Customer Reviews

Beginning iPad Development for iPhone Developers: Mastering the iPad SDK

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have no idea why anyone would give this book 5 stars. I honestly dislike giving poor reviews, but after reading it, and passing the time I could have requested a Kindle refund, I felt it was necessary to assist others thinking about purchasing this book. Here are my complaints about this book, and why you should not purchase it.

1. The Source download for the book does not match the text always, and is cause for great confusion in following the author's steps.
2. The Author leaves out key steps/parts from time to time and someone with little experience would encounter errors when building the project
3. I've read several books and taken college classes on iOS programming, and the author takes a different approach than I'm used to, so I find it hard to follow at times.
4. I wish the sample chapter wasn't just background on iPad, so I could have seen a sample project before purchasing.
5. There is no published Errata for the book online, not even a user forum to discuss the code errors.
6. Some sections in the book do not work, while you build the same project from the downloaded source code, and it builds fine.
7. Not all the code works, but builds OK. For example, in the Dudel project, setting stroke widths, only works on the pencil tool, but no other tool.
8. Not all the downloaded Projects from each Chapter Build, and give compiler errors and warnings. So hard to double check your own work.
9. Memory warnings appear on Downloaded Source and Following book's code.
10. Following the book on the VGA out chapter will not work, but the downloaded source does.
11. In one chapter Author says to delete a XIB file, while the Source Downloaded still has it, and includes a Text file telling you to delete it. Why not just have it read to go?
12. Various Typos: Text says to create FileListViewController.h/.m while book code says FileListController.h/.m
13. Author references Frameworks, but doesn't always tell you to add to project. Some chapters it is mentioned, some not.

This book definitely has not been checked for errors and inconsistencies. I wish others in their reviews alerted me to these fallacies so I would not have purchased this book. What a waste of money.

Hopefully this will help someone else out in the future. If the Author corrects the mistakes and creates a detailed Errata and Forum, I would be happy to change this review. Or, better yet, issue a new revision to correct the mistakes.

When I got my iPad and started playing with the sdk I focused a lot on the new split view and the popovers. I don't know why, but for me they seemed like the biggest "new thing" on the iPad. I've also played with movieplayer controllers a bit while doing some work for a customer but so far, that's been it on the iPad.

I've been spending a lot of time learning more general Cocoa frameworks which work on iPhone, iPad and osx like Core Data and haven't really studied much of the iPad sdk since.

I really didn't know what to expect from this book and found it hard to see how an entire book could be filled with iPad specific stuff. There is - of course - a lot of new stuff in the iPad sdk such as bezier paths, creation of pdf files, a new framework called Core Text, Popovers, enhanced movie player controllers, split view controllers, modal presentation styles, new input methods, gesture recognizers, document support and you'll be happy to hear that this book covers them all.

The book shows most of the new functionalities by building a graphics app called Dudel. As the chapters in the book progress, more and more new features are added to Dudel. I've seen this approach in more books and I like it: not only does it give a more practical understanding of new functionality, you also learn how the authors structure their apps. There's much to be learnt from just that.

Apress continues to deliver quality books for iPhone and iPad development. I've been through this book about 3 times now and everytime I find something new. If you have been playing with iPhone development and are considering stepping up to the iPad, then this book will be a _very_ good companion.

This book is an excellent read for someone with prior iPhone (iOS) programming knowledge looking for a book without 100 pages of reminders. Many of the other books are written as a combination of thoughts for "You're new to iOS and new to iPad.." I didn't want to pay for a book and then have the first half of it all stuff I already knew. This book is written with a strong assumption (as noted immediately in the book itself and the title) that you need to understand how to program an iPhone first, then pick up this book to get straight to what matters in programming an iPad. If you know the basics of programming for iPhone, I'd suggest this your first title for expanding your knowledge to programming an iPad.

Probably a very fine book in print. The Kinde version, unfortunately, suffers from the fact that the code examples are fuzzy screen shots or scans. Further, the images containing the code are resized to different sizes and are badly formatted.

Jack's style is accessible and practical. A real iPhone developer sharing secrets of the iOS API and giving great insight into developing software for a much larger canvas with the iPad. If you're looking for a book that will take you from a blank Xcode project to finished iPad App, this one's for you. I'd rank this one a solid partner to Apex's Beginning iPhone Development as a one-two combination for iOS success.