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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.1
EAN: 9780470487372
ISBN: 0470487372
Label: For Dummies
Manufacturer: For Dummies
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 408
Publication Date: May 11, 2009
Publisher: For Dummies
Studio: For Dummies
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Here's the fun and easy way to learn how to create your own iPhone applications
Whether you're a professional developer or an iPhone user with a knack for technology, this plain English guide shows you how easy it can be to create your own cool iPhone and iPod touch apps. The open iPhone SDK offers a world of opportunities, and with the information in iPhone Application Development For Dummies, you can get in on the fun and profit.
You don't need high-level programming skills to create iPhone apps. iPhone Application Development For Dummies walks you through the fundamentals for building a variety of applications using Objective-C and covers the critical steps for creating applications that get accepted into the AppStore. - Apple's open SDK for the iPhone allows any developer to create iPhone applications
- This guide helps you develop new applications for use on your own iPhone or for release to other iPhone and iPod Touch users
- Covers small and large-scale application development
- Shows how to develop usingObjective-C
- Enables both novice and experienced programmers to leverage the marketing power of the open iPhone SDK
The iPhone is the hottest smart phone around, and with iPhone Application Development For Dummies, you can create cool new apps to make it even more exciting.
Average Rating: 
Rating: -
Long ago, in a life far far away, I was a C programmer. I learned C, caught onto the beginnings of C++ and then changed my career path to that of an Oracle DBA. Now, I find myself interested in Objective-C programming. Go figure.
I picked up Neal's book as the second book in my effort to both relearn the C programming language (and C++ and Objective C, etc..). As an author myself (of Oracle Database books), I found this book to be a worthy effort and a good start in my Objective-C life.
I found the beginning chapters (Parts I, II and III) to be quite well done and while I found a few minor mistakes, they were pretty obvious and easy to figure out. I would say that Parts I, II and III are above average in their quality and completeness. The code examples are quite complete and I don't believe I found a single mistake in the code in these parts (though a few mistakes in the text were found). I did find some descriptions lacking clarity, but this was not a constant problem. I have high hopes that these issues will be addressed in the next release of this book which I see is due soon. If I were judging this book on Parts I, II and III it would get 4.0 stars. One thing I do wish is that Neal would comment his code (or, at least, that the download code would have comments in it). He does provide good explanations on what the individual code snippets do, but I'd like to have ready-made comments in the code itself. Not a big deal, I added them myself. Still, commenting is good coding practice and I'd like to have seen that demonstrated here.
I wish I could say the same about Part IV, frankly. I get the sense that perhaps Neal was working within either page count constraints or time constraints (as an author I understand and respect both).
In Part IV we get into more advanced concepts and a much bigger example application (and cooler!). It is in this part that we find some missing code (mostly stuff in the header files) and some resulting frustration. Additionally I find the descriptions in this part to be less informative and complete than in the previous parts of the book.
Finally in Parts I through III, the code is re-compilable at several points along the path of development. This makes it easy to see what your changes are actually doing in the resulting application. I find this less so in part IV, which might be just part of the nature of the app, but I think that it might more be a factor of whatever caused part IV to feel a bit haphazard when juxtaposed to the other parts.
I think Part IV introduces some very important concepts and ideas and I'm a bit disappointed in it. So, 3 stars for Part IV.
Overall, I recommend this book for someone like me. You should have a basic understanding of C++ (objects, methods, messages, etc) and you should be ready to do a little digging in Part IV (which from a learning point-of-view might not be all that bad of a thing). I'll probably buy the new edition when it comes out and see how it has changed. Good job Neal!
Rating:  -
The first hundred of pages are devoted to all sorts of theory and general considerations, I was struggling with sleep when reading them. I never saw that amount of fluff in any other iPhone development book.
The author believes that creating a "Hello world" application would be too trivial and so creates an application that does exactly the same as a HelloWorld one would do, except of displaying the "hello world" message. How illuminating can be that, I don't know.
The reader is invited to write the very first lines of code on page 124 only. By page 140, when the reader had an opportunity to write about a dozen lines of code, the author hits a substantial problem, created by himself, with user interface and starts throwing at the reader things like notifications (a topic that most books would leave for one of the final chapters).
I regret that I've purchased this book, but now I will keep it as an example how tutorials should *not* be written.
Rating:  -
I'm not an expert in Objective-C or in object oriented software programming. Following this book with step by step interactions with the content gave me the confidence to dream how to build my own iPhone application, which is something I plan to do.
Overall, I would have to say that this was a great overview of the Apple iPhone SDK and through the practical projects included in the book, was a competent confidence builder. Readers with relatively limited skill like me can follow the feature development logic and implement the lessons for 'stickier' learning. Neal does a great job of helping us take baby steps and then reviews what we've just learned too.
In this book you build the ReturnToMe application which provides a mechanism for lost iPhones to be returned to their rightful owners, gradually adding functionality along the way while learning about the iPhone SDK and Objective-C. Later, Neal reviews his experience with a more sophisticated application integrating web content and table data.
Rating:  -
Although I have some experience in programming, I found the book a bit confusing in the first part. In the following parts it improves a lot, but some damage on your motivation is already done.
Rating: -
A good book to start iPhone programming. It provides needed background information and basic information needed to understand and become proficient in developing for the iPhone. Also it reminds the developer of the UI principles that should be accounted for when creating an iPhone application.
One slight negative is that the book covers the older SDK and will be better when updated for the 3.0 SDK.
I would recommend the book to new iPhone developers. The developer will probably want to add an Objective-C reference book to their collection as a companion to this book.
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