Customer Reviews

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

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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 As a result it is already outdated with respect to many of the frameworks and APIs that aren't available in the official 1.2/2.0 firmware release and will most likely also be outdated in terms of the open toolchain, which is already changing to adapt to the SDK.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.

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.

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.

This book was a life saver. A few months ago, when I first started coding for the iPhone, I had no clue what to do with anything. There was literally NO DOCUMENTATION whatsoever. However, this book make learning the iPhone's API a breeze. Since then, I've gone on to make several well known iPhone 1.x applications, including PocketTouch, FontSwap, and StatusStyle.

I would highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to learn how to start coding great applications for the iPhone.

I returned this book, since I bought it after Apple's iPhone SDK was released, I assumed that would be the topic of the book. This book is for the development of Jailbroken iPhones. I'm sure I would have learned quite a bit from reading this book, but I'm just more interested in using Apple's official SDK, since my iPhone is no longer Jailbroken and I don't plan on Jailbreaking again.

While this book was well written and informative, it is well past its prime now. Apple's Official SDK is no longer beta, and thrid-party apps are flowing on the AppStore. While there may still be a reason to jailbreak and write completely open and un-restricted apps, this book is still stuck way in the past. The v2.0 firmware has changed so radically that the examples and teaching in this book will only hurt the would-be developer.

Wait for the new batch of books about the offical SDK coming out this fall, and in the mean-time check out a book on plain-old Objective-C instead.

Coming from a PHP world, Object-Oriented Programming can be difficult to wrap your mind around. Thankfully the introduction chapters here aren't too far overhead. OOP concepts are a must-have for modern programmers, and this book makes no contentions to teach you Objective-C directly. However, the author has included some good references to where you can take beginner OOP courses.

Through the first year of iPhone's being and well into the pre-2.0 and post-2.0 environment, this book proves invaluable for its chapters on the UIKit, a large part of the API that is used to build graphical apps on the device. Extensive coverage of UIKit classes, as well as undocumented 1.0 enumerations for certain components makes this a frequent reader when you are getting started.

The examples within the chapters cover just about anything you can think of doing with the UI, within reason. You will be able to confidently build apps that rival the ones included by Apple itself. Chapters on audio and graphics subsystems are as complete as could be at the time, and offer some examples that would be useful for game developers.

Quirks about the Ojective-C language are briefly discussed, then wonderfully mastered and repeated frequently to drive the point home. Object delegates, high-level messging, inherritence; you will get a full course of modern OOP goodness.

By the time you are done working with the chapter's examples you will feel like a million bucks. The iPhone platform is now your own lump of clay for you to mold and shape to your will. Couple this with some in-depth cocoa publications and you have the all the keys needed to swing the doors wide open. Feel smart, be informed and discover the tremendously versatile API that is iPhone OS.

The 2.0 version of Apple software makes some important changes, but for the most part, this book is still very useful. Great for beginners -- even if you don't know OOP, you can learn from examples on the 'Net and be way very soon.

If you are confused by the reviews here, you really need to go read the forum posts ( look for the "Customer Discussions" links below these reviews).


Personally, I wouldn't do this - too geekish for me, and if I were going to get into it, I'd go the "official route". The author made a very good point about this in the forum:

quote
It clears up a lot of confusion if you look at the Apple SDK as the "AppStore SDK", rather than a form of official SDK. The "AppStore SDK" as it is today summarizes what Apple will probably allow you to do in official AppStore applications. What you can technically do hasn't changed - it's just what Apple will "allow" you to do if you want to get on AppStore.
endquote

So if your interest is developing your own apps that you either aren't selling or at least won't be selling through the official store, this is fine. I thought it was well written, and although I can't follow it fully , it seems to lead you into the subject well.

I do harbor other feelings about this. While I think Apple is very smart in how they've opened this up while keeping it firmly under their control, I still think that Apple and the world would be better off it it were really open. In that respect, I applaud the author and hope that thousands of developers embrace this and force Apple to relinquish control.

iPhone Open Application Development is meant for hard core developers.
The writing style is very concise and to the point, not much BS. If you don't understand certain parts of the book, you can always Google.

I'm from Java background, but picking up Objective-C and trying out some samples in the book do not seem to be super difficult for me. I also got the toolchain built successfully by following the steps in the book, although there was one error in the LLVMOBJDIR setting but can you find the solution in iphone dev google group.

You don't need to wait for Apple's official SDK 2.0 release in order to build iphone applications. And the most important thing is: you can run your application on your iphone w/o bricking it (as comparing to what Apple's beta SDK will do to you). And it's totally FREE!

Highly recommend this book to any serious iPhone/iPod touch developers.
The samples in the book along can last for quite a long time.

For those app developers that don't know Objective-C and Cocoa Touch and don't want to outsource development, check out localbeacon (an iphone app builder) at [...]. Full integration of Twitter and Facebook, multiple ways to add content into system, off-line access, robust infrastructure including a CDN for all rich content, ability to merge in audio/video and photo galleries, and push notifications. Great for those who want to build just one app or developers interested in white label.