incomparable to the first iteration. There are some very cool things coming.

So, responding to my initial question: “Can an average guy become a successful iPhone developer?”. Yes! An average developer can be successful in the App Store. But it takes hard work, a lot of time, money, and perseverance.

A while back, TechCrunch covered yet another article complaining about the App Store being more of a Lotto than a marketplace. Setting aside the App Store’s numerous other issues, coverage of iPhone app developers has been divided into two extremes: reassuring yet unlikely success stories, or depressing yet much more likely failure stories.

The general question in all of these articles is: “Can an average guy become a successful iPhone developer?”. The answer depends on how you define success, and on that topic I can speak from my own experience.

If, to you, success means making a million bucks overnight you will most likely be unsuccessful. To me, success is defined as the return on my investment (both in time and money) on the project. In my previous article, I mentioned making somewhere around a hundred dollars a day on iLaugh. However, I didn’t mention how much I invested in the project.

The first version of iLaugh and its subsequent revisions took me very little time to create. I estimate that I invested between ten to twenty hours of my time to create iLaugh 1.0. At my asking rate of $100 per hour, that represents a $1,000 to $2,000 investment. The server running the first iteration of the iLaugh API cost me about $100 per month to maintain.

If you look at the numbers for iLaugh from previous months, I make over $3,000 monthly (for a total of over $8,000 so far). Thus, I consider it a success.

Many people, in response to my previous article, said that I too, was one of the lucky ones, albeit on a smaller scale. And while that may be true, considering the low quality of that first iteration of iLaugh, a more carefully crafted app would likely have done better.

I believe the potential for success is relative to the investment put into anything.

If you look at the familiar success stories, many of them involve reinvestment and good marketing. For instance, Tapulous hit the jackpot with their Tap Tap games. Being good friends with one of their employees, I know exactly how much work goes into their production.

Perhaps one of the most talked-about success stories is Trism. Its developer, Steve Demeter, made an insane $250,000 in just two months. What I believe is the key to Steve’s long-term success, is that instead of buying a fancy sports car, he reinvested his money into founding a sustainable business.

Part of reinvesting, and a facet of development often ignored, are things that a typical developer can’t do. Most importantly: design, copywriting and marketing. These are things that will most likely have to be outsourced. Developers are reluctant to do that, because it’s very costly, but in the end, ignoring it is going to cost them the popularity of their application.

I view iLaugh 1.x as a catalyst towards bigger and, hopefully, even more successful endeavors.

In fact, I have already put a big part of my (in comparison to the numbers above, quite mediocre) earnings into the second iteration of iLaugh. I’ve hired a bunch of people much more talented than I am in their respective fields, and iLaugh 2.0 is coming along really nicely. It will be entirely different and nearly incomparable to the first iteration. There are some very cool things coming.

So, responding to my initial question: “Can an average guy become a successful iPhone developer?”. Yes! An average developer can be successful in the App Store. But it takes hard work, a lot of time, money, and perseverance.

Growing iPhone Development Into A Viable Business

When one hears stories from iPhone developers, they’re either from the lucky ones who made insane amounts of money and laugh all the way to the bank, or rather from disappointed developers who consider their efforts a failure.

The latter tend to blame the App Store for the failure of their application(s). Granted, the App Store is a harsh market which has both its advantages and its flaws. But, in my humble opinion, a good craftsman never blames his tools.

The App Store has trends that can be analyzed, and if you’re going to be developing for the iPhone, you need to learn how to adapt. I have learnt this first-hand through experimentation, and have learnt many valuable lessons along the way.

Last September, while working on a much bigger iPhone game, I thought it would be cool to create a quick one-trick application for viewing jokes. I never envisioned that iLaugh would become my most lucrative app that would keep me going while I develop the aforementioned game.

The Y-Axis shows daily revenue in US dollars.

Let’s leave the end of the graph (Feb-Apr) aside for a minute, we’ll get back to it.

