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Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK

Authors: Dave Mark, Jeff Lamarche
Publisher: Apress
Category: Book

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Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars

12 reviews
Sales Rank: 419

Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 536
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.9 x 1.3

ISBN: 1430216263
Dewey Decimal Number: 004
EAN: 9781430216261
ASIN: 1430216263

Publication Date: November 14, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Availability: Usually ships in 4 to 7 weeks

Reviews

"People ask me again and again about how to get started in iPhone development, but I never had a very good answer for them until now. Dave and Jeff's book starts at the beginning in clear English, making sure you understand the fundamentals with many large illustrations. From there, they progress into key concepts such as the MVC pattern and ImageBuilder fundamentals. Additionally, I find myself flipping back to it as a reference guide—the plethora of code samples make it a must-have."

—Steve Demeter, Creator of "Trism" and owner of Demiforce LLC

"Beginning iPhone Development delivers a clear picture of the entire development process from registering as an iPhone developer through creation of complete applications. There is a wealth of examples illustrating each feature of the iPhone. The authors did an excellent job of demonstrating "best practice" coding methodology throughout the book. You would be hard pressed to find a better guide to creating software for the iPhone."

—Aaron Basil, iDev2.com

"Dave Mark has always been the king of Mac programming authors, and now he's proven to be the reigning king for books on iPhone development!

"Beginning iPhone Development is the definitive guide for iPhone development, and anyone aspiring to develop for the iPhone should get this invaluable reference."

—Brian Greenstone, President & CEO, Pangea Software, Inc.

"Jeff and Dave have done an exceptional job exploring the iPhone SDK. This book is far and away the single best resource for iPhone SDK development. Developers will latch on to this book and find it useful as they create the next great iPhone application. If you're a developer with an interest in this amazing new platform, this is a must buy."

—Chris Stewart, Founder, iPhoneDevSDK.com

"If you're planning on coding for the iPhone, start here. Dave and Jeff know their stuff and also know how to explain it. I was amazed how much stuff they cover, from Hello World through analyzing user gestures. Not only do they cover the fun stuff like playing with the camera, they cover real-world development issues like localization. I learned a huge amount from them"

—Mark Dalrymple, Co-founder, CocoaHeads, and Principal Author, Advanced Mac OS X Programming

"Starting with an overview of the technology, how to approach the device, the authors lead us straight into the heart of iPhone development. As you progress, you'll learn more about various layout engines and view managers, as well as the more meaty topics like accelerometer and GPS APIs. This book is a must-have for anyone interested in getting started quickly and efficiently with iPhone development!"

—Chris Pelsor, Manager, Tarantell:Hybrid

Summary of Contents

Welcome to the Jungle
Appeasing the Tiki Gods
Handling Basic Interaction
More User Interface Fun
Autorotation and Autosizing
Multiview Applications
Tab Bars and Pickers
Introduction to Table Views
Navigation Controllers and Table Views
Application Settings and User Defaults
Basic Data Persistence
Drawing with Quartz and OpenGL
Taps, Touches, and Gestures
Where Am I? Finding Your Way with Core Location
Whee!
iPhone Camera and Photo Library
Application Localization
Where to Next?

About the Apress Beginning Series

The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry–level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to know?but without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real–world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you there?it is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!

Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

THE Book to Learn iPhone Programming, but nothing on network I/O?? December 4, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

I have The iPhone Developer's Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK (Developer's Library), the yet-to-be-released beta PDF of iPhone SDK Development, and this book on my desk. While the iPhone SDK Development book is as yet unreleased, I won't formally issue any opinions on that book (and this is the wrong place to do that, anyways). Thus far, I believe Dave and Jeff's work on "Beginning iPhone Development" is hands-down THE book to use if you want to learn iPhone development, and they've set the bar pretty darn high for future books presently being authored.

Dave and Jeff do an incredible job in the first 52 pages of the book explaining the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the XCode and Interface Builder development environment. I only wish I had their first 52 pages to help me when I started on my own iPhone development journey. As an experienced Java and .NET developer, I found XCode and Interface Builder with their dozens of different tools windows to be foreign, arcane, and difficult to navigate. While I now feel more then comfortable with these Apple tools, I could only shake my head and chuckle, saying to myself "Where was the first 3 chapters of this book about 2 months ago when I needed it most!"

One thing to keep in mind is that Apple's iPhone SDK is an evolving thing, and in my experience these early books were printed well before the 2.2 release shipped, which did indeed change some things. Later books that are still in beta will have the benefit of being slightly more accurate with documented Apple best practices and more in-tune with Apple's changes. That isn't to say that this book should be avoided or that the code samples don't work; on the contrary- if you've never used any of the Apple tools before and plan on entering the iPhone application development frenzy, buy this book; the time you'll save from reading just the first 10% of the book is worth every penny!

While there are some common examples between The iPhone Developer's Cookbook and this book, one example really stood out to me. Implementing a Search Bar in the Cookbook was glossed over- the sample worked, but I felt it had lots of holes. In contrast, this book presents a logical and well-written section that covers 15 pages, including insight on deep mutable copies, the apparently new Objective-C 2.0 feature "fast enumeration" (a for loop Java and C# folks will be comfortable with, i.e. for (id key in keys) is the example they cite), etc.

