Learning iPhone Programming: From Xcode to App Store [Paperback]

Alasdair Allan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 2010

Get the hands-on experience you need to program for the iPhone and iPod Touch. With this easy-to-follow guide, you'll build several sample applications by learning how to use Xcode tools, the Objective-C programming language, and the core frameworks. Before you know it, you'll not only have the skills to develop your own apps, you'll know how to sail through the process of submitting apps to the iTunes App Store.

Whether you're a developer new to Mac programming or an experienced Mac developer ready to tackle the iPhone and iPod Touch, Learning iPhone Programming will give you a head start on building market-ready iPhone apps.

• Start using Xcode right away, and learn how to work with Interface Builder
• Take advantage of model-view-controller (MVC) architecture with Objective-C
• Build a data-entry interface, and learn how to parse and store the data you receive
• Solve typical problems while building a variety of challenging sample apps
• Understand the demands and details of App Store and ad hoc distribution
• Use iPhone's accelerometer, proximity sensor, GPS, digital compass, and camera
• Integrate your app with iPhone's preference pane, media playback, and more

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Alasdair Allan is a senior research fellow in Astronomy at the University of Exeter. As part of his work there he is building a distributed peer-to-peer network of telescopes which, acting autonomously, will reactively schedule observations of time-critical events. On the side, Alasdair runs a small technology consulting business writing bespoke software and building open hardware, and is currently developing a series of iPhone applications to monitor and manage cloud based services and distributed sensor networks.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 Pap/Psc edition (March 16, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596806434
• ISBN-13: 978-0596806439
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #94,294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #43 in Books > Computers & Technology > Hardware > Macs

More About the Author

Alasdair Allan is the author of Learning iPhone Programming, Programming iPhone Sensors, Basic Sensors in iOS, Geolocation iOS, iOS Sensor Apps and Arduino and Augmented Reality in iOS, all published by O'Reilly Media. He is a senior research fellow in Astronomy at the University of Exeter. As part of his work there he is building a distributed peer-to-peer network of telescopes which, acting autonomously, will reactively schedule observations of time-critical events. Notable successes include contributing to the detection of the most distant object yet discovered, a gamma-ray burster at a redshift of 8.2. Alasdair also runs a small technology consulting business writing bespoke software, building open hardware and providing training. He sporadically writes blog posts about things that interest him, or more frequently provides commentary about them in 140 characters or less.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but steep learning curve, May 11, 2010

By 

MarcKirk "SurfGramps" (El Segundo, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Learning iPhone Programming: From Xcode to App Store (Paperback)

This is a well written book, but it pushes you into deep water a little too quickly for my taste. Because the SDK provides so much boilerplate code, writing the proverbial "Hello World" app is very easy, but understanding what is going on under the hood is another matter. If you are already familiar with Mac development, Cocoa and Objective-C, you'll be just fine, but even an experienced C++ programmer (as am I) should read something like Cocoa and Objective-C: Up and Running: Foundations of Mac, iPhone, and iPod touch programming either before or simultaneous to reading this book. The main problem is that the object part of Objective-C is based on the Smalltalk object syntax, not C++. The concepts are similar, but the syntax will seem strange. So clean your reading glasses, and buckle up. The nice part about this is that when you're done, you will be familiar with development for Mac, iPhone and iPad.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outdated, but still relevant!, December 28, 2010

By 

T. H. Shaw "Aesir of aesthetics" (Palmer, AK USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Learning iPhone Programming: From Xcode to App Store (Paperback)

This is actually one of the two books that I've come to greatly appreciate in my quest to enter the iPhone development game (the other being "Programming in Objective-C 2.0" by Stephen G. Kochan, also available here on Amazon for an excellent price). The printing date puts it at March 2010, which sadly falls a few month before the release of iOS 4.0. Fortunately, however, the vast majority of the example code given within the pages of this tome are unaffected by the iOS revision.

I've been playing around with iOS development for the past couple of months (I've probably got around forty or fifty days of actual coding time under my belt), and thanks to this book, the mystery behind NavigationViewControllers and TableViewControllers are almost a thing of the past.

Interestingly enough, what puts this book ahead of others that I've read (e.g., Beginning iOS 4 Application Development and Sam's Teach Yourself iPhone Development in 24 Hours) is that it teaches those two particular things without skirting around them. It may lack color screenshots, but I'll gladly trade those for having more coverage on one of the most heavily used model schemes in the iOS game.

In conclusion, I can't recommend this book enough. Code samples are still valid, the explanation of said code is outstanding, and it's just overall high quality work.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good introduction, other skills needed, October 15, 2010

By 

Paul M. Lohr (Cape Coral, FL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Learning iPhone Programming: From Xcode to App Store (Paperback)

For an O'Reilly book, I was surprised that this book had some code that would not run (the samples are on the book's website), and there were some critical points that were not mentioned which I found elsewhere. Previous O'reilly books were better written and the code ran without issues. The author places his e-mail address in the front of the book but does not respond to e-mail messages. O'Reilly has a forum for discussion of many of its other books but not this book. The forum could be a great place to get help.

The introduction to iPhone Programming is done fairly well. I think the reader's time is well spent. There are some tips in the book which were certainly helpful. Keep in mind this is the only intro level iPhone Programming book I have read. The small improvements needed in this book leave me recommending someone to look elsewhere to learn iPhone Programming. At least until a new edition is released.

For someone new to programming, the typical path seems to be learn C first, then Objective-C and Cocoa, then iPhone programming. If you do not know these other related languages, the code in the book will not be understandable. I did have a little experience with C++ so the code was not totally foreign.

Dr. Dobb's Journal recently wrote a little about iPhone development. Their main thought was that it took quite a bit of learning to get up and running. Since Cocoa is built from Smalltalk and C, it takes more time to learn than something like Visual Basic. But don't get discouraged - iPhone development seems worthwhile.