Would This Be A Simple iPhone App to Create?

I created and launched an Android app a couple months ago (with lots of help from this site, thanks!).

Well, I've a made a couple hundred dollars. So naturally I'm thinking that if I can sell this on Android,it should sell on the iPhone. I pieced together the Android app by just searching forums on the individual parts of the app.

I don't have a Mac or iPhone. But I'm looking to purchase a Mini and borrow a friends iPhone 3. However, since creating the Android app was free, I'm wondering if creating it on iPhone would be fairly simple before I drop $800 on a mini and developer's license.

Would this type of app be fairly easy to make?

1. Splash screen - 3 seconds
2. Main Menu with 5 buttons. Each button leads to a sub menu
3. Sub Menu with anywhere from 3-9 image buttons. Each button goes a full view of the image.
4. Full开发者_开发百科 screen view - has play button, which when pressed, plays a 3-6 second video.

Example:

1. Main Menu - Buttons that say: Cat, Dog, Fish, whatever. Users selects Dog
2. Sub Menu (thumbnail images act as buttons)- Retriever, Lab, German Shepherd,... User selects Retriever
3. Full image view of Retriever with a play button. User selects play button.
4. Video is played of Retriever running around.

It was pretty simple on Android but without any experience with Objective C and such, I'm not sure how difficult it would be to build on iPhone.

Also, I'm not thinking that this would be a quick app for me to build. Because I started with no experience in Java and using Eclipse, my android app took me about 100 hours to create.

I've seen on here suggestions for checking out the Standford iPhone course in iTunes as well as a few other sites for reference.

One thing to mention is that I have Flash Professional 5.5. I read that I could use this to create an iPhone app as well (without having to purchase a mac). I've never used flash before. Would this program be easy to create in Flash as well. Ideally, I know it's better to create in native code, but this would save me purchasing a mini. Thanks again.

All things are relative, of course, but that's about as simple as apps get. The splash screen is simply a case of dropping an image in, the main menu is just a load of buttons, you can use a navigation controller to go from screen to screen, an image view for the full screen image, and a movie player to play the movie. There's very little code to write, it's just hooking up things that are built into the platform.

Yes this app is about as simple as you can get while still including a decent range of concepts for a starter project (multiple controllers, buttons, videos, images). I think it would make a good introduction project to Objective-C and CocoaTouch (the iOS interface APIs -- which at least in my opinion are much more intuitive than the Android APIs).

Objective-C is very similar to Java in concept, just very different in syntax. Once you get over the syntax differences, you should feel right at home. I learned in the opposite direction, but I was able to pick up Java very quickly because of my Objective-C knowledge. I think it should be similarly easy to go the other way.

I highly recommend you utilize Apple's documentation. They do a great job of explaining everything without needing to read third party books. I learned iOS programming directly from the Apple documentation without even having any object oriented programming experience (I had only done some light procedural PHP).

The first thing you should read is this guide for an overview of Objective-C: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ObjectiveC/Introduction/introObjectiveC.html

Then spend a day before you even touch the code reading this guide for a good overview of iOS programming concepts: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html

Then just utilize the iOS class references first (usually just searching google for a class name like UIView will have the class reference as the top link) and this site for everything else. That should be all you need. You can buy some iOS books if you want, but I haven't found them necessary.

Sample codes are available that can easily help you figure out how to implement features.

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/navigation/#section=Resource%20Types&topic=Sample%20Code

I would recommend once you have the mac for programming, taking a look at the same code. In Xcode 4 you can hit the alt key and select an object such as NSString or UILabel and it will show you quick references and then you can go to the resourced material from it.

For the type of app you are wanting to do, it would easily be possible to perform the actions you listed. I have done them in some of my apps. A standard view with your splash screen on it and you can use interface builder for a lot of the things you want to display.

I would recommend watching tutorial videos on the web for insight on how things work. You can pick up a lot of basics. Just be careful not to pick up bad habits. If in doubt refer the apple docs.