What is iPhone SDK?

What is iPhone SDK?

The iPhone SDK or iPhone software development toolkit is a collection of API and necessary tool to write, test, debug and build the software for the iPhone. The iPhone SDK includes the API and components to create nice GUI for iPhone. It has also its API to interact with iPhone components such as camera, speaker and microphone.

In this section we will see the different components of the iPhone SDK. The latest version of iPhone SKD is 3.0 ( as on May 6, 2009).

The first version of iPhone SDK was released on March 6, 2008. Since onwards the apple is releasing the new versions of the iPhone SDK with new features.

The iPhone SDK is included in the Xcode IDE, which is the integrated development environment for the iPhone applications. The Xcode is intuitive IDE allowing the developers to write, test, debug and release the application easily.

Xcode IDE:

Components of iPhone SDK

The iPhone SDK includes the following components to make the development easier and organized.

1. Cocoa Touch
   It provides API containing the components that allows the developers to build applications for iPhone. It includes API for
   * Multi-touch events and controls
   

   * Accelerometer support

   * View hierarchy

   * Localization (i18n)

   * Camera support

2. Media
   It provides the support for:
   

   * OpenAL

   * audio mixing and recording

   * Video playback

   * Image file formats

   * Quartz

   * Core Animation

   * OpenGL ES

3. Core Services
   It provides the API to access the following core services:
   

   * Networking

   * Embedded SQLite database

   * Core Location

   * Threads

4. OS X Kernel
   

   * TCP/IP

   * Sockets

   * Power management

   * File system

   * Security

The Xcode IDE is only available for the Mac OS X platform. You can by any latest mac machine for the development of the iPhone applications.