Home > The iPhone Developer's Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone 3.0 SDK (2nd Edition)
 | Price: $26.00 Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Professional  |
Product Description
“This book would be a bargain at ten times its price! If you are writing iPhone software, it will save you weeks of development time. Erica has included dozens of crisp and clear examples illustrating essential iPhone development techniques and many others that show special effects going way beyond Apple’s official documentation.”
–Tim Burks, iPhone Software Developer, TootSweet Software
“Erica Sadun’s technical expertise lives up to the Addison-Wesley name. The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook is a comprehensive walkthrough of iPhone development that will help anyone out, from beginners to more experienced developers. Code samples and screenshots help punctuate the numerous tips and tricks in this book.”
–Jacqui Cheng, Associate Editor, Ars Technica
“We make our living writing this stuff and yet I am humbled by Erica’s command of her subject matter and the way she presents the material: pleasantly informal, then very appropriately detailed technically. This is a going to be the Petzold book for iPhone developers.”
–Daniel Pasco, Lead Developer and CEO, Black Pixel Luminance
“The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook should be the first resource for the beginning iPhone programmer, and is the best supplemental material to Apple’s own documentation.”
–Alex C. Schaefer, Lead Programmer, ApolloIM, iPhone Application Development Specialist, MeLLmo, Inc.
“Erica’s book is a truly great resource for Cocoa Touch developers. This book goes far beyond the documentation on Apple’s Web site, and she includes methods that give the developer a deeper understanding of the iPhone OS, by letting them glimpse at what’s going on behind the scenes on this incredible mobile platform.”
–John Zorko, Sr. Software Engineer, Mobile Devices
“I’ve found this book to be an invaluable resource for those times when I need to quickly grasp a new concept and walk away with a working block of code. Erica has an impressive knowledge of the iPhone platform, is a master at describing technical information, and provides a compendium of excellent code examples.”
–John Muchow, 3 Sixty Software, LLC; founder, iPhoneDeveloperTips.com
“This book is the most complete guide if you want coding for the iPhone, covering from the basics to the newest and coolest technologies. I built several applications in the past, but I still learned a huge amount from this book. It is a must-have for every iPhone developer.”
–Roberto Gamboni, Software Engineer, AT&T Interactive
“It’s rare that developer cookbooks can both provide good recipes and solid discussion of fundamental techniques, but Erica Sadun's book manages to do both very well.”
–Jeremy McNally, Developer, entp
Want to get started building applications for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch? Already building iPhone applications and want to get better at it? This is the only book that brings together all the expert guidance–and the code–you’ll need!
Completely revised and expanded to cover the iPhone 3.0 SDK, The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook is the essential resource for developers building apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. Taking you further than before, this new edition starts out with an introduction to Objective-C 2.0 for developers who might be new to the platform. You’ll learn about Xcode and Interface Builder and learn how to set up and configure your iPhone Developer account. Additional highlights of this new edition include:
Using the iPhone SDK’s visual classes and controllers to design and customize interfaces
Using gestures, touches, and other sophisticated iPhone interface capabilities
Making the most of tables, views, view controllers, and animations
Alerting users with progress bars, audio pings, status bar updates, and other indicators
Using new Push Notifications to send alerts, whether your app is running or not
Playing audio and video with the MediaKit
Working with the Address Book, Core Location, and Sensors
Connecting to the Internet, Web services, and networks
Embedding flexible maps with MapKit and Google Mobile Maps
Building multiplayer games with GameKit
Using Core Data to build data-driven applications
Selling add-on content and services with In-App Purchasing using StoreKit
Building accessible apps with Accessibility Plus
The unique format of The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook presents the code you need to create feature-rich applications that leverage the latest features of the iPhone 3.0 SDK. Over 30,000 iPhone developers turned to the first edition of The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook. So should you!
Customer Reviews
Excellent bookThis review is a bit late as this was for the 3.0 SDK... I read it when it was still fresh and it was great. The one caution I would give is that Erica is a skillful programmer and knows her way around the iPhone SDKs (and then some) very well. The "and then some" is the cautionary note... she often uses examples that are outside of the SDK that may not work in future upgrades... she warns you not to use, but it is so tempting.
Highly recommended for experienced developers
Erica Sadun's book and code are excellence itself. I started out with Sams Teach Yourself iPhone Application Development in 24 Hours, which is a fine book. However, as someone with several years' coding experience (and none on Apple platforms), I could have jumped right into this book and found everything I wanted or needed.
