iPhone Open Application Development: Write Native Objective-C Applications for the iPhone [Paperback]

Jonathan Zdziarski (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0596518552 | ISBN-13: 978-0596518554 | Publication Date: March 17, 2008 | Edition: 1

Certain technologies bring out everyone's hidden geek, and iPhone did the moment it was released. Even though Apple created iPhone as a closed device, tens of thousands of developers bought them with the express purpose of designing and running third-party software.

In this clear and concise book, veteran hacker Jonathan Zdziarski -- one of the original hackers of the iPhone -- explains the iPhone's native environment and how you can build software for this device using its Objective-C, C, and C++ development frameworks.

iPhone Open Application Development walks you through the iPhone's native development environment, offers an overview of the Objective-C language you'll use with it, and supplies background for the iPhone operating system. You also get detailed recipes and working examples for everyone's favorite iPhone features -- graphics and audio programming, interfaces for adding multitouch functionality to games, the use of hardware sensors, and the device's vast user interface kit.

This book explains:

• How to access the iPhone's underlying operating system
• The makeup of an iPhone application
• How to get the open source tool chain running on your desktop
• The iPhone's core user interface framework, which is heavily tied to major application-level functions
• Using the many touted iPhone features such as multitouch, hardware sensors, and gestures
• Intercepting and handling event notifications for many iPhone-related events
• Raw video surfaces and 3D transformations that take you deeper into advanced graphics on the iPhone
• How to record and play simple sounds and intercept sound events
• Advanced digital audio output using Apple's new Audio Toolbox framework
• Advanced user interface components such as section lists, keyboards, and image manipulation

The Appendix includes a compendium of miscellaneous code examples for cool application features, such as using the camera and creating a CoverFlow®-like album browser.

This book is a true hacker's book, designed for the millions of users who have run third party applications on their iPhone, but its concepts and code examples have shown to be remarkably similar to Apple's official SDK, making this book a valuable resource for both camps. Any programmer can use this book to write applications with the same spectacular effects that made the device an immediate hit, and impress users just as much as the official iPhone software does. That programmer can easily be you.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jonathan Zdziarski is better known as the hacker "NerveGas" in the iPhone development community. He is well known for his work in cracking the iPhone and lead the effort to port the first open source applications. Hailed on many geek news sites for his accomplishments, Jonathan is best known for the first application to illustrate and take full advantage of the major iPhone APIs: NES.app, a portable Nintendo Entertainment System emulator.

Jonathan is also a full-time research scientist and longtime spam-fighter. He is founder of the DSPAM project, a high profile, next-generation spam filter that was acquired in 2006 by a company designing software accelerators. He lectures widely on the topic of spam and is a foremost researcher in the fields of machine-learning and algorithmic theory.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (March 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596518552
• ISBN-13: 978-0596518554
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #701,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Get Apple's free iPhone programming PDF instead...this is outdated material, March 26, 2008

By 

JavaBarista (Encinitas, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: iPhone Open Application Development: Write Native Objective-C Applications for the iPhone (Paperback)

The biggest problem with this book is that it addresses programming for the 1.1.4 iPhone firmware and was written prior to the official iPhone SDK being released. As a result it is already outdated with respect to many of the frameworks and APIs that aren't available in the official 1.2/2.0 firmware release and will most likely also be outdated in terms of the open toolchain, which is already changing to adapt to the SDK. So while the book has been helpful for me in getting up to speed with iPhone development pre-SDK (I have a draft PDF from O'Reilly), it is of little to no use now given the resources Apple has already made available for free at the iPhone Dev Center.

49 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Make sure you're the right audience for this book..., March 11, 2008

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: iPhone Open Application Development: Write Native Objective-C Applications for the iPhone (Paperback)

I'll be interested to see how this book plays out... iPhone Open Application Development: Write Native Objective-C Applications for the iPhone by Jonathan Zdziarski. Don't be misled thinking this covers the official SDK that Apple created. This is for those of you who don't want to be penned in by someone telling you what you can and can't do on their device. Truly targeted at the inner hacker...

Contents:
Breaking into and Setting Up the iPhone; Getting Started with Applications; Introduction to UIKit; Event Handling and Graphics Services; Advanced Graphics Programming with Core Surface and Layer Kit; Making Some Noise; Advanced UIKit Design; Miscellaneous Hacks and Recipes

Your satisfaction with this book will rely heavily on making sure you know what you're getting into. If you think this is the official approved method for writing applications for the iPhone, think again. Zdziarski goes the hacker route and shows how to program the iPhone using the Objective C language as well as a number of open source tools best known and understood by those in the Unix/Linux world. Considering the first step is to jailbreak your iPhone, you should know you're getting into stuff that could "brick" your cool toy if you're not careful. But since that doesn't stop the true hacker anyway, then you should have no problem continuing on. The book isn't a tutorial on the C language, so you really do need to know and understand that before you'll be able to follow along and venture outside the lines that Zdziarski lays down for you. But he does go into the UIKit in good detail, so you can start to grasp what graphical and audio capabilities you can control and use in your application(s).

I see this book being a great tool for the person who wants to write their own personal applications for the iPhone, and who doesn't want to live with the restrictions that Apple is placing on the use and distribution of "official" applications. If you're writing for someone other than yourself, your audience probably won't stray far from the hacker group who also was comfortable with jailbreaking their iPhone. If you're considering developing mainstream applications for the iPhone, this isn't the way you want to go. You'll want to stick with the SDK so that you are assured of a consistent and reliable release and distribution mechanism. Even so, spending time here before moving to the SDK will give you a much greater understanding of the iPhone operating system and hardware interface, which will likely come in handy when you go the SDK route.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not as Far from the SDK as People Think, March 14, 2008

By 

Brady L. (Missouri) - See all my reviews

This review is from: iPhone Open Application Development: Write Native Objective-C Applications for the iPhone (Paperback)

For those people who have dabbled in both the open toolchain (open iPhone development) and will be using the official SDK, I would highly recommend this book.

The book doesn't differ as greatly from the SDK as people are reporting. I won't bore with details, but an example of what I mean: I personally ported an open sourced 'Toolchain' application over to the official iPhone Development Environment inside Xcode. Once there, it took approximately 4 hours and the changing of MAYBE 20-30 method and class names to get the app up and running inside the Aspen simulator.

With this in mind, and with the very miniscule chance that the iPhone Open Development Community is going anywhere, I would say that this book holds more relevance to the current SDK than most people believe. This book is essential for a TRUE understanding of coding on the iPhone platform, and the readers can decide for themselves whether to code using the open toolchain or the official SDK.