SO YOU WANT TO TEACH AN IPHONE PROGRAMMING COURSE?

According to a Pew Research survey conducted in April and May 2010, an estimated 82 percent of adult Americans now own a mobile phone and nearly 25% of United States adults use mobile apps on their phones. The Apple iPhone was introduced in 2007 and to date has been a cultural phenomenon in addition to being a commercial success. According to Apple's quarterly earnings, close to 60 million iPhone's have been sold through the end of June 2010. The success of the iPhone can at least partially be attributed to the iPhone ecosystem consisting of mobile device hardware, the iOS operating system, software developer tools, and the App Store - all created and controlled by Apple. To date, over 300,000 apps are available in the App Store, and Apple has reported that over 1 billion dollars in profit has been paid to iPhone developers. The Department of Computer and Information Technology at Purdue University strives to keep its curriculum current and to teach courses using best-of-breed technologies. For this reason, an undergraduate, upper-level course on iPhone application development was offered during the Fall 2010 semester. Our department has been teaching software development for mobile devices since 2002, but the Fall 2010 semester was the first using Apple development tools for iOS devices including the iPhone. In this paper we will discuss our experiences teaching the course. Topics will include obstacles faced, the selection and purchase Macintosh computers for our mobile computing lab, selection and purchasing of mobile devices, course pedagogy, textbook selection, student assessment, and unexpected problems are presented. Finally, conclusions and lessons learned are addressed.