The only area that I was particularly disappointed in was the lack of I/O coverage offered in a 500 page book. Phones are mobile, yet the Internet is always just a step away. That is, after all, one of the things that make a truly compelling iPhone application. Just look at the commercials Apple runs showing leading applications that give you insight on where to dine and what song is playing on the radio. In almost every case (the exception perhaps in games), Network and File I/O are key components of the application. As an example to back up my point, the book's index doesn't even index the word "network" or "Internet" or "Web" (unless you count "web sites, coding advice" at the end of the book). The index states that NSURL (a class used to access a URL) is only found on a single page, page 334. On page 334, the end of a sentence about persistence reads ", which means that classes like NSURL, UIIMage, and UIColor cannot be used directly." This glaring omission was the biggest disappointment that I ran into. The other books I cited both spend (or appear to plan on spending) considerable time on I/O, with one providing a recipe to "Build a Simple Web-Based Server" (yes, that's your iPhone running as a server!). For this reason, it is probably necessary to supplement this book with one of the other books I cited.

All in all, I believe the book earns a 4 star rating. I simply can't give it 5 stars because networking is so important to mobile applications (how did this get lost along the way??). The writing style of the authors is easy going, yet highly instructional. Definitely THE book for true beginners who are new not only to the iPhone platform, but to all Apple developer tools as well.

5 out of 5 stars

Good for non Mac programmers December 3, 2008
I would say this book is particularly good if you don't come from a Mac development background. The Sadun book I think assumes a lot of Mac programming background. This book is much easier to just pick up and start using, especially if you are familiar with other gui development environments like c sharp or some other gui development tools.

A word of advice for people who want to use the the apple iphone dev sample code. When you download it seems to put all the files in a temporary place that you can't save to. You can use it in xcode once but you can't save it or changes for later use. I'm sure the mac guru's have a better way to do this but I found you can see the temporary space the sample code goes to after you download it in Finder. When you are in that temporary directory Apple Key a, the Apple Key c, then Apple Key v into another permanent directory. Then you can use xcode project open to have permanent access to the code.

5 out of 5 stars

Best way to start developing for iPhone December 2, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

Before any iPhone development books were released, learning the frameworks was next to impossible for me. There was just no easy way to learn iPhone development until now. It's extremely well written, and feels carefully crafted to maximize understanding - not just quickly thrown together to get the first iPhone dev book on the market. I would reccomend this book to anyone interested in iPhone development.

5 out of 5 stars

Excellent December 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I've been learning Obj-C for iPhone for about 3 months and this is by far the best book I've come across. It explains things like nothing else I've read and I have been doing exercises from the book involving things I thought I already understood, just because things become a lot clearer after reading it. Highly recommended reading.

5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic reading!! Excellent work!! December 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

When this book arrived, and I saw the book cover, I knew I got something different. Not a cookie-cutter book but an original piece of work where somebody really intended to teach something.

I just got this book a few days ago and with this 4-day Thanksgiving weekend and living alone I have been having a blast focusing just on this book. I haven't read through it all yet, still just a quarter of the way through, but I'm not trying to cram. This book does exactly what I want a book to do (as opposed to an online reference resource): stop and talk about every little thing that is really useful to know in the workflow of applications programming on an iPhone.

These guys know how to write. They don't leave the reader with presumptuous word choice and leave the reader hanging; every time they say something it's like they read the mind of the reader, "Now you might be wondering, what about... or why not do ... Well, let's talk about that." Nearly every corner is covered, and where I still have questions it's usually not directly related to the topic, i.e. I have an Obj-C question. Even then, after I return from surfing the web for answers, I return to the book and turn the page and the book says, "You should read up on this stuff at [URL]"... I kid you not, this book had me floored.

Looking towards the latter pages of the book, I can't help but be astounded, thinking, wow, I get to learn about THAT? And in the same style of learning that I've been enjoying so far? This is great!

There are very few errors, mostly just little things that the reader can spot just by paying attention. There are plenty of enough illustrations and tips to keep the reader engaged and constantly learning not just the basics but how to get comfortable in the workflow of iPhone development.

My only disappointment is that the book assumes knowledge of Obj-C, but fortunately it comes with plenty of URLs and references to complete those prerequisites as well, and really, to discuss Obj-C in detail, beyond the rather brief coverage-as-we-go that is indeed in this book, would have been beyond the scope of the book so that's fine.

There's just nothing I can say bad about this book, and everything good. It is by far the funnest technical book I've owned and cracked open in months, if not years.

By the way, coming from a C# background (and Java and VB5/6 before that), lightweight programming of the iPhone is EASY!! It's different, but it's easy, particularly compared to C++ programming which I've had a number of false starts. For me, if I can go from VBScript to VB6 to Java to C#, I can go from C# to Obj-C. Also, the workflow of Xcode + Interface Builder is somewhat analogous to the workflow of Visual Studio + Expression Blend 2 for WPF programming, if indeed event handlers would have been set up in the Blend designer in a drag-and-drop way. I must also add, learning how to develop software in Xcode forces the developer to learn MVC. I don't know why people who are used to Visual Studio programming dislike the MVC-ness of Xcode programming, but I love the change of workflow, and I think there is much to take back with me when I return to C# development.