The examples build on each other, starting from the simplest implementation to rich and complex ideas. However, even the first example in each chapter is grounded in a few pages of background information. This provides the context for using a control or class that is often missing from Apple's documentation. And the complex examples are useful and not contrived. Unlike tutorial books that might stick with an app idea and reuse it past its useful life, Sadun strikes a thoughtful balance between building on the code that has come before and breaking out with a new code base.
Finally, the online repository of the source code is a goldmine. The author has taken the time to continue to revise her code as she or her readers report issues.
All in all, an outstanding tome. I am looking forward to the inevitable (I hope) iPad + iOS 4 update.
arithehun: Is Essential OpenGL Throughly Covered?
I am a 14 year-old who is very interested in iPhone development. I have begun learning many computer languages, but have always stopped short because of 1 or both of the following reasons:
a) I saw no point in learning this platform; i.e. It had no real purpose, it was outdated, it didn't really use programming, etc.
b) I was unable to find antiquate resources for my developing platform
Then I saw the Xcode. By far, it is the most superior compiler I have ever seen. I rate Microsoft Visual C++ and Dev C++ only 3/5, while I give this 5/5. So, I am a quick, intuitive learner, and I find iPhone development very straight-forward, logical, and proper. So, with some personal information for reference, I have two questions to ask. One is: Do I really need to buy a beginner book if I know basic Objective-C, or can I just save money (I need to watch myself, I also need to buy a Mac) and buy this book. Also, I was wondering if this covers enough OpenGL to create a 3D application, and load models that I will create with Blender into it. I need advanced behaviors such as if something hits glass, it needs to create an appropriate crack. I know that these are part of Blender's physics functions, but does this cover in its graphics section how to put these functions into use. Thanks for the support and advance, and also for finishing this really long, boring "review." Please comment, so I will be notified.
Very good, for what it sets out to do.
I found this to be brilliant, if you keep in mind what it is meant to do, which is to illustrate advanced iPhone techniques through _snippets_ of code. For lots of things, it made think quite a bit about what I was reading. I also know I haven't had to go back to my Objective-C book so much since I got this. I read through it quickly and go back to it for reference now.
It is not:
a) Any kind of teaching oriented material, sorry.
The points made about file contents, such as the lack of .h files are correct, as far as they go. I personally prefer to look at minimalist code. Separation between .h and .m files is essential, in production code. In a book's code listings, not so much. Now, she probably said this somewhere in the intro, but it seems rather obvious in context anyway.
If you don't know you should separate interface declarations see b).
b) An intro to iPhone development. Or to development in general.
There is little overall guidance in the book. What there is are detailed recipes about how to approach certain types of problems. Some of them are pretty advanced techniques, from what I can judge. It doesn't hold your hand to tell you how to code, what classes are for, etc... It doesn't even provide an overall picture of iPhone development or Objective-C best practices. You are assumed to know this already. I don't mean to be rude or dismissive by that statement, that's just what the book is like. If you are somewhat of a beginner, you could use it, but in addition to other books.
Now, there are some shortcomings. But I haven't seen the following addressed in other advanced books either.
1. The IDE and its compilation, linking and build path behavior.
I usually work with interpreted languages. As a result I find it somewhat problematic to troubleshoot errors involving 3rd party frameworks. Not all that much help in this book, though she does cover build targets and the like. Some of this stuff is probably basic C/Objective-C concepts, but the IDE does mean you don't necessarily pick up hints that a command line compile/link cycle, or using make, would show.
2. Unit testing coverage.
SenTestingKit and OCMock are, in my opinion, an essential addition to a programmer's toolkit to deliver quality programs. How difficult would it have been to cover them? Again, I haven't seen much coverage elsewhere either, but that's not to say it is isn't sorely missed here.
3. How to integrate source control with SVN or CVS.
It would have been nice to be told how to hook up Xcode to Subversion. Not done. Author seems to be a git fan, as the source code is hosted on git. And git is not supported in XCode 3.2.
I think a quick coverage of SVN or CVS would have been welcome in the chapter about the XCode IDE.
4. No "raw sql" on SQLite, only Core Data coverage. That is a subject covered by other books.
The Best I ever bought, and superb service from Amazon!
I had the best experience in my life about buying books when I did it for this book, on this site. I receive a great support for tracking the shipment and as soon I got the book, I started to eat it. Its very impressive how the author seems to know exactly what you are working on, and what you need and to be perfect, teach you the best and short way to get what you want. This book is not for beginners, but intermediate instead and advanced. Wonderful and I recommend it a lot...
