Need a point in the right direction

I am an aspiring iPhone app developer, as if you haven't heard this plenty of times. I am here to ask where I should continue my learning next.

To help you answer my questions, I should probably give you a little background first.

I came up with an idea for an app in January and have since bought 4 books on Objective-C and iOS programming. The books I purchased: "Programming in Objective-C 5th Edition - Stephen Kochan", "iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide 3rd Edition - Hillegass", "The Core iOS 6 Developer's Cookbook - Erica Sadun", and also " The Advanced iOS 6 Developer's Cookbook - Erica Sadun".

In January before I began my path to learning to make iPhone apps, I had no prior coding experience and planned to learn Objective-C as my first programming language. I have since read the Programming in Objective-C 5th Edition book and I now know and understand the basics and syntax of Objective-C programming. However, I still feel as though I am no where close to where I need to be as far as having the know-how knowledge to create the app I want.

The app I am looking to create would require user registry/log-in, as well as, being able to upload various data such as audio/video/image. I am stuck currently not knowing where to go from here. If someone could point me in the right direction, such as listing some frameworks to look into in order to implement the aforementioned features.

Although I feel I've passed the first big hurdle in programming by grasping the concepts and embracing the syntax and Objective-C language, I still feel as if I am lost. I guess I am just overwhelmed at all of the things it takes in order to create apps.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and any help is greatly appreciated!

 

Hey, thank you for your reply!

Yes, I am planning on using a web-service as far as the server, but that won't come until the very end when I am getting ready to launch my app to the App Store.

As far as right now, is there any way to implement some of the features I mentioned to make sure the app is working right? For example, I have already created a registration view for my app which includes a simple name, username, password, and also uses a segmented control to let the user signing up select their gender. What I'm asking is, how would I go about creating a method that would create a new user once they had filled out that information and clicked the sign-up button on the view?

And then, if I were to go and make a log-in page, would I just use an if statement such as if (userName && passWord == _____) to determine whether an account has been made with the corresponding username and credentials match, allowing a user to log in?

And also what about creating a news feed. Where once the user is logged in they would be able to submit a post. If you could point me to a framework for these things that would be helpful or are the things I have just mentioned requiring a server? In that case that is quite inconvenient.

 

By inconvenient I meant it is inconvenient as of right now as I am in the development phase. Right now I am just looking for a way to be able to create an account that I can test my app with. What I mean by that is I am looking to be able to run my app in the simulator, create an account, and make a post to make sure things are working properly. Once my app is near finished, I would begin looking for server hosting so that user data can be stored.

Also, what do you mean that it isn't possible for each user to communicate with other users? I am looking to instill a feature where certain users would be able to see certain things on their news feed. I know that is very vague, but what I am getting at is something like a certain user would sign up and lets say they have 100 "friends" but I want to make it so they would be able to post content that may not be able to be seen by all 100 friends, maybe 20 instead. Also, I want to have a centralized feed where all content is visible to all "friends" and also have a feature where there is another feed that a user could post content to, but not all of the users "friends" may be able to see this. Who could see the content would depend on certain factors. Are you saying this would not be possible?

Thanks for your input.

 

Ok I understand what you mean now. I had known from the beginning I would need a server, but I did not know I would need it if I wanted to test out my app. Do you suggest building your own or using web services? The latter sounds much easier, but if you think building your own features certain perks then it may be do-able.

Do you mean writing the app? I am handling that.

Personally, I'd rather learn how to write it myself. Does learning to provision my app for a specific hosting company require me to learn another programming language? Or would I just need to learn a certain area of the language in order to implement my desired networking features. Would this require a large amount of time? The reason I ask is because if you think it would save me a lot of time then it may be an option. However, when I began this project I had intentions of doing this all on my own.

Thank you, your whole post was very informative. When you say the server may be missing a feature I need, do you mean that the server hosting company doesn't offer the feature and I would have to go find a new hosting company that offers the feature which would mean I would have to re-write the provisioning? Or are you saying that I would just have to re-write the provisioning for that hosting to include the feature?

I am not cash-poor, however I wanted to do the majority, if not the entirety of it, on my own.

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Is there any hosting companies that you would recommend that are specifically for iOS app databases that would hold user accounts, uploaded media, etc? If not I'm sure I could find some with a little Google.

I'm guessing that I would need to test the app on a real device rather than the simulator if I were using a server, correct?