Customer Reviews

Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK

5 star:		(106)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have some very mixed feelings about this book. Let's start on a positive note. First of all, it is VERY well written. the authors don't just walk you through the answers they present in their projects, but also awaken your curiosity and walk you through the trial and error process that leads to their answer. some people say that this makes the book longer than necessary. i say that this makes them great teachers, since they know how to engage their readers and get you to understand not just what their solutions do, but why they have been implemented a certain way. my only qualm about their writing is that they spend a bit too much time explaining what they have done in the past and what they are going to do in the future instead of focusing on the lesson at hand.

I also got a lot of mileage out of the projects / code included in the book, especially the chapters on setting up your first two applications and the chapter on persistence.

Unfortunately, though, after reading this book it turns out i was not ready to make iPhone applications. i still ended up reading exorbitant amounts of documentation from apple to troubleshoot my code and do some very ordinary things. i found that apple's iPhone Application Development guide and Cocoa Fundamentals Guide had much more relevant data for learning how to make an iPhone application and are a better way to get started. i especially found that i needed to understand a lot more about how how my development environment manages resources, how events are handled and passed around (especially with regard to when to use actions vs delegates vs notifications and details on how these mechanisms work), memory management details, how an iPhone application works under the hood, how to interface between different languages and libraries, etc, etc.

The material in this book is great, but in the end, i would say that apple's introductory guides are what you need to get started, and this is just a supplement to them.

NOTE: I will be updating this review once I am done reading the new SDK 3 updated book. The review below is for the original SDK version of the book. I thank the author for personally responding to my review in the comments, and will make adjustments to this review after I read the updated book. I feel that some of his points are fair, but still arguable, as to what should and should not be included in the book.

I, like many others, bought this book simply because there really aren't any other iPhone SDK books on the market right now. It's a decent first book, but as someone who has programmed on the iPhone previous to reading this, I found some issues with it.

I DO recommend this book so far, as it really is the only one out there, and it does cover a lot of ground, but I feel that there will be much better books to come. I'd love to see a 2nd Edition of this.

THE GOOD:

- Current to iPhone 2.1
- Current to Objective-C 2.0
- Covers a wide area, such as Accelerometer, Swipes and Touches, Data Storage, Drawing, etc.
- Easy to read.


NEEDS WORKS:

- The author fails to show some useful shortcuts, such as putting all objects that need to be synthesized on one line: "@synthesize txtName, lblFileName, myViewController"

- They also seem to skip over some very basic areas, such as what do all the iPhone pre-built templates do? Instead, they say "Apple provides this for you, but we are going to build from the ground up". That is great, but ALSO cover the easier way and explain some differences between the easy/hard ways.

- They don't go deep enough into using and understand views. Sure, they go into navigation controller, tab bars, etc. but they don't explain enough on just basic view manipulation. The example of switching between two different colored views doesn't cover enough ground for something so important on the iPhone.

- I would have liked to see an "Advanced topics" as a final chapter. For example, how do I combine both a Tab Bar and a Navigation controller? Applications that are more than just very basic need a section going into some deeper topics. I do understand that this is a beginners book though.

- Skips over explaining basic concepts, such as what does "scalar" mean, how to view SDK headers to find methods (besides the documentation), and how you can right-click on an object in Interface Builder to bring up the connections pop-up.

Good book though 3.5 stars. Recommend it for beginners until a better book comes along.

This book is one of the best programming books ever written!!!!! Want to know how good this book is? Over the holidays, my 12 year old was begging me to help him learn iPhone programming since he saw me release my first few apps and make a few dollars on it. He has never done any programming before. I told him to first read the first 100 pages of Programming in Objective-C by Stephen Kochan so he understood the basics of programming and then I gave him this book to learn about programming the iPhone. By the end of the weekend, he had written his first basic iPhone app. I was so amazed I am now going through the book page by page myself, and this 25 year veteran of computer programming is also learning a lot. It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and the switch from someone used to doing strictly procedural assembly language and C programming to something like the iPhone is tough, but this book has shed a whole new light on how to program for the iPhone. Simply put, it's fantastic.

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!

Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK

This book drives you through the development process step-by-step, starting from the "hello world". All the code presented is correct, and you can download it from the site, but the problem is that everything works "by magic": the remarks are too detailed, missing a top-down explanations. The result is that you create something that works but you are not able to reproduce it yourself, without the help of the book. Almost no mention, for instance, to the reason for which you choose a template instead of another, what they are meant to, or what are views, view controlles, subviews, on what are the relationships between them, etc. A general introduction to these concepts, and others ("nib" and "xib" just to mention a few) would be very appreciated. I believe that this book only will not be enough.

This book says its written for learning for beginners to programming in objective C but that is not the case. I have a background in java and c++ but this book doesn't explain anything about objective C and just has you type in code in the book and try to explain whats going on. For those who are experts at programming in objective C than this book would be good for you to get started with programming on the iPhone.

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.

I am at chapter 5, and I am loving this book. First off, I am not a programmer. I have bought may programing books trying to learn, but I am an artist, so this stuff does not come naturally. I say this so you understand that I did not even know what Objective C was when I bought this book.

First, you do not need to know Objective C to use this book. You will need it after you are done though, if you want to move on to doing anything else. This book walks you through building some useless apps to teach you how to do some amazing things. The Xcode & Interface Builder programs are amazing, and I already feel like an expert with them at chapter 5.

Reading the book, I feel like the author is looking over my shoulder, which is great. This is the first book outside the Head First series I have really felt did a good job teaching. While I have learned a lot, I think the biggest thing I have learned has been that I need to learn Objective C. For those in the same situation, I recommend Programming in Objective C 2.0 by Kochan, as it assumes you do not know how to program.

The bad:
The code is not right. Xcode makes it easy to see, and I was able to figure out my own mistakes, but you MUST get the code from the author's web site. Without it this book would have been useless to me. In chapter 4 everything you do needs a chunk of code (via the book):

@property (nonatomic, retain)...

but it should be:

@property (retain, nonatomic)...

Again, the corrected code is available on the author's site.

All in all, I think this book is more to teach coders how to use Xcode to make iPhone apps, but you learn enough to get you started with Objective C. If you are not sure if you really want to learn programing, this is a great book to get started. You get a taste for the programing while learning the Xcode and Interface Builder programs.

I give it a 4 out of 5 for 2 reasons, the editing should be better and I do wish the apps were more useful, I am not sure if I would be happier if the book took you through all of these steps to build on or 2 apps that were actually useful, or if this useful things put together uselessly is the way to go. Either way, if you want to learn to create apps for the iPhone, this is the book to buy. I also got the For Dummy's book, and was very disappointed.

Personally, I'm happy with what this book provides in the form of Objective C examples and fundamentals for creating iPhone native applications with Xcode and Interface Builder. The learning pattern of the book goes like this: write some code, run some code, and explain some code. This works well for most people with experience in application development.

If / when you get this book, however, do not put too much pressure on it to explain to you every possible concept there is to know about Objective C, patterns, explicit syntax, etc. It is more or less a guide for learning the fundamental abstract concepts of iPhone applications using concrete Objective C code examples.

Many reviewers have stated that this is not a beginners book and it may not be for people who have never been exposed to Objective C. This book alone may not get you to iphone omnipotence (iO) and you shouldn't expect it to by default, but seriously consider buying this book and one other Cocoa / Objective C book such as Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition) in order to gain mastery of the subject matter.

I have so far really found this book to be a good introduction into programming for the iPhone. Having said that, I have taken off one star because the book does not give the user even a short introduction to Objective-C. You are assumed to already know the programming language by the time you pick up this book.

I printed Apple's quick-intro notes on Objective-C and that took around 3 condensed pages (expanded it would probably be around 6 pages) and that taught me enough about Objective-C to follow what's going on in the book and figure out the bits I was missing. I think it is sad that the authors did not choose include such an introductory chapter as part of the book for people not coming from an Objective-C background as that would have changed the book into an 'all you need' type book.

As things stand, my advice would be to read up on Objective-C first, if you are still interested in pursuing iPhone development after you master Objective-C, this is the book you want.