Customer Reviews

iPhone Application Development For Dummies

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

 

 

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!

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.

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!

I have no programing experience; however, this book makes it easy to understand how it works. It is very good at explaining little intricate details. I recommend it!

Bought this for a high school student who has been programming/writing iphone apps who found this book interesting enough to read at library - going back daily to keep reading it. The book is now a reference

This is THE book to purchase if you want to learn the iPhone app development from the ground. The book "Beginning iPhone 3 Development" by Jeff LaMarche and Dave Mark, is a more in-depth book and I recommend that one to the more experienced programmer, but "iPhone Application Development for dummies" should be any other persons choice. This book also have a few really important mentions that LaMarche and Mark forget to mention at all.

The book itself is logically built up from the start with a lot of theory in the beginning. This is necessary to wrap the beginners head around objective thinking and especially the delegate part of iPhone programming, but it can be a bit of a desertwalk at times. Do not dispair, there is light at the end of the tunnel!

I mentioned in my title a point of irritation and that is that Neal Goldstein uses his own programs as reference all the time. He has to use some program, yes, but it's name is referred to so many times in the theory-part, that when you come to the practic part of the book you're kinda fed up with precisely that program already. If you can get over this little quirk of Goldstein you should be ok. He tries to be funny too, sometimes not very well attempts. Ignore that.

The book is well written, forgets nothing, as far as I care, and leaves you pretty well tanked up and ready to send your apps to the appstore in notime.

I have meters of iPhone litterature and along with the other book mentioned this one stands out!

It's a good buy, don't hesitate !

Many of the things found in this book dates back long before even the iPhone 3gS although it's a nice tutorial on how to do things i still found it to be pretty difficult to learn... guess im an idiot and not a dummy?

Learning iOS and programming for iPhone is NOT FOR DUMMIES. There is no shortcut. I have bought this book and gave up after reading half of it. Yes it will help you build an app but after you drop the book you havent learned much because you only followed instructions and copied code. After reading this and other books I decided to take a longer, more solid route to learning iOS and bought the Big Nerd Ranch Guides that definitely solved my problem.

Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (Big Nerd Ranch Guides)

I bought this for kindle/kindle apps. You don't get the CD, but you can download all the files the author uses online. BUT, wherever there is code, he's got parts in bold that let you know something, but the formatting isn't there in the kindle versions. It just flat out didn't do its justice on the kindle.

In addition, as of the last time i tried using this book (a few months ago) I wasn't able to get the applications to work. I even took the finished app off the authors website, opened it in Xcode, and run it, and it still didn't work properly. The code had errors in it.

I'm completely new to the iPhone (and mac) development, and this book has been great for me. I am a programmer already, but still new to small system development. So, while I'm not totally inexperienced to programming, I am new to mobile (and desktop) development.

I wouldn't recommend it to people totally new to programming, but it would be fine for those that have done some programming.

I also wouldn't say that this is the only book you'll need (reference) for iphone development. You may end up getting a good objective C book, as well as a more advanced iphone book.