You can see the initial release spikes, typical of the App Store, and then a very depressing downwards trend right after release. For the second release, 1.1, I upped the price from $0.99 to $1.99. Which slightly lowered the initial spike revenue. But at that stage, I had a much more mature app which unfortunately, due to lack of effective marketing stagnated at a sub-$20 daily revenue.

But in February, I made pretty much the best decision I have ever made. That, of course, was to release a Lite version. I initially thought it would be a nearly cost-free way to get some free advertising for the premium version. The main reason I put ads inside the Lite version was actually not to create revenue, but rather to give users a reason to upgrade. But, other than that, the Lite version was an identical, fully functional copy of the premium version.

As you can see, it did a pretty decent job of advertising the premium version. Since the mid-Feb release of iLaugh Lite, daily revenue for iLaugh has been much higher than it previously was.

Fortunately, iLaugh Lite became quite popular on the iTunes App Store, and while never entering the global top 100, it has charted as high as #29 on the Entertainment chart, and has been in the top 40 entertainment apps nearly since its release.

While this did have some unexpected consequences, like bringing my entire server down due to excessive traffic which brought the iLaugh service down and forced me to upgrade to a better server, the benefits were pretty clear.

This graph shows daily iLaugh Lite downloads.

This equates to about 100,000 monthly downloads.

Here’s a graph that shows the web-service traffic this generates (since each joke is fetched from my server, this gives me a pretty good overview of the actual usage of the app). Unfortunately, I only started using this particular analytics package on March 2nd, so that’s when the graph starts.

To date, iLaugh has served over 6 million jokes, and it’s going at about one million per week.

So far I left out one pretty important thing: ad revenue. But one always leaves the best for last, right? So here goes:

As the installed user-base for iLaugh Lite grows, so does daily ad revenue. Currently, I’m seeing pretty good numbers. I have around 6 million monthly ad impressions, and as you can see in the above graph, I’m seeing around $100 daily ad revenue.

While these aren’t mind-shattering numbers, I think they give a pretty good overview of what one can achieve as an average developer for the iPhone platform.

Growing iPhone Development Into A Viable Business

When one hears stories from iPhone developers, they’re either from the lucky ones who made insane amounts of money and laugh all the way to the bank, or rather from disappointed developers who consider their efforts a failure.

The latter tend to blame the App Store for the failure of their application(s). Granted, the App Store is a harsh market which has both its advantages and its flaws. But, in my humble opinion, a good craftsman never blames his tools.

The App Store has trends that can be analyzed, and if you’re going to be developing for the iPhone, you need to learn how to adapt. I have learnt this first-hand through experimentation, and have learnt many valuable lessons along the way.

Last September, while working on a much bigger iPhone game, I thought it would be cool to create a quick one-trick application for viewing jokes. I never envisioned that iLaugh would become my most lucrative app that would keep me going while I develop the aforementioned game.

The Y-Axis shows daily revenue in US dollars.

Let’s leave the end of the graph (Feb-Apr) aside for a minute, we’ll get back to it.

You can see the initial release spikes, typical of the App Store, and then a very depressing downwards trend right after release. For the second release, 1.1, I upped the price from $0.99 to $1.99. Which slightly lowered the initial spike revenue. But at that stage, I had a much more mature app which unfortunately, due to lack of effective marketing stagnated at a sub-$20 daily revenue.

But in February, I made pretty much the best decision I have ever made. That, of course, was to release a Lite version. I initially thought it would be a nearly cost-free way to get some free advertising for the premium version. The main reason I put ads inside the Lite version was actually not to create revenue, but rather to give users a reason to upgrade. But, other than that, the Lite version was an identical, fully functional copy of the premium version.

As you can see, it did a pretty decent job of advertising the premium version. Since the mid-Feb release of iLaugh Lite, daily revenue for iLaugh has been much higher than it previously was.

Fortunately, iLaugh Lite became quite popular on the iTunes App Store, and while never entering the global top 100, it has charted as high as #29 on the Entertainment chart, and has been in the top 40 entertainment apps nearly since its release.

