I’ve never been a fan of coding books, but when someone recommended me to try Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche, I just had to try it. I’d been wanting to learn how to code iPhone apps for Codesnipp.it. Shortly after listening to several podcast interviews, I also realized that I would love to be able to create my own projects and make money off of them, instead of working for clients.
I was quite impressed by this book, and it has to be the first and only coding how-to book that I enjoyed and actually looked forward to working on every night. Unfortunately it took me four months to finish, but that was only because I could only work on it for 30 minutes a few nights a week.
Synoposis
Beginning iPhone 3 Development is a 555 page, black and white paperback book. It’s written in very clear language and takes you step-by-step through most kinds of iPhone apps, and even touches on OpenGL, which is what is used to make iPhone games.
The book assumes a working knowledge of Objective-C, but was simple enough to follow along with no knowledge of the language at all. Now that I’ve finished, I’m contemplating picking up a beginner’s Objective C book to compliment this one, as I’m still not knowledgeable enough to create the apps I want.
This book definitely gets 5 out of 5 stars. It was easy to follow along, the apps were exciting and fun to build and the authors were silly enough to be fun and enjoyable.
Chapters
The chapters are laid out well and take you through all different kinds of apps and functionalities.
- Welcome to the Jungle – Installing the SDK and introductions
- Appeasing the Tiki Gods – A walkthrough of Xcode and Interface Builder
- Handling Basic Interaction – Short explanation of MVC and a quick app
- More User Interface Fun – Learning controls, images, text fields, alerts
- Autorotation and Autosizing – Rotating views and expanding layout
- Multiview Applications
- Tab Bars and Pickers
- Introduction to Table Views
- Navigation Controllers and Table Views
- Application Settings and User Defaults
- Basic Data Persistence – Storing and retrieving data, SQLite3
- Drawing with Quartz and OpenGL
- Taps, Touches and Gestures
- Where Am I? Finding Your Way to Core Location
- Whee! Accelerometer – Shaking, moving the iPhone
- iPhone Camera and Photo Library
- Application Localization – multiple languages and countries
- Where to Next? – list of resources
Worth The Purchase?
Definitely. Although I’m by no means ready for the App Store, I’ve gained a lot of knowledge with this book and feel ready for the next in their series.
By the way, the download of Xcode, Interface Builder and the Simulator is free, along with the free developer account. However if you want to put the apps on your actual phone or sell in the app store, you have to pay a $99 fee. However, all the apps in the book work pretty well in the simulator, so no need to pay the fee just to do these apps.
Buy It Now
You can find Beginning iPhone 3 Development in Amazon for only $26.39
Have You Read This Book?
What are your thoughts on it?