CS 342: Mobile Application Development

Setting up Xcode

There's nothing to hand in for this assignment.

Let's get started with Swift, Xcode, and iOS development.

• If you have a Mac, download and install Xcode. If you don't, you can use the version of Xcode (6.2) installed in the CS labs on the third floor of the CMC. (There's also the much harder road of getting VMWare to run MacOS on a PC, but you're on your own if you go that route.) As some of the online discussions note, a Mac Mini is cheap (where $600 list price or $350 on ebay is the definition of "cheap"), but that's certainly not necessary for this class.
• Create a new project and explore its contents. Build and run it on the emulator. Try it on both iPhone and iPad emulators.
• Try out ButtonDemo and other samples in my swift_samples repository.
• Collect your questions and post them on slack or bring them to class.

Apple's iOS tutorial is very good for getting started with Xcode and UI construction, but when they show code, it's Objective C, not Swift. There are also good getting-started resources on the official Swift site, such as the videos linked on this resources page.

You can also search for things like "swift ios tutorial" to get lots of help. I find this one by Ray Wenderlich (and Wenderlich's more advanced tutorials) to be clear, to the point, and well written, but there's tons of other stuff out there. Watch out for dated or obsolete information, of course. Evaluating the suitability of a particular online resource is always a good exercise for your critical reading skills.