Any advice for a complete noob attempting his first App?

[p9ul]

I've had an idea for an App that I thought should have been included on the iPhone since day one, but seeing as Apple aren't doing one, and I beleive no-one else can unless using the 3.0 SDKI thought I'd give it a go - well, at least create my interface for now at least.

I'd rather not say what my App idea is, but I beleive it's currently impossible with the 2.2.1 SDK, although I'm hoping 3.0 SDK becomes free when the firmware comes out of beta - however, I have a few questions which I hope can be answered.

I've not done any programming since messing around with BASIC on a ZX Spectrum in my teens, and a little Visual Basic at college (I keep meaning to learn VBA though) - The Dev Center says you should be familiar with Objective C - I'm not, so how much would you think I need to know before diving in?

Is creating an App relatively straight forward? I mean, am I going to get tripped up by not knowing which line of code is putting a spanner in the works?

Can I lay claim to a name for it before I've even submitted it to Apple? ( I think I have belter and I'll be suprised if no-one has thought of it!)

Any recommended reading?

Thanks In Advance

 

[achoudry]

came across this today which may be of interest to you...

it allows you to create an app using mainly html and javascript...