NEW YORK - Want to learn how to create an iPhone app? A lot of developers have learned the secrets of Apple’s hit mobile devices from a much in demand computer science course on iPhone apps offered for the first time at Stanford during Fall 2008.

The Stanford course is so wildly popular now that video podcasts of the 10-week course are available as a free download on iTunes U, a dedicated area within the iTunes Store. Stanford’s iPhone Application Development course is taught by Apple engineers. However, grades, college credits and access to the classroom and the teaching staff are limited to Stanford students only.

Sessions normally appear on iTunes U just two to three days after each class. The course was downloaded 4.4 million times on iTunes U in 2009. The curriculum has been updated to take advantage of new opportunities and abilities in iPhone OS 3.1, the latest operating system for the iPhone and iPod touch, released last summer.

Stanford told the New York Times that it could not secure rights to publicly discuss Apple’s new iPad, which was part of the spring syllabus. According to the US newspaper, the course delves into the minutiae of programming in a computer language called Objective-C, so it’s not for novices. “Topics include creating apps that use the device’s built-in accelerometer and camera, and managing its limited memory and performance. Lectures are interspersed with slides that cover the major concepts, and these bullet points can be downloaded as separate pdf files,” reported the NYT.

It added that as the 10-week course progresses, students are asked to create increasingly complex programs, beginning with an introductory app designed for new students to Stanford, then a Paparazzi app that draws in photos from image-sharing sites like Flickr. Over the last four weeks, students team up to work on their own projects.

If you are interested in computer programming and engineering this may be an exciting course for you. If you are curious about the work coming out of this course, check out stanfordiphoneclassapps.com for a list of apps that continued development past its end and are either on the App Store today or will be soon. Course graduates have created everything from Air Guitar, which turns the screen into an imaginary musical instrument as a song plays, to Site Saver, useful for saving Web sites to the phone. Both are $1.99 at Apple’s App store.