[determinant]

1) Totally normal 2) Big Nerd Ranch Guides are quick and painless 3) Go to the library for the books (old books for iOS 6 and better are good enough to learn from); use the simulator for code. Don't worry about getting it on the device first.

With iOS, ignore older tutorials and always start with the most recent stuff. If you find code that's from, say, pre-2013 even, you'll find non-ARC stuff, people going through all kinds of hoops, a resistance to use storyboards, and in some cases, you'll be solving problems Apple already solved.

I think there is some online Stanford course that is pretty good that'll take you 2-3 days to get through to not feel so "hello world."

Also, one last note: Don't read everything and then try to make something. It's painfully boring. Try to build something complicated right off the bat and read to make that happen. A lot of iOS stuff is painfully boring to read about, but crazy fun to rip apart and break in XCode.