Customer Reviews

iPhone SDK Application Development: Building Applications for the AppStore

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Okay.. I'm not even sure where to start. So, I'll start where the author does in chapter 2. At random points. And I will switch threads of thought like a rabid ferret on caffeine, just like the author. Oh, wait, no, I want you to GET something out of this review, so I will try and be clear.

I've made it through 2.5 chapters of this train wreck of a book, so maybe it gets better. In chapter 2, he obstensably shows you how to build an iPhone app with Interface Builder. However, it's not complete. He says things like, "Set the buttons correctly, and proceed to the next section." Of course, he doesn't tell you what "correctly" means. And he does have some goal in mind. He jumps between points of view. And ends up with a program that's not functional. No full source provided. When I wrote in to complain about this, they said, "Just download the full source from our website." I did. It doesn't include source for the program in Chapter 2. It starts at Chapter 3.

Moving along to Chapter 3, it gets better. The first program, HelloView (a simple 'load and do nothing' program actually works. The second program, it's obvious he never TRIED it before. He puts two different classes into the same source file. Not great style to encourage, but, we all get lazy and it's a small program. As soon as you move the cursor over the old UIView variable declaration, the entire XCode IDE spins to 100% CPU usage and locks up (which is 100% reproducable). This doesn't happen if you put the classes in separate files. That's not a bug with this book, per se, but he does lead you down the garden path into exercising a bug in XCode. Again, it suggests he never tested his own code.

Now, that's as far as I've gotten, and I bought it on Sunday.

Where do these people learn to program? Just reading the examples in the book tells one how superficial and confused this author's brain is. And don't give me the "...my intention is not to provide the most efficient code..." excuse. This is nothing but bad code. The text itself is no better. Just read the What's Going On sections.

I've read the first 3 chapters and already looking for something else. Don't waste your time and money. I've been programming for 25 years and it is hard to find a worse book than this one. It is the typical "get it out the door" text.

Horrible horrible book. Rushes through the basics in a very confusing way. He uses words instead of pictures or screenshots to try to convey what you should be seeing on your screen, or looking for. XCode can get very cluttered very easily so pictures would be much more descriptive than words (a picture is worth 1000 words to be exact!). There are many typos and errors. There aren't many iPhone books out currently, and this is near the bottom of the bunch. I own them all. This book is more like one of O'Reilly's "Nutshell" books, maybe useful to a certain few people but not terribly comprehensive. I feel like O'Reilly just wanted to get an iPhone book out ASAP, without really focussing on usefulness or ease of reading, and not proofreading very carefully.

Both the current books on iPhone development fail to provide an "introduction" to development as I'd call it. Both books (this one, and Beginning iPhone Development by Mark and LaMarche) say, right up front something akin to "the Apple approved and easy way to write for the iPhone is to use Interface Builder, but we're going to start you off with the harder, hand-coded way, so you'll learn the guts of how it works."

Really bad idea. Delegates, controllers et al are different enough without throwing unnecessary hand-coding at the novice first. Further, in both books, the code is usually "just presented" (here: type this) with only modest followup as to what you've just entered actually does and where it fits into a larger picture.

Now it's obvious that I'm new to Xcode and iPhone, but I'm not new to programming per se: I started coding in 1978. I'm also a teacher, and can say that both these books represent the "jump into the lake and while you're gasping for air, I'll teach you how to swim" approach.

The beginner would have been far better served with the inclusion of Interface Builder right up front. That would help understand the whole paradigm used by the frameworks and how it implements MVC.

Once that was understood, -then- is the time to go back and say "... and this is how we hand code that..." - once the basic understanding and overview was in place in the reader's mind.

I'm even monitoring the Stanford class... and what I can say is that between that, and two books, and constant re-reading, I've finally managed to extract the conceptual overview needed to understand WHY thing are done, which any programmer needs to understand to write good, efficient code.

Copy/paste doesn't teach programming. It's like teaching "turn screwdriver clockwise to set screw" first, and expecting that to lead to carpentry skills.

It's a common problem when experts teach, and is why teaching is a profession unto itself.

I've figured it out.. and am still learning... but I should not have to "reverse engineer" it all to learn to do it.

