The Cork university has become the first in Ireland to be a designated iPhone developer, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

GIVEN CORK’S close relationship with Apple for more than two decades as a European manufacturing and support and sales site, it seems only fitting that University College Cork (UCC) has become the first designated iPhone Developer University campus in Ireland.

The programme, which supports third-level institutions that want to incorporate developing for the iPhone and iPod Touch into course work, has been running for over a year in the United States, but only opened up for international applicants in January.

“Within an hour of the announcement, I had an application in for UCC straight away. By February, we had developer status,” says UCC computer science lecturer David Murphy.

Murphy, who describes himself as a bit of a Mac and Apple evangelist, was formerly an Apple employee and developer himself before going into academia. He thinks the developer programme was a natural fit for UCC given the relationship between the city and company. “I think there’s just an affinity with Apple and Cork. It’s a very healthy relationship,” he says.

It also helps that there are three “experienced iPhone developers on the staff” in Murphy and two department colleagues, he says. The three work together to produce applications for Macs and iPhones for clients.

The iPhone courses will be included on two master’s degree programmes starting in September. A module on mobile application design including the iPhone will go into the MSc in mobile computing, while the MSc in interactive media will incorporate a module on mobile multimedia application development.

Murphy says the two courses come at the issue of application development from different perspectives – one from software development and programming, the other from interactive media design – but notes they “are very complementary”.

Undergraduates get a head start on postgrads, however, because they can avail of the developer support programme for their senior projects this year, with several already doing so, says Murphy.

Full developer resources from Apple can be accessed through an internal UCC iPhone and iTouch developer portal site.

Bringing iPhone development into the curriculum is a plus for students, because they can develop for a real device and environment, rather than having to produce projects that run on a computer simulator, Murphy says.

“Up until this point, most of their projects were done on a simulator, which is not very gratifying.”

Students all start at “a very high end, building their own applications” using Apple’s iPhone software development kit (SDK). “So there’s almost an instant gratification in doing this, from a student’s point of view.”

They can access the professional developer forums on the Apple website as well, and UCC can place promising student applications on the Apple iPhone applications store website.

The chance to make money from a student project can act as an added incentive for a good project, Murphy notes but, even beside that, it adds a compelling “real world” element to the project that is missing when preparing an academic project for a simulator.

Students on the master’s course will be eligible to apply for a €1,600 support scheme offered to all European students to attend Apple’s annual worldwide developer conference in California.

He’s especially enthusiastic about getting students working on iPhones because he sees them as revolutionary devices. “I think the iPhone has gone beyond computing. It’s no longer just a functional device. It’s more like a lifestyle choice.

“Rather than look at a device as a functional piece of kit, it is more an extension of your life.”

Students arriving into the computing department already are “digital natives”, at home with a variety of devices and expecting to be immersed in the digital world as part of their daily activities, he notes. That in turn “lowers the entry bar” and makes computing more intuitive and accessible, he thinks.

He also thinks the programme is a smart move by Apple. “I think it makes incredible business sense. Apple has traditionally been behind Microsoft in market share. With the iPhone, they were faced with the dilemma of a really cool, great product with a small developer base.

“You need small, third-party developers creating applications to drive the sale of your devices.”

In the past, the company has been wary of opening up its products to a mass market of developers, but the shift in approach seems to be benefiting the company. Apple is now approaching one million downloads of the iPhone SDK.

“They’re making it really easy to migrate over,” Murphy says.

Dabbling in a different operating system and different platform is good for students, too, Murphy says. He thinks the iPhone Developer University programme “opens up a wider job market for students. It gives students breadth. They get exposure to a different environment technically, which makes them a more well-rounded software developer.”

And ultimately, he hopes that the ability to work on iPhones will be an attraction to students to come and study at UCC.