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: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK 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

The iPhone and iPod touch aren’t just attracting millions of new users; their breakthrough development platform enables programmers to build tomorrow’s killer applications. If you’re getting started with iPhone programming, this book brings together tested, ready-to-use code for hundreds of the challenges you’re most likely to encounter. Use this fully documented, easy-to-customize code to get productive fast—and focus your time on the specifics of your application, not boilerplate tasks.

Leading iPhone developer Erica Sadun begins by exploring the iPhone delivery platform and SDK, helping you set up your development environment, and showing how iPhone applications are constructed. Next, she offers single-task recipes for the full spectrum of iPhone/iPod touch programming jobs:

• Utilize views and tables
• Organize interface elements
• Alert and respond to users
• Access the Address Book (people), Core Location (places), and Sensors (things)
• Connect to the Internet and Web services
• Display media content
• Create secure Keychain entries
• And much more

You’ll even discover how to use Cover Flow to create gorgeous visual selection experiences that put scrolling lists to shame!

This book is organized for fast access: related tasks are grouped together, and you can jump directly to the right solution, even if you don’t know which class or framework to use. All code is based on Apple’s publicly released iPhone SDK, not a beta. No matter what iPhone projects come your way, The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook will be your indispensable companion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #94723 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review

From the Back Cover

“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: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK 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

The iPhone and iPod touch aren’t just attracting millions of new users; their breakthrough development platform enables programmers to build tomorrow’s killer applications. If you’re getting started with iPhone programming, this book brings together tested, ready-to-use code for hundreds of the challenges you’re most likely to encounter. Use this fully documented, easy-to-customize code to get productive fast—and focus your time on the specifics of your application, not boilerplate tasks.

Leading iPhone developer Erica Sadun begins by exploring the iPhone delivery platform and SDK, helping you set up your development environment, and showing how iPhone applications are constructed. Next, she offers single-task recipes for the full spectrum of iPhone/iPod touch programming jobs:

• Utilize views and tables
• Organize interface elements
• Alert and respond to users
• Access the Address Book (people), Core Location (places), and Sensors (things)
• Connect to the Internet and Web services
• Display media content
• Create secure Keychain entries
• And much more

You’ll even discover how to use Cover Flow to create gorgeous visual selection experiences that put scrolling lists to shame!

This book is organized for fast access: related tasks are grouped together, and you can jump directly to the right solution, even if you don’t know which class or framework to use. All code is based on Apple’s publicly released iPhone SDK, not a beta. No matter what iPhone projects come your way, The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook will be your indispensable companion.

About the Author

Erica Sadun has written, coauthored, and contributed to about three dozen books about technology, particularly in the areas of programming, digital video, and digital photography. An unrepentant geek, Sadun has never met a gadget she didn’t need. Her checkered past includes run-ins with NeXT, Newton, iPhone, and myriad successful and unsuccessful technologies. When not writing, she and her geek husband parent three adorable geeks-in-training, who regard their parents with restrained bemusement.

Customer Reviews

Colour me unimpressed!
I've learned a large number of languages, toolkits and SDKs over the years and been part of the review process of a fairly well known book as well, so believe me when I say this is not a great quality book!

If you read the back cover and even the prerequisites, you might think this book is for you. The prerequisites page only mentions the following with regards to knowledge required: "Familiarity with Objective-C". No mention is made of familiarity with writing software for OS X, but by page 23 we're seeing statements like "These essential frameworks enable you to build your iPhone applications using the same fundamental classes and calls you are familiar with from the Macintosh". This is followed on 24 by a comment about Info.plist - "It works the same way Info.plist files work on the Mac." Even as early as page 7 we're seeing things like "As with the Macintosh..." This book does not stand well on its own and that will make it less accessible to some people.

Then we get to the missing stuff - in the very first project, we're instructed to "Drag the three image files from the Chapter One Project folder provided with this book..." Provided where? There's no CD in the back, and I've not found anything in Chapter 1 so far that tells me where this resource is supposed to be included.

The first code listing spans almost two full pages as a single block of text. While the code is commented, there is no in-line breakdown of what each section is and you'll find yourself flipping back to previous pages to tie what you read there back to the code being displayed. Once this two page block of code is over, you don't see it again during this chapter - there is no further discussion of the code so you have to take it on faith for now and learn about it later. That's fine for a 10 line "hello world" app, but not really acceptable for an introduction to a language / framework like Cocoa.

All in all, first impressions are not good. This is not a book to rival the kind of book we've become used to with the Aaron Hillegass definitive reference for starting OS X programming. It will serve more experienced Apple developers well, but will be frustrating for new users.

This is a book written for people who don't need to read a book about iPhone development
I was utterly disappointed with this book as I've been a long-time reader of Erica's posts on TUAW.com and have enjoyed her efforts on MacBreakWeekly and her less official iPhone development.

Unfortunately the problem with this book is that she is too experienced to talk to anyone but other experienced developers. With her 'Hello World' app, traditionally the first app you will learn to write in any language, you are told to throw away parts of the folder structure that Apple sets up in XCode, along with some of the pre-written code and use the code she writes with absolutely no real explanation of why. The net effect is to leave you utterly lost, not really knowing what you can and cannot do with the tools you are given.

The second problem is that it seems that Erica seems to have written the book in a huge hurry. No time is taken to explain anything. Maybe I'm not the target audience for the book but I was absolutely none the wiser about the basic tools in the SDK after reading the first thirty or so pages and I am an object-oriented ActionScript developer with some experience with the MVC design pattern so should have some affinity with the OOP code used in Objective-C (even if the syntax is a bit more alien).

I have since bought Beginning iPhone Development - Exploring the iPhone SDK by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche and have found it's pace much more manageable and feel much more able to take on the examples after reading through the theory.

Useful samples, not for beginners however
I thought this book was well written but be aware it does throw you into the deep end pretty much immediately. I would recommend this book mainly to developers who are already familiar with the basics of building iPhone applications as there really isn't much of a beginners introduction here.