iPad iOS 5 Development Essentials [Paperback]

Friday, March 16, 2012

Product Details

Paperback: 506 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace (December 12, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1466360488
ISBN-13: 978-1466360488
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

By : Neil Smyth (Author)
Price : $27.99

Customer Reviews

12/05/11 ~ UPDATE
These days, when it comes to software, we critique developers in large part based on their responsiveness to user suggestions, complaints, etc. It is reasonable to think that the world has not applied this same ethic to books (yet) because publishing has traditionally been a slow paper-based process. This is of course all changing, thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing. And Neil Smyth is championing that change.
In quick response to my initial review of this book, Neil thanked me for my review, shared with me that he is working on an update, and requested any other feedback I could share with him. It reminded me of how a respectable software developer would respond to bug submissions or feature requests. Over the next week (Thanksgiving week), he updated his book based on my feedback and sent me an itemized list of those updates. This inspired me to send him more feedback...nitpicky observations in the spirit of continuous improvement. And once again, Neil got right back to me to thank me for the additional feedback and to inform me that he'll be implementing the corrections soon.
Thank you Neil!
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I am about three-quarters through this book. Once I finish, I will circle back and update my review as necessary. I just thought I'd share some feedback about this book for those of you searching for iOS 5 coverage and wondering if this book is worth the read. Spoiler: it is.
There were the typical amount of typos and misinformation that, in my opinion, a good tech reviewer should have caught, such as mentions of releasing memory that were likely inadvertently carried forward from his iOS 4 version. Also, at least in the Kindle version that I read, plenty of typos and omissions, e.g., no ";" to pass method arguments by reference when required. His code is not DRY, either.
Additionally, in some cases the author did not provide an explanation of the why behind a set of example code, e.g., why we need to pass some values by reference, which made those sections' code feel more like a recipe than complete learning example that I presume would be beneficial for the typical beginner who would be reading an essentials book. I have read countless books on iOS, so I actually enjoyed the absence of deep dives into the fundamentals, because I already know them. For an essentials book, however, perhaps detailed explanations in footnotes would be appropriate.
The author consistently declares ivars in the header files. I believe this is no longer necessary, instead just declare the property for each ivar. This is how I coded my example apps and everything worked fine.
Fortunately, the book code all works as advertised (with one exception, see below). So whenever I did not catch an omission in the Kindle-presented code and encountered an error that I couldn't immediately figure out, I referenced the book code and resolved the issue straight away.
The one exception is that, in the iCloud chapters, the author defines the constant UBIQUITY_CONTAINER_URL and used that constant in the URLForUbiquityContainerIdentifier: method. Doing so produced errors for me. So I researched it and discovered that if you pass nil instead, iCloud will return the first container set up for the project.
Something that neither this author nor any other that I've ever read (which is to say, pretty much all the same books you as an ambitious iOS developer have or will also read), I wish there would be a consistent use of accessors used throughout the code. Every ivar should be synthesized...
synthesize property = _property;
...and with the exception of constructors/destructors, and maybe a few edge cases, the accessor method, e.g., self.property, should always be used.
Lastly, and this is more of a coding convention style than anything specific to this book, I consistently prefer to use dot notation for all accessor methods, and bracket notation for all method calls (of course, because you can't use dot notation for methods...yet?). It would be refreshing to see a book take advantage of the easier read dot notation offers.
All this said, the author does do a great job of focusing on the stated learning objectives of each chapter. He is very well written and easy to follow. For example, his brief explanation of how Core Data works is exceptional. And since he is pretty much first to market on iOS 5 and a focused version on iPad, anyone jonesing for iOS 5 coverage and/or an iPad focus would benefit immensely from reading this book. And for that, despite the shortcomings I've mentioned, I still think this is a 5-star book and definitely worth the time and money.
As a new iOS developer, I left the last WWDC amazed yet bewildered, and decided to wait until industry veterans published more gentle (i.e., "spoon-fed") how-to's for iOS 5 than Apple's exceptional-yet-non-linear documentation (and by that, I admit that I am just not that proficient yet at being able to utilize the API docs). This book pulled it all together for me and helped me re-set my foundation in iOS development taking into consideration all the new features and changes in iOS 5. Thank you Neil Smyth!

I was looking for a book that would go step by step, for someone who is new to the Apple environment, but has programming experience (my background is in EDA software under Unix). This books fits the bill. BTW, I have the Kindle version, and I am reading it on an iPad and the Mac, so I can zoom in on the good quality, color figures.
Apple has created a vast repository of documentation, but it does not work well as an intro to IOS (written by many people, at times repetitive, full of forward/sideways/deeper references). Probably as I get more up to speed I will transition to using it more, since it has the definitive info.
Hence, I checked for books that might provide a more linear and guided approach. There are quite a few in print, but most cover earlier versions of IOS and/or Xcode. Given the very fast improvements that Apple is making, those books are essentialy obsolete.
Of the few books that are up to date, I found this one to be the best. I'm still going through it, but so far I am able to follow the explanations and exercises without having to jump forwards and backwards to resolve first what's left unsaid, nor finding unnecessary diversions. It's clear and well written, and the pace and level of detail about the underlying ideas, Objective C, relevant class libraries, and the usage of Xcode are about right.