While this did have some unexpected consequences, like bringing my entire server down due to excessive traffic which brought the iLaugh service down and forced me to upgrade to a better server, the benefits were pretty clear.

This graph shows daily iLaugh Lite downloads.

This equates to about 100,000 monthly downloads.

Here’s a graph that shows the web-service traffic this generates (since each joke is fetched from my server, this gives me a pretty good overview of the actual usage of the app). Unfortunately, I only started using this particular analytics package on March 2nd, so that’s when the graph starts.

To date, iLaugh has served over 6 million jokes, and it’s going at about one million per week.

So far I left out one pretty important thing: ad revenue. But one always leaves the best for last, right? So here goes:

As the installed user-base for iLaugh Lite grows, so does daily ad revenue. Currently, I’m seeing pretty good numbers. I have around 6 million monthly ad impressions, and as you can see in the above graph, I’m seeing around $100 daily ad revenue.

While these aren’t mind-shattering numbers, I think they give a pretty good overview of what one can achieve as an average developer for the iPhone platform.

New Yorker iPhone Cover Boosts Sales for Brushes App

Artist Jorge Colombo may have drawn the dreamy, nocturnal cityscape of Manhattan on the June 1 cover, using his iPhone, but a software engineer named Steve Sprang built Brushes, the iPhone application that transformed Mr. Columbo’s swipes into digital strokes.

The novelty and popularity of the cover has provided a healthy boost in sales for the 32-year-old who works shifts in a coffee shop when he’s not developing applications for the iPhone and Mac.

On Monday, Mr. Sprang said the application had its highest selling day since it was first released into Apple’s App Store in August, with 2,700 copies at $4.99 apiece flying off the virtual shelves.

“That’s even bigger than when Apple featured the application on iTunes,” said Mr. Sprang, who estimated that on average the application sells roughly 60 to70 copies each day.

To date, the application has sold around 40,000 copies, he said.

The flurry of attention and sales was something of a surprise to Mr. Sprang, who said he first learned Mr. Colombo’s illustration would appear on the upcoming cover of the weekly magazine when he received a call from a newspaper interested in interviewing him about it.

“Now, it’s everywhere,” he said.

Before trying his hand at building iPhone applications, Mr. Sprang worked at Apple for seven years as a software engineer, developing presentation software such as Keynote.

Last March, he decided he was ready for a different challenge. “I wanted to strike on my own,” he said. “The iPhone presented a good opportunity.”

Always a fan of graphic design and early drawing programs for Mac computers such as MacArt, he decided to create a digital palette for artists.

“A painting app for the iPhone seemed natural thing given the phone,” he said. “It’s very tactile and touching.”

iLotto stories have fueled the exodus of some developers eager to try their hand on the platform. But in March 2008 when Mr. Sprang quit his job, Apple had just released the software developer’s kit to third-party developers. “There wasn’t really an iPhone developer community at that point,” he said. “No one knew what it was going to be like.”

And although he has yet to rake in the six-figure sums that some developers have accumulated from their creations, Mr. Sprang says he’s thrilled to see an artistic community flourishing around his application.

“Some developers are able to make hundreds of thousands dollars doing this,” he said. “I’m not at their level. But I am able to make a living and support myself doing this, which is what I wanted to do.”

Ganhando dinheiro na AppStore

For The Sake Of All That Is Good, Ignore The App Store Gold Rush

• App Sales Coorelation Between Demo and Paid Versions

  Posted: Sun, 10 May 2009 21:42:06 +0000

  David Frampton from Majic Jungle Software has shared an interesting graph that shows how sales of his game Chopper (iTunes Link) have been increased by the release of a free version, Chopper Lite (iTunes Link).

  It’s an interesting move. Chopper has been around for a while, it was first released in early September, 2008. Chopper has also spent quite a bit of time in the top 100 lists. It had even peaked at number 2 in all paid apps in the US, and spent 9 days as the number 2 paid game during the Christmas/New Year time frame. A great time to be on the top lists with all of the new devices and people with gift cards to spend.

