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The iPhone Developer's Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK (Developer's Library)

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Author: Erica Sadun
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$39.99~~
Buy New: $26.39
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Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

21 reviews
Sales Rank: 1903

Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 7 x 0.9

ISBN: 0321555457
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.26
EAN: 9780321555458
ASIN: 0321555457

Publication Date: October 23, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Also Available In:

•	Kindle Edition - iPhone Developer's Cookbook, The

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Editorial Reviews:

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.

Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...

1 out of 5 stars

Technically Lacking October 18, 2008
Rupert P. Fillywick (San Francisco, CA, USA)
39 out of 51 found this review helpful

I am sadly disappointed with the technical content of the book. After just reading a few chapters, it's clear that the content is relatively shallow, and the recipes have quite a few technical errors.

1) Recipes Correctness

Here are just two of the issues I noticed in the Address Book section:

- The address book section is contains numerous instances of recipe code that fails to release allocated memory returned from calls such as ABPersonCopyImageData() or ABAddressBookCreate(). The author does not explain the Core Foundation rules for memory allocation in the Address Book framework.

- The author manually stitches together first name and last name of address book records, when Apple provides ABRecordCopyCompositeName() exactly for this purpose. Concatenating full names is complex and entirely locale dependent -- for instance, in many eastern countries, the family name is printed *first*. That's why Apple provides a locale-aware function for doing so, rather than relying on a naive implementation that simply concatenates "FirstName LastName"

2) Undocumented & Private APIs

Using private API is not only forbidden by Apple for App Store applications, it's also very likely to result in your application breaking on a future release of the iPhone OS, as the private APIs may be removed or modified at *any* time. In numerous instances, rather than explain how to implement a feature yourself using the available public APIs, Erica suggests using undocumented, private API.

This includes the "Programming Cover Flow" section, which is touted in the book's description -- "You'll even discover how to use Cover Flow to create gorgeous visual selection experiences that put scrolling lists to shame!"

In fact, the "Cover Flow" section is simply a short chapter that suggests that you use Apple's private Cover Flow API -- something that would never be allowed into the app store. Writing Cover Flow using Core Animation is actually a very interesting problem -- advertising a chapter on Cover Flow that simply tells you to use forbidden API appears disingenuous at best.

I highly recommend waiting for a more comprehensive and correct iPhone development book. With the iPhone NDA lifted, more are sure to appear -- if they haven't already.

2 out of 5 stars

New to Apple's Developer Tools? This book is not for you! November 18, 2008
Jason R. Weiss (Katy, TX USA)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful

The book states it is aimed "squarely at anyone just getting started with iPhone programming." It is not.

At the time of purchase, I was a brand new iPhone developer with zero exposure to Apple's developer tools and their iPhone SDK. That said, I am a very seasoned Java and C# developer, I have used Eclipse and VS.NET extensively for numerous years to build some very sophisticated applications. Apple's developer tools, XCode and Interface Builder, are radically different tools unlike either of these development environments. Instead of a singular IDE, the Apple tools are a hodgepodge of separate applications filling your screen with a plethora of small tool and inspector windows. If you are brand new to XCode and Interface Builder, this book simply doesn't have enough horse power to properly educate you on the pitfalls newbies will face.

If you are already familiar with Apple's developer tools, then the book may be better received by you then by someone who had no exposure to them.

As a newbie you need to realize a very, very important point: copying code out of a book and into XCode is simply not enough to get a demo working out of this or any iPhone developer book! The trick is knowing how to "link" within Interface Builder- how to establish what I now know to be IBAction and IBOutlet property decorators. The IB stands for "Interface Builder" and these two markers provide "hints" from XCode to Interface Builder. For example, to "link" a button from Interface Builder to a property in XCode, the @property would have to be properly decorated (with IBOutlet) and then you must physically establish the link in Interface Builder, using a control-click-drag metaphor from source to destination. To my point- therein lies the problem with "recipe" books like this one- unless you already have a grasp on this concept and how it works (which I didn't when I bought the book several weeks ago), this book will leave you very frustrated. You have verbatim code in XCode, but things don't work! Worse, you have no idea why. [bang head on desk repeatedly here]

My recommendation is to look at the forthcoming book from the guys over at Pragmatic Programmer- iPhone SDK Development I purchased their book, and while it still left me to figure out some holes and some of the Interface Builder nuances, it was much more targeted for someone who has never used any of Apple's developer tools. The Pragmatic book isn't a panacea for all newbie problems, but it is far better suited then this "recipe" book.