In sum then: at least if you're starting from where I started, get everything you can find on iPhone programming - one book alone won't cut it.

In January 2009, I purchased Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK (apress) mainly because it was the only book available that seemed promising in.

I wish I had access to this first, the iPhone SDK: Application Development (O'Reilly) book, as it contains details of all of the interactions that I've been trying to develop on my own.

If you are trying to decide between this book and the apress book, please read on...If not, skip to the Bottom Line.

The apress book is great for beginners to get up to speed on the iPhone's functionality, but it lacks the basic components needed to complete the user experience that people have come to expect from most iPhone Apps. I was constantly soliciting help from other iPhone developers on Twitter for help with things like the Page Flick interaction because it wasn't written up in this book. It has lots of pictures of the iPhone sample programs running in the screen view, but this just means there is less room for explanations that could lead to something you or I can customize. This book, in my opinion, won't be enough to build a production ready program that will garner high sales in the iTunes App Store by itself...

Bottom Line: Jonathan Zdziarski's iPhone SDK book provides fully detailed instructions to intermediate XCode programmers on how to construct and embed almost all of the iPhone's notable UI features: Date/Time Pickers, Progress / Activity Indicators, Proximity Sensors, Cover Flow, and the Movie Player Controllers to name a few. The book even covers network connectivity (CFNetwork) which is quintessential for data driven applications. The prospect of using rich media components such as video and page controls means that others will be adding these features to many iPhone Apps in the future and soon demand for those items will be commonplace. There aren't a lot of pictures of sample apps running, but that's where the examples come in and you can customize the code however you want.

My bet is on the book that has sections dedicated to user experiences that most iPhone users will pay money to download. Plus, most software companies won't hesitate to pay top dollar for people who can actually build Cover Flow into their software either...

Very inconsistent book. The chapter 3 is the longest one. But what was the point to describe UI elements without a single illustration? I could not find a single useful piece of info there. Some info is incomplete or simply wrong. Like why exactly you have to implement loadView method in your controller. You will be better of with Apple free documentation, like "View Controller Programming Guide for iPhone OS".

i am surprised by some of the reviews this book is getting. personally..i think is WONDERFUL book...BUT not for beginners. i think if you already have a handle on things, this book can REALLY push your understanding to another limit. if you want to be held by the hand..step by step then please dont get this book, i totally understand where the other reviewers are coming from( YOU DONT BUILD APPS WITH INTERFACE BUILDING IN THIS BOOK ... everything is from scratch 100% code ). ...this book is a MIRACLE.

This books meanders from the brilliant to the poorly edited. There are sections that are probably just about as good as you could get, then there are areas that are glossed over, missing or ignored.

My guess is that the editors or Apple got to the manuscript before it was published as there are items in the index that aren't in the book (check out Bluetooth if you don't believe me). There are also a lot of key items that appear in book, but are not in the index. Considering the size and scope of the index, I find this very puzzling. This makes the index worth a check, but not really as useful as you would expect.

All in all this is a handy reference to have, but it hints of how good it could have been and I find that disappointing. Not quite a programmers guide to development on the iPhone and not quite an authoritative reference. I find myself tempted to give it less than 4 stars due to it's failings, but when it is good it is damn near perfect.

So if you are starting programming with Cocoa or on the iPhone, I would recommend you start with something else. If you are familiar with the concepts and want to learn how to go that step beyond, this book might point you in the right direction.

I am new to Mac/iphone development and this book didn't cover a lot of basics. I used a few other books for basics on Objective-C/Coca programming. I tried to read the book by implementing examples but some of the examples didn't work. I contacted the author but didn't get any reply. Overall, I liked first six chapters and they had good examples but last six chapters were just list of APIs and their explanation. Apple has very good reference on iphone development but I was looking for a way to build complete applications using different APIs and in that regard the book failed. Finally, this book completely ignores Interface Builder that is key part of Mac development.

This book covers a lot of content in a small amount of pages. I'd prefer something more in depth, that also includes examples with Interface Builder.

Additionally, some of the examples have bugs where they don't work correctly in the emulator. There are better iPhone books out there, if you're only buying one I'd go with those.