  But, that was months ago. Sales, while never disappearing, had started to fall from their peak. So David decided to release a free demo version, Chopper Lite. A smart move if the example of some other games are any example. iShoot rode to number one on the games and all paid apps lists in the US, many believe, due to it’s demo version. Similarly, Fast Lane Racing also saw a boost in sales once they released a free version of their app.

  So, with that, releasing a demo version seems to make sense. It requires a minimal investment. You do risk the chance of diluting the sales of your app. But if a demo version of the app is done properly, it’s a kind of taste for the app and just whets the appetite of the customer for the main version. Deciding how much to put in your demo version is a tough topic, and one we’ll have to discuss at another time.

  The graph below shows a month of sales for both versions of Chopper starting out on the date the free version, Chopper Lite (yellow line) was released. At the time of release, you can see that the paid version of Chopper (green line) was selling around 300 copies / day and increased to a peak of just over 800/day during this month.

  

  The graph shows that the release of the demo version had an immediate impact on the paid version, easily doubling sales in less than a week. The interesting thing is the direct correlation of the free version downloads to the paid version download. When one does better, so does the other. The spikes, mainly come on weekends. Which is interesting as I would have assumed that most of the sales would come during the week. That all, of course, depends on your demographic and who is actually buying the app.

  Also notice how the paid version sales slowly come down after a peak in the free version downloads. “Whenever I download a lite version it usually takes weeks before I then buy the full version. I’d say that is exactly what is going on here, the lite version is having a more long term effect, despite having peaked in downloads some time ago.”, theorized David on this trend. A theory that seems sound. It could also have to do with how long it takes a user to complete everything they have available to them in the demo version. Once they are done with the demo they will decide if they want to just replay the demo, delete it, or hopefully, purchase the full version.

  David also notes that Chopper and Chopper Lite have been far more popular in Germany than any other country.

  This, of course, is just an example. Releasing a demo version will not work for everyone but shows that having a demo version can be beneficial. In this specific case, David released a demo version at just the right time. Both for the sales level of his game, and for the market at the time. Thanks, David, for sharing this info.

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Sales Stats Tools for iPhone Apps

AppViz charts all your app store sales reports for you, and for a huge time saving it logs in to iTunes Connect for you and downloads them automatically. An added bonus (assuming you can stomach reading them) is that AppViz will download all your app reviews too! AppViz charts new downloads, upgrade downloads, all downloads, and sales revenue. Graphs can be plotted by different date ranges and for different countries, and it converts everything to your own currency. AppViz doesn’t currently support multiple iTunes Connect accounts, but there are work-arounds and the feature will be added soon. I’d like to see it handle the financial reports a bit differently to make it easier to reconcile with payments from Apple. Highly recommended.

AppSales Mobile is similar to AppViz, but its for your iPhone! AppSales source code is in Google Code right now, download with SVN and pop it on your phone with a debug build. Great distribution model for us developers! It’s a fantastically designed app, squeezing lots of charts onto the phone without anything ever look squeezed. Charts and reports show daily or weekly sales revenue with drill down by product or country. AppSales does have one big drawback, it is oriented around revenue from paid apps. It will show download number for free apps mixed in with the overall report data, but it doesn’t include downloads in the line graphs, they are revenue only. (Back in the day I used to use AppSales for the mac, but it’s no longer being distributed or updated.)

My App Sales is another sales stats checker for your iPhone, but unlike AppSales it reports and charts both free and paid apps. Reports are broken down by day and week, with your account totals and app by app too, showing new downloads, update downloads, refunds, and sales revenue for paid apps. From the reports screen you can drill down to see that data country by country. The app will chart your data by sales revenue or downloads by day or week. My App Sales is the work of Oliver Drobnik, and he’s still maintaining and actively marketing the app.

