Beginning iOS 5 Development: Exploring the iOS SDK [Kindle Edition]

I have bought several Objective C & IOS development guides trying to get an understanding of development on the Mac & iPhone. None of the books would guide you properly and did not contain useful exercises and examples.

I bought the Kindle addition of this book and have not put it down. I am dragging My MacBook Pro everywhere and reading/programming in all of my spare time. The IOS 4 guides I purchased appeared to be more of an introduction to added functionality within the release.

The Objective C books end up having you run programs on the command line. The integration was missing.

This book is different. I have been a programmer for years but not a "C" programmer and not a Mac programmer. I work on Linux clusters and the like. a lot of scripting.

This book starts out telling you that it is not intended to teach you C. The exercises and chapters walk you through the entire IOS 5 X-code IDE and explain how to use the system in a progressional way. I am being taught how to use the IDE and develop useful code that is helping me understand how I need to setup and integrate all the pieces of an IOS application.

I highly recommend this book

I can describe this book with a single word. Fantastic!

As some of the other reviewers mentioned, not having knowledge of Objective C can make following this book somewhat challenging. Not having any programming knowledge makes reading this book pointless. Having some knowledge of objective C is a must to fully reap the benefits of this book. As a background, my only programming knowledge before starting this upward (and somewhat steep) journey came from C which I learned over 10 years ago. I read two objective C primer books (and to save any beginners the trial and error of deciding, I would suggest Objective C programming: The big Nerds guide, followed by Programming in objective C 4th ed by Kochan). However reading the first one should be enough to get started with this fantastic book.

This book takes you up a steep hill using a "stairs" approach. Every step feels almost effortless as you move forward. The teaching style is very clear and does not assume prior knowledge of a subject, despite the fact that they explained that subject few chapters back. The exercises are very practical and they keep it simple and clear.

I highly recommend this book as a foundation laying book for beginning app development.

P.S. I purchased the Kindle edition of this book.

Phew, I just finished reading this book after putting about 68 hours of work into it, trying to understand every chapter and notion and writing the code myself so that it will better stick in my head.

I have to say, this has got to be one of the best technical books I've ever read, certainly great for a noob in Objective C and Cocoa like myself (but not an inexperienced programmer).

Things I believe contribute to the quality of this book:

- it is written with a nice pace in mind, taking the time to explain why certain choices were made and how iOS components work; every task is explained in detail, especially the Interface Builder tasks which can take some time to get used to and the authors never assume that you know how to do a certain thing - which is great for beginner developers; it also means that you can pick up chapters in a relatively random order and still be able to grasp how to work with XCode;

- goes through all major components of the Cocoa framework and provides relevant and well documented code;

- the book has a dedicated website which offers support in the form of a forum and from where you can download all the source code and resources used throughout the book;

- the authors included funny bits and bobs of text along the way, which help bring your morale up as you start wondering if this stuff is really for you;

- updated for iOS 5, includes information about ARC and a dedicated chapter for Storyboards;

- the authors teach you to think rather than learn how to do different tasks, which will definitely come in handy in the future, as XCode will most definitely change as it has in the past; a testament to this is that I've read the book partly from the 2nd version, while using the latest Xcode (4.2 at the moment) and was able to set up the projects correctly even though namings didn't quite match; after I switched to the third edition (this book) everything was as you would expect - up to date with XCode 4.2;

I have to say, this has got to be the best money I've ever invested in learning, as the price per quality ratio of this book goes through the roof!

I definitely recommend this book to any developer who wants to start building iOS applications and doesn't have any previous experience with Objective C and/or Cocoa. The book slowly builds on programming principles and Cocoa patterns, never assuming that you should know this or that. While knowing a bit of Objective C definitely helps, the authors explain each concept good enough to allow you to progress with the book without wondering what in the world have you just wrote.

I previously read Stephen Kochan's Programming in Objective C 2.0 which is a very good primer to the Objective C language but doesn't really teach you how to program iPhone or iPad apps and I'm also reading Aaron Hillegass' Objective C Programming, The Big Nerd Ranch Guide, which again seems like a language primer more than a book targeted to teaching you how to correctly think and develop iOS apps.

I'm pretty sure there are other good books out there, but I cannot stress enough the fact that if you're starting out this book will take you through all the necessary steps to understand how Cocoa works and how the apps are structured, what you can and cannot do with iOS and where to seek help when you'll need it.

I've really enjoyed this book, I'm pretty certain I now have a decent grasp on iOS development.
I'll be looking forward for any iOS books written by the same authors!