Chapter 1. Getting Ready for RubyMotion

"You will never win if you never begin."

–Helen Rowland

Welcome to RubyMotion iOS development essentials. The goal of this book is to quickly acquaint you with RubyMotion and start building applications for your favorite iOS device. Ever since the introduction of the first iPhone, followed by the iPad, iOS devices have become very popular because of the way they have revolutionized how people work, and thereby have begun an era of increased productivity. The success behind the phenomenal growth of these devices lies in the applications bundled with them, which increases their functionality exponentially.

We will learn how to develop iOS applications with RubyMotion by building sample applications from scratch. We will try to have something tangible with a running code by the end of every chapter so that you can see a clear progression from chapter to chapter. Though RubyMotion and iOS Cocoa APIs are vast, and part of a fast-moving framework, we'll focus on the smaller, more stable set of core RubyMotion techniques that have crystallized after its release. This means that the knowledge you gain here will not become obsolete quickly. This book is written keeping the Zero-to-Deployment approach in mind.

In this chapter we will learn:

• Various ways to create iOS applications

• How RubyMotion is different from other frameworks

• RubyMotion installation