Programming the Iphone User Experience: Developing and Designing Cocoa Touch Applications (Paperback)

~ Toby Boudreaux (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch not only feature the world's most powerful mobile operating system, they also usher in a new standard of human-computer interaction through gestural interfaces and multi-touch navigation. This book provides you with a hands-on, example-driven tour of UIKit, Apple's user interface toolkit, and includes common design patterns to help you create new iPhone and iPod Touch user experiences.

Using Apple's Cocoa Touch framework, you'll learn how to build applications that respond in unique ways when users tap, slide, swipe, tilt, shake, or pinch the screen. Programming the iPhone User Experience is a perfect companion to Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, and provides the practical information you need to develop innovative applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, whether you're a CTO, developer, or UI/UX designer.

• Understand the basics of the Cocoa Touch framework for building iPhone and iPod Touch applications
• Learn theory and best practices for using Cocoa Touch to develop applications with engaging and effective user interfaces
• Apply your knowledge of Objective-C to the iPhone/iPod Touch framework
• Customize standard UIKit views according to Apple's Human Interface Guidelines and usability principles
• Learn patterns for handling user experience concerns outside of the interface, such as network- and location-awareness

About the Author

Toby Boudreaux has been developing for Mac OS X using Objective-C and Cocoa since 2000. He has spoken at WWDC on the topic of Hybrid Cocoa/ Web applications - a very relevant topic for the iPhone. He is the CTO of of The Barbarian Group, an interactive/software shop based in the US. He focuses evenly on OS X/iPhone application development and Web development, and acts as a mentor to his team, liaison to his clients, and representative to the community. Toby has authored and acted as technical editor for books and articles related to programming and specializes in Web development for consumer markets using open technologies and on Mac/iPhone development.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (August 12, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596155468
• ISBN-13: 978-0596155469
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #77,015 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #14 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Apple > Cocoa
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars a few nice gems buried in there, August 21, 2009

By	Joseph F. Heck "rhonabwy" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The book is short, and while it has quite a number of code samples buried within it, it has only a few real gems that I thought were worthwhile. If you're looking for code examples on how to do fancy UI things with the iPhone or iPod touch - don't go here. It's really more of a conceptual overview of what an iPhone user experience should be including categorizing some common elements and patterns in use.

In the code samples, I found a useful nugget: a tidbit on how to improve the app startup/loading experience, with code samples. Otherwise most of the code samples were almost more of a "hey look, I can do the same thing that Interface Builder does, except in code" and re-hashes of example code that you can find on the web or in Apple's sample code projects. I suppose it's a lot easier than screenshots illustrating how to replicate with Interface Builder. The fact that you could do many of these patterns with Interface Builder seemed to escape comment in the text.

In terms of something to think about for how you're going to set up a user experience, it gives some patterns and anti-patterns that complement Apple's iPhone HIG. I thought at a fairly high level, those were pretty good. I didn't agree with all of them, and some segments seemed to be so wishy washy as to be useless (like wether or not to use Core Data) - but some were good too.

I wouldn't run out to go get this book and read it, but if you're looking for a paper copy of another point of view on the UI patterns of designing iPhone applications, this book might be worthwhile for you.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Programming the iPhone UX starts @ Chapter 5, August 18, 2009

By	John McSwain "Compound J" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

When I got this book, literally my jaw fell open and my first comment was "Why is it so small??" I struggled to even write this review, but I felt compelled to state specifics. Here is what I learned:

Chapter 1 - Very strongly emulates the Apple Cocoa Fundamentals Guide. No code samples present.
Chapter 2 - Emulates iPhone Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). No code samples present.
Chapter 3 - Emulates iPhone HIG. No code samples present
Chapter 4 - Emulates Apple's Xcode Quick Tour for iPhone OS. No code samples present
Chapter 5 - Code samples are FINALLY present, but I don't know if there is a place online to download the source. Where can I download the code, run it, customize, or save it?
Chapter 6 - Code samples are present via 7-8 pages of straight code
Chapter 9 (UX Anti-patterns) seemed interesting, but there were no code samples present.

I checked to make sure I didn't misunderstand the book when I bought it, but it still said PROGRAMMING the iPhone User Experience.
I don't think programming UX is possible using this book from scratch or without additional literature. The UX explanations are not very specific as I hoped there was focus on topics like cognitive biases, user centered design, and interaction design on the iPhone and demonstrating some examples programmatically..

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ok, not great. Kind of a let down, August 18, 2009

By	CodeFree "CODEFREE" (EVERYWHERE,USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

I was expecting a book that had some new or advanced UI advice and basically it was a rehash of Apple materials. I don't think it was worth the 23.09 it was billed as and it is super SHORT. The first half is just review material from the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. This same material is present in any number of books and I can not recommend it to anyone who is an iPhone developer.