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93 of 99 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just what I needed!, July 23, 2010
First, to all the people giving low ratings because of a few typos - Get Over It! Any first printing of a technical book like this will have them, especially when things like the OS, SDK and dev tools are updated all the time. You have to judge the book on it's content, not a few mistakes in printing.
As for the book, this is EXACTLY what I needed. I've never programmed anything before in my life, but like everyone else I want to learn iPhone programming & make a million dollars. :P
I started with a few other "beginning iPhone programming" books and every one of them was way too out of my league. Inevitably the first chapter would say "You need to know Objective-C first...". So I'd grab a book on Objective-C for beginners and that would be over my head & the first chapter of those would say "You need to know C first..." So I'd grab a book on C for beginners. The one thing all of these books had in common was THEY DIDN'T EXPLAIN WHY THINGS WORK. So after reading a couple books on C, a couple on Objective-C, I was still completely lost when I started on the iPhone books.
Then I found this book. It is really the start I needed. Things are explained quite well and I was finally able to actually understand what I was doing, not just memorizing code. When learning something this foreign, it is much more helpful to have it explained thus; "This piece of code controls... and make the program do this..." or "This bit of code makes... happen because...". Analogies are used in a terrific way so you can understand the mechanics behind it all.
To use an analogy, if you never worked on a car engine,it would be far more helpful if someone explained what a spark-plug does than just telling you you need to have them. That is the kind of teaching Dr. Lewis provides in this book. I can't praise it and thank him enough for writing it & can't wait for more from him.
As for the typos (and there are really only a few), I actually benefited because it gave me a bit of a crash course in debugging and figuring out how things should really work. If you get confused or lost because of them, don't fret it, just come to the forum for this book and one of us will be happy to help out. [...]
If you are like me, "An Absolute Beginner", then you'll be hard pressed to find a better book to get you started. Trust me, I wasted many months trying.
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66 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Has errors but it's a good starter book, July 22, 2010
If you have been a long time Mac and iPhone user you may have had an idea for an application you wished someone would build. But unfortunately, developing software is not as easy as dragging and dropping media into say iDVD and producing a nearly professional DVD with titles, chapters, and background music. Learning the language of Objective-C programing is not the same thing as even producing your own dashboard widget--remember those?
If you know nothing about UITableViewController class, switch view interfaces, objects and properties, IBActions and IBOutlets, then I can nearly guarantee that Dr. Rory Lewis's iPhone and iPad Apps for Absolute Beginners is probably the best book for getting you started with mobile app development.
This book peaked my interest because I'm one of the absolute beginners whom the author is addressing. I have dabbled a little in CSS and HTML languages, produced some AppleScript and Automator workflows, but none of that compares with learning Objective-C and Cocoa programming--the basis of iPhone and iPad applications.
I've tried a few other iPhone app development books and while the authors maintain their book is for novices, I didn't find that the case. Sure I could work through a simple step-by-step "Hello World" program, but by the second chapter, most authors are off and driving fast, telling you how to drive a car, while at the same time explaining how the engine works. One other book I tried literally spent three chapters explaining Objective-C programming using only one sample lesson; but then the fourth chapter leads off with, "Now that you understand Objective-C..."! There's no way you can learn Objective-C or app development by simply reading a chapter about it.
You have to get your hands--okay, your mind--dirty with writing code. For the most part, Dr. Lewis has the ability to make app development manageably understandable. He takes nothing for granted when it comes to what his readers need to know, and he doesn't pretend that just because he spent an entire chapter explaining something that you will understand it.
Now, to be honest, what makes this book stand apart, for me anyway, is very simple. Dr. Lewis has produced instructional videos that nearly mimic the instructions in the book. These videos mirror he ones he developed as part of the classes he teaches on iPad and iPhone development. In many cases, without the instructional videos I would have been completely lost. There are times in the book though, when Dr. Lewis tries to give step-by-step instructions while also explaining the why of those instructions. That makes it very difficult to follow along if you're an absolute beginner.
So my approach has been to read parts of a chapter and follow along with the videos. Then go back and re-read the lessons that I successfully and unsuccessfully completed in X-code.
But I must admit, and say again, software development is not like editing video in iMovie. It takes time and focus to learn app development. Leaving out a semicolon, a word or two of code can mean all kinds of errors when you try to compile and run your application. It's very frustrating to spend twenty minutes typing out code only to find that you missed something along the way.
The book's accompanying web page does include the source code for you to compare your own work with. If you get stuck, I recommend opening the source code in say TextEdit and printing it out. Then go back over your own code using the source as a guide. If you still get stuck, just copy and paste the code and run it. You don't want your small errors to prevent you from understanding the concepts.
So coding is for those with patience and a determination to learn. However, I think, having worked through about two-thirds of the book, I can tell you that iPhone app development is not rocket science. It is indeed possible to produce many of the types of basic apps uploaded to the app store on a daily basis. I think this type of programing could be learned without taking a class, though a course on the subject would probably get you much further.
