When Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone in January of 2007, he referred to it as a combination of three product categories: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device. When he first announced each of those three feature sets on stage, the iPod and the phone received tremendous applause from the crowd. However, the Internet communications aspect only got a few polite claps. In 2007, the iPhone ran on EDGE (2G) cellular networks. There was no iCloud. The App Store wouldn't exist for over a year; iPhone OS was a closed platform. At the time, there just wasn't anything particularly exciting about an internet communicator.

Fast-forward to the present day: our phones are running the 10^th version of iOS, and each year iOS developers are getting paid over $10 B from app sales and in-app-purchases. Since the days of the original iPhone, we've seen the introduction of the iPod Touch, the iPad Air, iPad Mini, and iPad Pro, and in the last year or so the Apple Watch and Apple TV as well. . If it hasn't been made clear yet, the iOS ecosystem's growth has been explosive! While this is nothing but excitement for iOS users, for someone who is about to set off on their journey as an iOS developer, all of these facts just mean that there is much more to learn!

While the iPod and the mobile phone pieces of Steve's original iPhone pitch are still there, the defining aspect of the iOS success story is its internet communicator capabilities, which you are about to dive into with iOS app development using Xcode. In this first chapter, my goal is to make sure you are informed, prepared, and excited to begin developing for the iOS platform. We'll be covering a wide variety of topics, including:

So without any further delay, let's go!