iPhone applications are indeed adding on to the utility of iPhone. It was March 6th, 2008 that marked the beginning of iPhone application development , especially, for the third party developers. On March 6th, 2008 Apple released a SDK (software development kit) exclusively for iPhone and iTouch. Here’s a step-by-step look into the iPhone application development and release:

The third party developer designs an application for iPhone using the SDK. The SDK can be downloaded free by Intel-Macintosh users. The iPhone runs on the MAC OS X 1.5 and hence, all the applications can be developed only on this platform. The SDK too runs only on this operating system. The application is tested in the ‘iPhone simulator’. The developer has to pay the Apple developer connection membership fee to facilitate the loading of the developed applications onto the phone. The applications can be sold or distributed through App Store only. The developer has the right to assign a price to the application but would have to share 70% of the price with App store. If the iPhone applications are found to be infringing the guidelines of iPhone mobile application development , then Apple holds complete authority to ban the particular application.

Developers can build applications in various categories, which include:

Office/business applications. Multimedia applications. Fun/games applications. Internet/web applications. Utility applications and so on.

Xcode Suite
Xcode is Apple’s suite of tools for application development. The integrated development environment (IDE), also named the Xcode, is the primary tool of the Xcode suite. The suite also includes the interface builder and the Apple developer’s documentation.

Interface builder is a graphical editor for designing user interface components for the iPhone applications.

Jailbreaking

Although, iPhone applications are to strictly released on App store, non-approved (by Apple) iPhone applications cabe released to jailbroken iphones using unofficial installers like Installer and Cydia. Jailbreakingis one of the challenges faced by Apple, as it deviates from the norms and regulations of iphone open application development .

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