books on iPhone programming

eliehass · Jun 24, 2008

I'm interested in learning to program for the iphone, but all the books I have seen so far talk about programming through reverse engineering and jail-breaking. Does anyone know of a book that deals with programming using the iphone sdk?

Aptmunich · Jun 24, 2008

I think there's supposed to be one coming out soon, but I'd imagine any book on the subject would at least want to include the AppStore and working with the 2.0 release of the firmware.

I've just started working through the latest edition of Aaron Hillegrass's "Cocoa Programming for OS X", which is pretty cool. I have zero Objective-C experience, but have leant most of the java basics, so this seems like quite a good jumping point.

eliehass · Jun 24, 2008

yeah, i have never touched Objective-C, just C++ and Java. So you recommend that book as a good place to jump in until an iphone book is released?

Aptmunich · Jun 24, 2008

Yeah. From what I'm hearing from my developer colleagues that book is more or less the book to start learning Cocoa with.

Once you've understood the concepts, making the jump to iPhone apps isn't all that difficult since such a large part is more or less the same.

My moolah link to the book on Amazon

Edit:

I just read this in an interview with Aaron (bear in mind he's the author, so he might be a bit biased

):

Scott: Is the material in this book a good starting point for developers looking to hit the ground running with the iPhone SDK, or are the development concepts too different? Do you plan to write a book specific to iPhone development?

Aaron: There is, at this point, no better starting point for iPhone development than "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X." If you understand the book, you can get started with iPhone development. There are ideas that have changed — for example, controls on the iPhone can have multiple targets and actions — but they have evolved naturally from the ideas of Cocoa programming.

eliehass · Jun 24, 2008

cool, just ordered myself a copy. Thanks for the info! Maybe someday soon I'll have an app in the app store, lol.

INTELligent · Jun 26, 2008

Make sure you get in the SDK and XCode to just mess around with it. I did, and I've not depended on a book... I've been trying to get better with the SDK since around April and so far I have made an application on my iPod Touch that makes its functions comparable to my TI-84 calculator. I know you could say that a calculator is pretty simple but, it's an iPod and a scientific calculator now.

Hmm...now that I think about it, I might create a program that would allow me to store information about some of this real estate that the family business has me deal with. On a side note, the real estate business is nuts...

Mickthemac · Jun 26, 2008

Hi INTELligent

I am looking for iphone apps programmers to develope and make application ideas that I have, Do you or do you know of any one know were I can look for these types of people?

regards.
Mick UK London

DigiPug · Jul 12, 2008

Hi All,

I just wanted to throw in two more cents about learning Xcode/Objective-C. The book by Aaron Hillegass is a phenomenal resource, and if you're intensely serious about learning fast, I would highly recommend attending one of his bootcamps at the "Big Nerd Ranch". I went through the 7 day course on Cocoa/Objective-C in December of 2007, and while it was incredibly difficult and insanely intense (sometimes you might find yourself working some 12-15 hours in a day, and Aaron is nothing short of superb about giving up ALL of his personal time for the students during these boot camps), the course was truly amazing. Several students there were folks that had taken the course before, but wanted to get the information at a deeper level, now that they'd gone off and gotten some more experience. I hope to do the same, as well as take some other courses offered there.

It's not cheap... but it's awesome. Aaron is not only incredibly knowledgeable with tons of experience, but he is also an excellent teacher... and that's what is so hard to find, really.

The next best thing is his book, the 3rd version just came out this past spring (2008).

Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with big nerd ranch or Aaron Hillegass... I'm just an extremely satisfied customer.

Best of luck to us all, diving into iPhone development!

Cheers,
Jon

Aptmunich · Jul 19, 2008

eliehass said:
cool, just ordered myself a copy. Thanks for the info! Maybe someday soon I'll have an app in the app store, lol.

Hey!

I'm working through the book at the moment. Did you do the challenges? I'm a bit lost on challenge nr 5 (count the number of chars in a NSTextField and return that number is another field).

I can output everything to the console alright (using NSLog), but I'm having difficulties telling the second TextField in my window to update with the result string.

Any ideas?

Ah, never mind - I figured it out. Just being impatient I guess!

Code:

        int i;
	i = [string length];
	NSString *results = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"The sentence you entered has %d charcters.", i];	
        [resultField setStringValue:(NSString *)results];

eliehass · Jul 20, 2008

Lol, glad you figured it out, I haven't gotten that far yet though. I'll let you know if I encounter any problems though.

eliehass · Jul 25, 2008

it looks like apple is not dropping the nda even though the sdk is out of beta. As long as thats the case I don't think we'll be seeing a book on official iPhone programming. Here's hoping they drop the nda soon.