Used Review

13 Comments so far »

1. by Riva, on 08.09.09 @ 6:08 pm

   

   4.0 out of 5 stars
   Excellent book for the beginner
   I found this book an easy read. I started at the beginning and did each tutorial in turn. At first is seems intimidating as there is so much to learn.

2. by Haley, on 08.09.09 @ 6:24 pm

   

   I, like many others, bought this book simply because there really aren’t any other iPhone SDK books on the market right now. It’s a decent first book, but as someone who has programmed on the iPhone previous to reading this, I found some issues with it.

   I DO recommend this book so far, as it really is the only one out there, and it does cover a lot of ground, but I feel that there will be much better books to come. I’d love to see a 2nd Edition of this.

   THE GOOD:

   - Current to iPhone 2.1
   - Current to Objective-C 2.0
   - Covers a wide area, such as Accelerometer, Swipes and Touches, Data Storage, Drawing, etc.
   - Easy to read.

   NEEDS WORKS:

   - The author fails to show some useful shortcuts, such as putting all objects that need to be synthesized on one line: “@synthesize txtName, lblFileName, myViewController”

   - They also seem to skip over some very basic areas, such as what do all the iPhone pre-built templates do? Instead, they say “Apple provides this for you, but we are going to build from the ground up”. That is great, but ALSO cover the easier way and explain some differences between the easy/hard ways.

   - They don’t go deep enough into using and understand views. Sure, they go into navigation controller, tab bars, etc. but they don’t explain enough on just basic view manipulation. The example of switching between two different colored views doesn’t cover enough ground for something so important on the iPhone.

   - I would have liked to see an “Advanced topics” as a final chapter. For example, how do I combine both a Tab Bar and a Navigation controller? Applications that are more than just very basic need a section going into some deeper topics. I do understand that this is a beginners book though.

   - Skips over explaining basic concepts, such as what does “scalar” mean, how to view SDK headers to find methods (besides the documentation), and how you can right-click on an object in Interface Builder to bring up the connections pop-up.

   Good book though 3.5 stars. Recommend it for beginners until a better book comes along.

3. by Valley, on 08.09.09 @ 7:52 pm

   

   5.0 out of 5 stars
   Great for starting Iphone development
   This is a great book for starting iPhone Development. I liked the style and examples, it makes learning and following along easy.

4. by Wallis, on 08.09.09 @ 8:27 pm

   

   5.0 out of 5 stars
   The Best Book for Beginning iPhone Development
   There are so many lousy books on Iphone out (Because it’s still pretty new), it’s great to find a book like this. This is an excellent book for getting started.

5. by Ragni, on 08.09.09 @ 8:39 pm

   

   When this book arrived, and I saw the book cover, I knew I got something different. Not a cookie-cutter book but an original piece of work where somebody really intended to teach something.

   I just got this book a few days ago and with this 4-day Thanksgiving weekend and living alone I have been having a blast focusing just on this book. I haven’t read through it all yet, still just a quarter of the way through, but I’m not trying to cram. This book does exactly what I want a book to do (as opposed to an online reference resource): stop and talk about every little thing that is really useful to know in the workflow of applications programming on an iPhone.

   These guys know how to write. They don’t leave the reader with presumptuous word choice and leave the reader hanging; every time they say something it’s like they read the mind of the reader, “Now you might be wondering, what about… or why not do … Well, let’s talk about that.” Nearly every corner is covered, and where I still have questions it’s usually not directly related to the topic, i.e. I have an Obj-C question. Even then, after I return from surfing the web for answers, I return to the book and turn the page and the book says, “You should read up on this stuff at [URL]“… I kid you not, this book had me floored.

   Looking towards the latter pages of the book, I can’t help but be astounded, thinking, wow, I get to learn about THAT? And in the same style of learning that I’ve been enjoying so far? This is great!