MajicRank and AppRanking scan iTunes servers and figure out apps ranking in iTunes stores around the world. As well as top 100 free and top 100 paid, the app stores have top 100 free and paid for each app category and game sub category, all of which can be browsed on the app store available on the iPhone and Touch themselves. I was very surprised to learn that Hit Tennis is in the top 100 paid sports games even in many countries including the USA, and its even in the top 100 paid games in a few countries around the world. This is really encouraging, and moves up the next release of Hit Tennis in my priorities. MajicRank is the first of the sales stats tools to record ranking data over time and graph it. Graphing ranking data alongside sales data and your calendar of marketing actions is very powerful for understanding how to tune your marketing plans to make the most from your apps. If you’re not sure about what all the different ranking lists are, read: app store top 100 rankings explained.

Mobclix shows app rankings on their site, with graphs. They are charting top 100 popularity free and paid combined, for the USA app store (so their numbers won’t match MajicRank’s numbers). Go Imangi!

AppStore Clerk is a simple utility that parses daily and weekly download reports and shows you the data in an easy to read table, showing new downloads and updates.

Heartbeat is a fully featured subscription website that features everything in all the tools above mixed with crash reporting, analytics, and a whole lot more. When I sell my millionth app I’ll try it :-).

AppStatz is another online solution to check out, though it’s still in private beta. (thanks @shanev). AppStatz - let me in your beta :-)

Drop me a line and tell me about the tools you use.

Best Books for iPhone Development

Some brilliant iPhone developer books are out now which are great for learning iPhone native app and web development, and handy references for existing Cocoa Touch experts. In this article I review several titles and give you my pick of the best for learning the native SDK and Objective-C programming:

iPhone in Action

iPhone in Action has very broad coverage of developing for the iPhone, and it introduces everything you need to know. The first third of the book covers web stuff - both how to revamp your existing website so it works great on both the desktop and iPhone, and also how to create iPhone specific web apps. Topics include design, CSS, iUI (the awesome library to make native looking web apps), graphics with webkit canvas, Dashcode, and debugging tips. The middle third of the book gets you started with native SDK development, starting with an overview of Objective-C and XCode, and then on to lots of good step by step tutorials for learning how to use Interface Builder and the different kinds of view controllers to create your GUI. The final third is an intro to important SDK programming topics including graphics, web interaction, SQLite databases, using the address book, etc. The book is invaluable for beginners because it shows you all the possibilities of both web and SDK and it introduces all the key topics - something no other single title does. Experts will want this title too for the detailed web development topics.

Beginning iPhone Development - Exploring the iPhone SDK

This fantastic book is an APress title, I don’t know how they do it but APress has great authors and every APress book I get is a home run. The book explains how to use the Cocoa SDK to write iPhone apps in very clear easy to digest steps. It has a lot more detail and an easier pace than ‘iPhone in Action’. View controllers are the most important part of the SDK to get to grips with, and they are the hardest to figure out. In this title we get 200 delicious pages devoted to them, compared to just 60 in ‘iPhone in Action’. ‘Beginning iPhone Development’ only covers the SDK and Interface Builder, so it has room for some useful SDK topics you won’t find written about elsewhere like UI’s that rotate to landscape mode and localization for different countries. This is the best book for learning native iPhone development.

Learn Objective-C on the Mac

Also on APress, this is _the_ book for learning and mastering Objective-C. Great writing, very easy to understand, and excellent as both a tutorial and reference. The authors assume you already know a little C syntax (from C, C++, Java, etc), so this is the key text for switchers. Still not figured out memory management retain counts and auto-release pools? Protocols, categories and inheritance a mystery? It’s all in this book. Recommended for all iPhone developers.

The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook

A great collection of recipes for using the SDK in the form ‘how to make my iPhone app do X’ format. These programming nuggets are lying on the page waiting for you to pinch ‘em and drop right into your own apps saving lots of time and giving you some great new ideas. Beginners and experts alike will learn many new tricks, everything is explained with clarity and brevity. For example after just 1 hour with this book I realized that my own app had buggy table views that I was able to easily fix using recipes from the book. Some of the recipes even mention undocumented APIs that allow neat UI details you’ve seen in Apple’s apps but otherwise couldn’t figure out how to do. This book should stay by any iPhone developers side.