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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Can we hurry up already...., December 13, 2009
This review is from: iPhone Application Development For Dummies (Paperback)
I was hoping for more, discounting the other negative reviews and giving the author the benefit of the doubt. I wish I hadn't spent my money on this book...
Let me list some of the problems I have with the title:
1. the screen-shot illustrations are impossible to read, they are too light
2. the author tries to be funny, but it didn't work for me... I don't need someone to tell me to roll up my sleeves to begin coding
3. After five chapters, I had enough theory. Show me some code already. Jeez.
4. The author tries to illustrate several concepts with diagrams that did little more than frustrate me.
5. I learn by doing, but the author wants to teach you everything and then show you a basic example after 5 chapters of explanation. He gives you complicated theory and then a basic application. Why bother with the theory if the example application will illustrate little of what you explained.
6. The entire book illustrates exactly one and one half applications. The apple docs will get you through your first app in about 4 pages...for free!
I think the author knows his stuff. This is not a personal attack, but the book could have been structured much better to be a more informative learning tool.
My copy is going in the trash. I don't want to see on by bookshelf and remind me of my wasted time with this fiasco!
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not the correct style/content for a development book, February 23, 2010
This review is from: iPhone Application Development For Dummies (Paperback)
The content of the book is basic and is OK as an introduction, however there are a few things I don't like about this book:
1) Some key steps are usually missing or not highlighted enough. For example, in order to dismiss the keyboard on the "ReturnToMe" application, there's a very important setting that needs to be made in Interface Builder, without it, it doesn't work. This part is missing.
2) The code samples are fairly crude code. Instead of using a single value to determine something, additional instance variables are created. Not elegant, and worse not reusable. In this case, the sample code was to scroll a text field to account for the keyboard showing/hiding. Similarly values like phone numbers are stored multiple times in the code. A more elegant solution is to simply store the value on the UI where its shown, and to read it from the button/label when necessary.
3) Presentation of code samples sometimes direct the reader to "insert the after this text" type of thing. I understand the need to save space. However when right next to this I find screenshots of XCode that are useless for any purpose (like adding accessor methods), the logic doesn't hold. Scrap the picture and list the code, as this is always more useful to the reader.
4) While there's a lot of text to try and motivate development of useful apps, the sample apps spend time on useless minutia and skip important tips. For example a bit of effort goes into developing a 'hidden button' to what amounts to setting a preference for the application. The space would be better served by showing how to set an application preference. Other details like customizing the keyboard that will show when the user taps on a field is more useful and directly affects the usability of the application for the user. The sample doesn't do what the text preaches.
5) A cool feature on the ReturnToMe application is enabling the user to dial the number. However the way this was implemented is silly. Instead of providing a pointer to the API to dial a phone, the phone number is placed in a UIWebView (to get the feature for free). The code to this is 100X more than calling the API directly. - [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL [..]]. And yes, I want to see how to use the UIWebView, but that usecase is the wrong place for it.
After the initial application, the book jumps into a larger application. I find larger samples to be less useful to the reader than small recipe type snippets that cover API ground. While a complex app is cool, it should simply be a downloadable sample for readers to examine.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good book, easy to understand, May 17, 2010
This review is from: iPhone Application Development For Dummies (Paperback)
Just to give a quick review. I have a development background but no knowledge of iPhone SDK and Obj-C. This book was very helpful. It explained every step and had graphics to show details. You can also download the sample code. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about iPhone programming. My only criticism is that I don't think a "dummy" can really pick up this book and understand it. I think that a techie background helps. Happy Programming!
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