Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK
by Jeff LaMarche, Dave Mark
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dave Mark, Jeff LaMarcheBrand: Apress
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-11-21
ISBN: 1430216263
Number of pages: 536
Publisher: Apress
Product features:
- Apress Beginning iPhone Development: Exporing the iPhone SDK
- Are you a programmer looking for a new challenge? Does the thought of building your very own iPhone app make your heart race and your pulse quicken? If so, then Beginning iPhone Development is just the book for you.
Book Reviews of Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK
Book Review: Strong foundation on which to build your Cocoa Touch knowledgebase
Summary: 5 Stars
In keeping with Dave Mark's excellent track record for introductory Mac development books (referring to his Learn C on the Mac classic) and Jeff LaMarche's obvious talents, this book is THE book for those new (and really, who isn't?) to iPhone Development.
I'll start by saying that relative to the Apple samples, the authors are heavily into Interface Builder usage, which is good to force separation of your Views from your Controller logic, but a challenge when you fumble hooking up an outlet and things don't work as you expect. Understanding how IB outlets & actions interact with source code is different than other programming most of us not from a NextStep heritage are used to. That is to say, for most programmers, debugging and changing behavior in source code is a much more familiar method to follow than trying to fix a NIB file. Not necessarily a better one mind you, but a significantly different one that'll take some getting used to.
That said, from my own brief experience, it seems starting off with a strong fundamental understanding of Apple-flavored MVC from this book, enforced via Interface Builder views and managed via controller source code, is preferable to trying to structure it correctly just in source code (as Apple usually shows it).
With respect to IB, the authors do a great job covering the common mistakes we all make and what you should do to resolve them (i.e. in Chap 6 they mention that if you don't see the proper action popup, you probably control-dragged from the wrong IB component. Nice touch.)
A minor nit, when I read the chapter on autorotation, I didn't find mention of the very handy "autoresizingMask" property of a view (UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth), which handles the changing sizes of a view for you. They mention it in passing, but it's such a nicely done feature that more people should use, it might deserve a project sample. Bonus: they explain why Apple discourages use of the "upside-down portrait" mode, which is good to know.
The authors wisely emphasize the importance of TableViews, which are so central to so many iPhone app interfaces for a reason. I've skimmed those chapters (8 & 9) and they're the best available anywhere on explaining tables and how they interact with Navigation Controllers and subviews. I'm really looking forward to digging into them. My initial concerns that like a compelling preview to a bad movie (I'm looking at you Zohan) I was worried that Chapter 3 [which Apress has available on their website, google for it if you're looking for a representative sample] would be the best in the book. Chapters 6-9 put those fears to rest.
The remaining chapter coverage is conducive to arming you with the basics to create a solid, stable, fully-featured iPhone/iPod Touch application that combined with your own creativity and hard-work, you'd be proud to display in the App Store.
So, in sum, this is the book to get right now if you're just starting out on developing Cocoa Touch apps. Even after I've learned the basics, I can see myself referring back to this book for refreshers. Thanks Dave & Jeff!
Summary of Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK
Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK is the second beginning level book from Apress that is written for developers who want to program Apple?s iPhone, this time focusing on how to take advantage of the powerful new SDK that Apple are due to release in the second half of 2008.
So while our first book (Beginning iPhone Application Development 978-1-4302-1051-1) was a general introduction to application development on the iPhone with general introductions to the tools of the trade such as Objective-C, the platform APIs and developer tools, this second book focuses specifically on the new iPhone 2 SDK, which will give developers new ways to create experiences for iPhone users.
Readers will discover how to create programs for the iPhone using Apple's official Software Development Kit (SDK). Readers will learn to design user interfaces using Apple's Interface Builder tool, starting with simple interfaces and progressing to complex, professional-quality multi-view applications. Using a practical step-by-step approach, the readers will see how to implement common iPhone application interfaces and learn about about the Model-View-Controller approach to programming used throughout the iPhone SDK. Readers will also see how to interact with the user through the iPhone's multitouch screen as well as learn how to save data using the iPhone's file system and the embedded SQLite database. The book is packed with information and code samples showing how to exploit all the goodness of the new SDK from the iPhone's built-in accelerometer to the built-in camera and everything in between.
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