I'm confident (well, hoping) that as my iPhone developer experiences grow and I become more accustomed to Apple's developer tools, the recipes presented in this book might be of more value.

It is my opinion that its stated objective should have read "...squarely at anyone just getting started with iPhone programming who is already comfortable with the nuances of XCode, Interface Builder, and the other Apple developer tools."

3 out of 5 stars

Not For Beginners October 28, 2008
voiceoverthewall.com (United States)
13 out of 17 found this review helpful

The "Who This Book Is For" section of this book states: "This book is written for new iPhone developers with projects to get done and a new unfamiliar SDK in their hands." I am rating this book three stars because it does not live up to this statement.

As someone familiar enough with Xcode and iPhone development to understand the Apple templates and Cocoa design patterns, I was sadly disappointed when I discovered that the code listings in this book were not separated into .m and .h files. Rather, all code is jumbled up into long single-file, multipage listings. The author even states that this format is suited for book publishing. I whole-heartedly feel that this single issue makes this book worthless to a new iPhone developer. Why? A newly created default iPhone project in Xcode has separate .h and .m files.

In addition to the above-mentioned flaw, this book does little beyond Chapter one to hand-hold a new iPhone developer. This book in not instructional at all in this regard and is only suited for those with several months or more of Xcode/iPhone SDK experience. That said, Chapter one contains incredibly detailed and well thought out introductory material, enough so that it may mislead you into thinking this book is for beginners. Chapter two jumps right into code without even explaining the bare essentials of Obj-C.

Furthermore, I think the lack of IB (Interface Builder) instruction will only confuse matters more. I equate this to coding in VB without The Visual Studio IDE.

It is clear, however, that Ms. Sadun knows what she is talking about when it comes to iPhone development. I give her credit for that. Unfortunately, her book comes off no clearer than Apple's own documentation.

I recommend you look elsewhere if you are starting out as a brand-new iPhone developer.

5 out of 5 stars

Consider the Value October 19, 2008
Chuck Toussieng (Malibu, CA)
11 out of 18 found this review helpful

I have made my living from programming, which roughly equates into: I charge clients for my time. That said, I would imagine that we all place some sort of "value" on our time, and being from a (hopefully) empathic species, I place value on the time of others. It is from this basic perspective that I often find myself extremely grateful for the teachers, authors, bloggers and others who obviously love to share knowledge and often do so at no cost.

I was excited to find this book by Mrs. Sadun, as I have come across her work while searching the web for solutions, and always found her information to be well informed and thorough. If anyone is on the fence about buying this book, visit her website and browse through the vast amount of information she makes available (at no cost by the way) and judge for yourself.

Is the book completely perfect? Maybe not- but consider the value in finding a single nugget of information for $26. How much is that worth to you in your time? I can tell you I personally found several items in this book that I was able to either use completely as-is, or as a jumping off point to further develop from.

As to the previous reviewer's comment's about some technical errors, I would like to point to Apple's own Documentation which is far from perfect and has been known to contain errors. That's why Apple and Mrs. Sadun post fixes and updates.

Buy the book. And maybe (like I did) buy the pdf too. Be a contributor to those who share quality knowledge. I guarantee that if you read this book all the way through, you will find that it more than pays for itself- and probably several times over at that.

1 out of 5 stars

Code Snippets Only - Buyer Beware October 17, 2008
Sheldon L. Sides (Papillion, NE United States)
10 out of 16 found this review helpful

I have to say I am very unhappy with this book. The title states "Building Application with the iPhone SDK". With this book you do anything but learn to build iPhone apps with the iPhone SDK. For one the book is just comprised of code snippets. There is no real teaching you how to program with the SDK. There are also quite a few errors throughout. Buyer beware if you are new to iPhone Development this book will not help you at all to get started. If anything you will have more questions than answers.

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