By the end of chapter of six, Dr. Lewis highly recommends re-doing the lessons of each chapter, like 10 to 15 times. I couldn't concur more.
What's great about this book is that Dr. Lewis revisits a few basic concepts in each lesson. So by the first nine lessons, you get a working understanding of some basic tools of programming, because you have done them more than once. But then there's the leap you must gain by understanding how things are running under the hood, so to speak. You must understand how the code makes things happen, which is the most difficult part.
There are some errors in the book that I have reported to Dr. Lewis, and if I'm correct I hope he posts them on his Errata page. But for the most part, I think if you are an absolute beginner like myself, with some time and patience, you can work through this book. (If you're like me and have an absolute beginner's interests in iPhone app development, write me. I'd be glad to share what little I've learned so far.)
And by the way, the book instructs you to download the current version of iPhone SDK, which will cost $99. But you can use the X-Code application, Interface Builder, and the iPhone simulator that comes installed on the Mac OS X Snow Leopard DVD. I wouldn't pay the $99 for the download until you're actually ready to submit your app to the App Store, which will then cost you the $99.
iPhone and iPad Apps for Absolute Beginners will probably not be the only book you'll need to produce your own iPhone and iPad apps, but it is the book to help you get started.
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36 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good beginners book, but beware the typos and inconsistencies, July 9, 2010
I bought this book based on all the rave reviews--but right away I ran into trouble. Some of the initial examples of code that the reader is supposed to type in and run (specifically, on p. 44) are so full of typos that I was stopped dead in my tracks with compiler errors and not a clue how to proceed. I looked on the publisher's website for corrections. In the "errata" section someone had indeed posted these same typos and asked for clarification. However, the corrections given (by the author?) were so short, enigmatic, and full of typos themselves (!) that they were not helpful.
Luckily, someone else had posted a comment that the videos on the author's website cleared up the typos. I went to the videos (links provided in book) and watched the author type in the correct code and run it, and figured out how to correct my code. I am now using the book OK and when I run into another of the numerous problems (such as incorrect file names, incorrect lines of code, examples in book that don't match the videos, URLs in the book that lead nowhere, typos) I can generally figure it out by referencing the video for the chapter in question or going to the publisher website and downloading source code from there.
Setting aside the typos, sloppy (or non-existent) proofreading, and last-minute changes made to the book but not to the downloadable source code (resulting in pointless confusion), the author's unique "do it first, understand it later" approach works well for me. He presents lots of easy exercises and repeats them with variations to drive his points home. I find that very helpful. Nevertheless, I'm not sure how a complete and utter novice would fare because I do know a bit of very basic Objective C. Enough so I can at least recognize when something in the text doesn't look right, and understand the author's explanations first time through. A total novice might well be mystified and give up. Still, this is the best beginners' book I've found, and I've tried several. (The "Dummies" book, by Neal Goldstein, for example, is not really a beginner's book--in Chapter One he states that it's written for people with some prior experience with object oriented programming.)
I would definitely give this book 4 stars, maybe even 5, for the author's enthusiasm and unique approach, but because of the sloppiness on the publisher's (and/or author's?) part regarding the numerous typos and inconsistencies I think 3 stars is generous. Having said that, I encourage you to try the book if you know some basic programming but can't seem to "get it" using the other books out there. If you don't know any programming at all, or want to get up to speed with Objective C, get the truly excellent Programming in Objective C 2.0 by Stephen G. Kochan, and work your way through the first 200 pages or so. Even better, take one of Kochan's online courses in which he emphasizes the parts of Objective C you need to know for iPhone programming.
So, who wrote those rave reviews? I don't think that any "absolute beginner" working his or her way through the book and doing the exercises could fail to get tripped up by the typos. The author is a professor of computer science at Colorado State University, and likely a popular one. This book is based on one of his courses. My guess is that some of his loyal students, familiar with the material in the book from his classes rather than through the book, wrote at least some of the 5-star reviews.
One final word: The author's original title for the book seems to have been "Getting Started with iphone and iPad Application Development" (I found this title in a caption of one of the videos on the author's website). And note that the Amazon title includes "(Getting Started)" after the title, but the book itself does not have these words in the title. Obviously, the title went through various revisions--probably by the publisher. The original title makes clear what the current title does not, that this book was intended by the author as a starter or primer and not much more. Indeed, the Foreword of the present book states in smallish print that this book was conceived as a lead in to a more advanced "beginning" book by the same publisher: "Beginning iPad & iPhone 3 Development: Exploring The iPad & iPhone SDK." By Dave Mark, Jeff Lamarche. Nothing wrong with that, just don't expect that having finished this book you will be ready to write useful apps. You will only have finished the "getting started" stage in preparation for the "beginning" stage. There are no magic bullets here. Learning this stuff is a long slog and you are going to have to work your way through yet another book or two to reach your goal.
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