Programming iOS 5: Fundamentals of iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Development [Paperback]

This book is simply a new release of "Programming iOS 4'. It contains lots of new information you won't find in previous release - mostly related to most recent changes in iOS 5. One of these features are story boards. Basically, whenever story boards are applicable, you will read how to apply them. ARC related memory management is another new feature, and, it is well described here. If you haven't used it yet you will learn how to work with ARC in both situations - when you develop old application and want to migrate to ARC and how to work with ARC in applications developed from the scratch. New concepts like @autoreleasepool blocks, weak references, retain cycles are also explained. Sections related to notifications, startup process and life time have improved. Comparing to previous edition, section "Swamped by Events" was rewritten and redesigned. In my opinion it is now easier to follow and easier to understand. The same refers to view controllers related part. Basically, the book targets recent XCode release and iOS 5 and addresses some composition/content related drawbacks you can find in previous release. Big plus goes for mentioning Instruments. However, this section is way too short. It covers only simple use-cases. Still, it's better than nothing.

When it comes to drawbacks. In my opinion there are two frameworks that are missing - CoreData and SQLite. You won't find anything about these in here. I think that book would be much better if it covered database storage related aspects. At least at introductory level.

If you own "Programming iOS 4' already, I'd skip this "upgrade". In case you haven't developed for iOS yet, this one is really good introduction to iOS development.

A little background so you know what type of experience I have. I have been a Microsoft .NET architect and developer since the first beta release. Before that C, C++, ColdFusion, ASP, JavaScript and of course HTML. Being a .NET developer has many advantages, but the one major disadvantage we suffer has driven me to Java and Objective-C over the past year. That one disadvantage? Microsoft themselves. They come off as completely lost and have wreaked havoc on .NET developer community the past few years.

I have read several books on programming with Objective-C, but this is by far the most comprehensive and well put together. One book I would recommend to anyone coming from the .NET world is Migrating to iPhone and iPad for .NET Developers.

After advising the reader to brush up on their C by reading certain parts of C Programming Language, and then spending a chapter showing how C relates to Objective-C, the author has a really nice overview of Objective-C. The overview is Part I of the book and it is 5 chapters long. The chapters include Just Enough C, Object-Based Programming, Objective-C Objects and Messages, Objective-C Classes, and Objective-C Instances.

Part II IDE includes chapters on Anatomy of an Xcode Project, Nib Management, Documentation, and Life Cycle of a Project. In part II the author goes into detail about the architecture of the project and the files included in the project. He does a great job of explaining nibs, the coding environment, testing, debugging, and provides an overview of the steps taken when submitting your app to the app store. The author also points out and shows you how to take advantage of the Xcode documentation.

Part III is all about Cocoa. It includes chapters on Cocoa Classes, Cocoa Events, Accessors and Memory Management, and Data Communication. The author does a great job of explaining Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) in this section.

Part IV Views contains chapters on Views, Drawing, Layers, Animation, and Touches. This part is all about paths, clipping, gradients, colors, patterns, transforms, shadows, points, pixels, layers, sublayers, hierarchy, resizing, positioning, depth, borders, everything about animation, touch events, gestures, and hit-testing. In other words a ton of information about views is covered in this part.

Part V Interface includes chapters on View Controllers, Scroll Views, Table Views, Popovers and Split Views, Text, Web Views, Controls and Other Views, and Modal Dialogs. The understanding you gain of view controllers in this part of the book is amazing. The author did an awesome job explaining them and how they relate to rotation.

Part VI introduces some of the other Cocoa frameworks available including Audio, Video, Music Library, Photo Library and Image Capture, Address Book, Calendar, Mail, Maps, and Sensors.

Part VII is called Final Topics. In this part of the book the author introduces Persistent Storage, Basic Networking, Threads, Undo, and includes an Epilogue.

The downloadable code is very well organized and usable. It is broken down into folders by chapter and page number which makes it very convenient to find the sample you want.

This is by far one of the best programming books I have ever read. The author's approach and writing style made it a pleasure to read. He does a great job of explaining complex topics and always covers everything in depth.

If you are an iOS 5 developer, you owe it to yourself to buy this book and keep it at arms length!!!

I started programming back in 1982, also on an Apple device -- the Apple ][. At that time, there were some books from Taiwan that were titled: (translated) Thorough Research into the Apple ][. Those books were amazing. Since then, I haven't read many books that were so detailed, thorough, and in depth, and even with philosophy embedded in the book. Not the "do this and this will work -- don't ask why" type. This book will tell you what to do, where to do it, why do it there, why do it this way, and how it works with the system, overall with iOS. It gives you a complete picture, how everything fits together.

I would like to persuade the author to study all computer technologies and write books about all programming topics... but I know that will be impossible.

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