Where to start??!??

My quest to learn how to develop iPhone applications begins today!    We have a 4 hour drive planned so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to start reading Beginning iPhone 3 Development by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche.   If this book makes sense then the next step is to start putting some money into this project and invest in an actually Mac and who knows maybe an actual iPhone!

This would be a big step as although I have a development/database background VB, SQL, Oracle, HTML, PHP and some very rusty C++ skills (I have written any C code for about 15 years!!)

The reason I decided to learn how to develop iPhone applications was due to an article that I read in London's Metro - it described 3 programmers who had a similar background to me that had published apps.    I remember thinking that if I hadn't missed so much time in my career having my 3 children - I would probably be doing something cutting edge like developing apps like they were instead of working on legacy systems (and yes still supporting/extending DOS apps!)   But I decided it was worth a bit more research especially as my youngest was about to start pre-school so why not!

The other reason that I was attacted to this type of development was that as Apple obviously act as a distributor via iTunes - there couldn't be an easier way to find your target market - although they take their percentage it didn't seem like a bad deal.

Also - when buying an iPhone application you are not making a considered purchased  - most people spend a less than  a couple of minutes thinking about spending 59p.