Alasdair Allan is a senior research fellow in Astronomy at the University of Exeter. As part of his work there he is building a distributed peer-to-peer network of telescopes which, acting autonomously, will reactively schedule observations of time-critical events. On the side, Alasdair runs a small technology consulting business writing bespoke software and building open hardware, and is currently developing a series of iPhone applications to monitor and manage cloud based services and distributed sensor networks.

Get the hands-on experience you need to program for the iPhone and iPod Touch. With this easy-to-follow guide, you'll build several sample applications by learning how to use Xcode tools, the Objective-C programming language, and the core frameworks. Before you know it, you'll not only have the skills to develop your own apps, you'll know how to sail through the process of submitting apps to the iTunes App Store. Whether you're a developer new to Mac programming or an experienced Mac developer ready to tackle the iPhone and iPod Touch, Learning iPhone Programming will give you a head start on building market-ready iPhone apps. * Start using Xcode right away, and learn how to work with Interface Builder * Take advantage of model-view-controller (MVC) architecture with Objective-C * Build a data-entry interface, and learn how to parse and store the data you receive * Solve typical problems while building a variety of challenging sample apps * Understand the demands and details of App Store and ad hoc distribution * Use iPhone's accelerometer, proximity sensor, GPS, digital compass, and camera * Integrate your app with iPhone's preference pane, media playback, and more