iPhone SDK Development (The Pragmatic Programmers),   ISBN:9781934356258

Customer Rating: 

I have virtually no programming experience. Other than a solid beginner's understanding of LAMP (unix, apache, mysql, PHP and scripting stuff in general), I've never done more than fiddle with code. I do have a cursory knowledge of programming concepts, but that's about it.

This book would be a challenge for an absolute beginner, but not an insurmountable one. It starts off slowly, introducing you to basic concepts and building basic UI elements and simple apps. The authors quickly turn up the heat, however -- concepts that are learned in the early chapters are only repeated a few more times, then the 'hand holding' is over... you're expected to know by now to import your header files, @synthesize, etc. As a beginner, I actually *liked* this. My projects often bombed, and it forced me to think *logically* -- why did this build fail? It forced me to look at the error and consider the solution. It forced me to go back and relearn the concepts that I was simply typing out so I could move on to the next chapter's tutorial. It's a tough love (but mostly gentle) way of encouraging a beginner to learn the fundamentals instead of simply aping/mimicking what the writers' had coded. It will also save intermediate/advanced programmers from constant hand holding and let them jump straight to the heart of the project.

I really, really enjoyed the 'tone' of this book -- some writers break their necks in an attempt to sound funny/jokey/non-threatening. This is very much a professional book but still maintains a welcoming conversational tone. It strikes a 'just right' balance.

For absolute beginners -- I'd highly recommend that when you order this book and are waiting for it to ship, get to know Xcode and Interface Builder. Particularly IB, it's fun to play with and easy to dive into. Practice dragging views, making connections and adding outlets/actions, etc. It will help you get started that much more quickly once the book does arrive.

I've owned dozens of wrox, apress etc books since the 90s, and this is one of the few that I would not hesitate to recommend to both beginners and advanced programmers with no Xcode/Obj-C/iPhone dev experience. Get it -- it's that good (and the online support forum is invaluable, the authors are very quick to respond to questions).

Customer Rating: 

Bought a Macbook, bought an iPod Touch, bought iPhone SDK Development book (in beta at the time) ... read, experimented, followed tips and used on-line examples from excellent web site associated with book ... result: "BeatTheSwine09" game now for sale in iTunes app store. Thank you Dudney and Adamson for providing the right stuff at the right time.

Clearly written, well-organized, comprehensive (includes chapters on debugging, performance tuning and marketing). The right mix to train and guide programmers through all stages of the development and deployment of an iPhone app.

Customer Rating: 

I initially purchased this book when it was still in it's beta format from [...], and have since purchased the hard copy from Amazon. This book been an excellent source of information for learning how to build meaningful iPhone applications and includes content relative to the 3.0 SDK. Though I have purchased several books for learning how to build iPhone applications, this one book is by far the most comprehensive and up to date that any other resource. The author does an excellent job of taking complex ideas and breaking them down into easy to implement strategies for building iPhone applications.

Any aspiring iPhone developer would have all of the information they require to build applications with this one book and the free sources of information on Apple's developer site.

Customer Rating: 

Though, I own a couple of iphone development books, I bought this book because I generally like Pragmatic Programmers books. However, I found that this book had a lot of problems with the examples. I like to follow the book by completing the examples in XCode, but I found a number of problems. For example, in chapter five, when I followed the example, my right button bar button wasn't appearing because in the book they showed (on page 86) to store edit button on right button, which I had to change to left button to get it working. Similarly, on chapter six, I could not even complete the example of navigation as it missed a number of things like declaration of synthesize for key and missing headers. There are countless other examples of sloppy snippets of code that you can't use to build project in XCode. I am very disappointed with quality of this book from PragProgs and Oreilly series.

Customer Rating: 

This is such a wonderful book to learn iPhone SDK programming. One warning is that you really should be familiar with the Apple development environment (XCode) and have a working knowledge of Objective C. The first book I went through was "Beginning iPhone Development," by Mark and LaMarche, since this was published before the current book. Those authors "hold your hand" more when teaching about the SDK. As such, it is probably a more appropriate book for the very beginner. If, on the other hand, you are comfortable with the target-action concept, making connections, MVC, etc., then go right to this book. It is refreshing to not have to read how to click and drag to create a connection for each and every project or how to create properties for every instance variable. The Mark and LaMarche book, however, in getting the reader accustomed to all those rudiments.