   There are very few errors, mostly just little things that the reader can spot just by paying attention. There are plenty of enough illustrations and tips to keep the reader engaged and constantly learning not just the basics but how to get comfortable in the workflow of iPhone development.

   My only disappointment is that the book assumes knowledge of Obj-C, but fortunately it comes with plenty of URLs and references to complete those prerequisites as well, and really, to discuss Obj-C in detail, beyond the rather brief coverage-as-we-go that is indeed in this book, would have been beyond the scope of the book so that’s fine.

   There’s just nothing I can say bad about this book, and everything good. It is by far the funnest technical book I’ve owned and cracked open in months, if not years.

   By the way, coming from a C# background (and Java and VB5/6 before that), lightweight programming of the iPhone is EASY!! It’s different, but it’s easy, particularly compared to C++ programming which I’ve had a number of false starts. For me, if I can go from VBScript to VB6 to Java to C#, I can go from C# to Obj-C. Also, the workflow of Xcode + Interface Builder is somewhat analogous to the workflow of Visual Studio + Expression Blend 2 for WPF programming, if indeed event handlers would have been set up in the Blend designer in a drag-and-drop way. I must also add, learning how to develop software in Xcode forces the developer to learn MVC. I don’t know why people who are used to Visual Studio programming dislike the MVC-ness of Xcode programming, but I love the change of workflow, and I think there is much to take back with me when I return to C# development.

6. by Valerian, on 08.09.09 @ 8:49 pm

   

   5.0 out of 5 stars
   A great starting point
   I like so many others am just starting out with iPhone Development and coming from a windows dev background for the past 15 yrs I found this book a great starting point…

7. by Anonymous, on 08.09.09 @ 10:06 pm

   

   This book is one of the best programming books ever written!!!!! Want to know how good this book is? Over the holidays, my 12 year old was begging me to help him learn iPhone programming since he saw me release my first few apps and make a few dollars on it. He has never done any programming before. I told him to first read the first 100 pages of Programming in Objective-C by Stephen Kochan so he understood the basics of programming and then I gave him this book to learn about programming the iPhone. By the end of the weekend, he had written his first basic iPhone app. I was so amazed I am now going through the book page by page myself, and this 25 year veteran of computer programming is also learning a lot. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and the switch from someone used to doing strictly procedural assembly language and C programming to something like the iPhone is tough, but this book has shed a whole new light on how to program for the iPhone. Simply put, it’s fantastic.

8. by Dallin, on 08.09.09 @ 10:28 pm

   

   4.0 out of 5 stars
   The good and the bad
   I am at chapter 5, and I am loving this book. First off, I am not a programmer. I have bought may programing books trying to learn, but I am an artist, so this stuff does not come…

9. by Anonymous, on 08.10.09 @ 12:04 am

   

   5.0 out of 5 stars
   Awesome book but wait for 3.0 edition
   Great book, but next edition covers SDK 3.0 and includes corrections. The eBook is already out, the paperback is coming early July 2009.

10. by Rafael, on 08.10.09 @ 1:56 am

    

    5.0 out of 5 stars
    Excellent introduction, gets you up to speed quickly.
    I picked up this book after learning certain areas of the iPhone SDK from reading the documentation and working on an iPhone project for some time.

11. by Annabelle, on 08.10.09 @ 4:03 am

    

    4.0 out of 5 stars
    Great book for getting started
    This is a great book for getting started with iPhone development. (NOTE: If you don’t already know Objective-C programming you should first read through a different book.

12. by Shmuley, on 08.10.09 @ 5:05 am

    

    5.0 out of 5 stars
    Best book to learn iPhone development
    I have all the books on iPhone development plus every bit of video, documentation and sample code, and out of all that I can tell you that if you want to follow a “path of least…

13. by Jovana, on 08.10.09 @ 7:13 am

    

    4.0 out of 5 stars
    Good for a non-Apple person
    So far, I’ve found this book to be just the ticket in understanding how to program for the iPhone. I’ve got plenty of development experience in a variety of languages (primarily…

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