Apple, Stanford Offering Free iPhone Development Courses

Apple and Stanford University will begin offering free videos and course materials on iPhone application development this week. Stanford is posting its first video of iPhone development courses this Friday – this includes Video recordings of Stanford’s ten week computer science class, a course syllabus and slides  as well and will be available to  download through Apple’s iTunes U educational channel.

Previously, Apple imposed a non-disclosure agreement on iPhone developers, which prohibited them from making public any information on coding software for the iPhone. The NDA also blocked publishers from releasing books on iPhone software development. But last October, Apple lifted its non-disclosure agreement.  According to Apple, they lifted the NDA because it had “created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software.”

The removal led to the start of Apple’s iPhone University program, and made Stanford’s iPhone elopment course possible.  Now, other universities plan to offer iPhone classes as well.  The attractive factor about the classes  is the successful App Store, which made some independent developers very rich. There has been a ton of interest created around iPhone development since the start of the App store and these classes are the perfect opportunity to ride that wave of interest.