Customer Reviews

Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I know that it say's "Beginning iPhone 3 Development", it does but it assumes a working knowledge of Objective C programming. Before buying this book, get a hold of a book that starts you purely on beginning Objective C, then buy this book and sink your teeth into it.

It's well written, clear code examples and fantastic "build your own" sample apps. 100% recommended for anyone starting iPhone development!

Note: This book does not cover any aspects of the iPad.

Beginning iPhone 3 Development is a solid beginner's book. However I would not recommend the book to completely novice programmers with no programming experience. Complete beginners might wonder what MVC, protocols, delegates, outlets would mean. These are advanced topics although not difficult to comprehend may overwhelm the completely new beginner. If you have other programming background particularly object oriented language you will have no problem understanding the Objective C constructs. It does help a lot and makes the picture clearer when you understand what they mean. Like for example, the use of square brackets [ ] is the dot notation version in calling methods from an object instance in C# or Java. It also helps to know the notion of method naming in Objective C which is very new to me i.e. the method name includes the series of parameters involved in the behavior which actually makes sense. I am used to naming methods by just the verb without the parameters involved. I had to look this up elsewhere as I found the method declarations completely baffling at first. But like when you start using the Mac coming from Windows, you get used to it and if you think about it more closely, it makes more sense and is actually very well designed.

Anyway, back to the book: I particularly like the progressive style especially in the beginning when as a newbie Objective-C programmer and Xcode user I have no idea what outlets, delegates and protocols are. The authors present simple chunks of exercises that build up to more complicated ones with just the right balance not to overwhelm the readers. Although the progression from simple to complex examples are well presented, the practicality and reusability of the examples are slightly questionable. This is debatable because whilst the choice of simpler example with no practical application creates a less steeper learning curve by isolating the topics at hand. I could also do with a more cohesive set of examples that lead into a final unified application. But this is the style the authors have chosen and I am not complaining as I have learnt a lot from the literature.

The meat of the book are topics concerning and leading up to Table Views manipulation from basic interaction to navigation. Chapter 11 about Basic Data Persistence falls flat with a very compact explanation especially on SQLite. The authors have however written the sequel book concentrating on what they have left on Data Persistence. Other chapters although compact are still useful including Quartz and OpenGL, Gestures, Core Location, Accelerometer, Camera and Localization.

I recommend that the reader, type the exercise themselves as you will more likely remember the topics involved. This is mandatory to beginner books and tutorials. However a bit of warning to those typing the code themselves. Especially when a specific protocol dictates a mandatory method to be overridden or implemented. If you misspell the method name, the application will likely crash with no clue in the debugger as to what happened. This is a gripe of mine directed towards Xcode as opposed to the book, because coming from a Visual Studio user, the mandatory methods would have been easily re-factored by the IDE. My advice is, just don't make any typographical mistakes. If the application crashes, you can download the actual code itself from their website and run it without any problems.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's a beginner's book and it packs in a good punch in iPhone development.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Its content is very accessible, and teaches through building example apps. There is source code available to download, but I would advise manually typing it in, at least for the first few chapters. This will get you thinking about the structure, and also help you become familiar with compiler and runtime errors.

The book would ideally suit someone with a programming background. The material is complex, and the book skirts over object oriented concepts like inheritance and polymorphism. For readers with no programming experience I would recommend reading a book on Objective C. In fact programmers with no experience of this language would benefit from doing a bit of background reading too.

The chapters take the reader through building applications step by step from the ground up. There are certain processes involved with wiring up components to reference each other, and handle events. These processes are repeated in each chapter, which helps to drill home the concepts. You could probably read any chapter in isolation as a self-contained lesson, but to gain the most out of this book, I would recommend reading it from cover to cover. There is nothing wasted here, an understanding of all the material presented will be required if you intend to develop apps seriously.

For me, the chapters on table views and hierarchical navigation controllers were the most relevant. This content had a direct bearing on my intended app, and I used the example as a skeleton which I developed further.

In summary, this book does a very good job of presenting complex material in a very accessible way. It may not be the most ideal starting point for a total beginner, but for programmers it's an excellent choice.

Excellent book, it drives the reader along all the way from zero knowledge, to what is needed in order to implement a complete iPhone application.
It enables to grasp all the basics, from a single source, in a clear style. A must-read.

I'm a very experienced developer on Microsoft technologies, but as a real starter with Mac development, I touched a Mac for the first time a few days ago. It was hard to follow the initial chapters, because it assumes that you already have some experience with the tools and Objective-C, or in other cases just says to not worry and go ahead because it will be explained later. I would prefer a book with more juice and practical content. I had to get iPhone in Action from Manning and start reading read it from page 150 (SDK programming), only then I was prepared to go back to this book.

This is my first book and first guide to SDK for the iPhone. It's a very good entry point to iPhone programming, there is much simple example projects.
I'd recommend to anyone who wishes to learn.

I bought this book thinking it would be good from looking at the reviews, but most topics are skimmed over and loads of the example code does not work. Beware

Bought this book to help me start my final year project at Uni.
Pros:
- Easy to read and understand
- Good for just jumping to sections that you need
- Covers all of the basics and some advanced features
- Good for people who have done Java or any OOP
Cons:
- doesnt go into depth with any topic (Probs why there is other books from Apress)
Over all its awesome and sits on my desk at all times

I've worked halfway through this book now and find it both interesting and fun. Both authors have a very relaxed writing style, which helps. Trickier sections are introduced with a little "warning" for the reader to ensure the focus is there. Altogether the book makes a very rounded impression.

My own background is business app and web app development (SAP ABAP and other SAP proprietary languages, PHP, Javascript), so object oriented programming wasn't new to me. However as a complete newbie to Objective-C I have to look up the odd statement and code segment, but the web can help out here.

I have already wishlisted the "More iPhone 3 Development" by the same authors, as this seems to get deeper into local data storage and usage of web services, which is of interest to me.

This book is a joy to read and understand. The authors understand their subject matter and know how to explain complex topics with good examples, I esp. found the picker and Nav bar examples very useful in my own iPhone development.

Another good thing is the topics are fairly independent from one another, so you don't have to read it from front to back in that order

I've read a few Cocoa dev books now and I have to say this is the best!

I am now considering purchasing their next book (the Pro version)!