Head First iPhone and iPad Development: A Learner's Guide to Creating Objective-C

More about Head First iPhone and iPad Development: A Learner's Guide to Creating Objective-C Applications for the iPhone and iPad [Paperback]

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Customer Reviews

This is a partial review. I want to provide some feedback quickly in case there are others in my situation. I call this an operational review because I just want to become operational/proficient in iPad development - I'm not someone who can write pithy reviews.
First so that you understand the context of my comments, I am a retread. I've never programmed on any Apple computer before. I received an iPad for my birthday last year and I bought a MacBook Pro to write an App for the iPad. I can program in Visual Studio environment.
That being said I bought the "iPad for Dummies" book and gave up with that book half way through when this book arrived. I only received the Head First book last week and I've learned more in this book, and more quickly, than the Dummies book. Don't even consider the Dummies book unless you are more concerned with the philosophy of Apple development and not what I wanted to do - that is, write an iPad App.
I will also point out I purchased the "Programming in Objective-C" by Kochan at the same time I bought the Dummies book. If like me you never even looked at Objective C before this is a must have. It gives you the nuts and bolts of the language.
I intend to write more on each book as I progress. So far the score is Dummies book - 0, Head First - 5.
15 July 2011. Ok I am making progress with Head First. I still like it. I've found a few missing steps which caused me some angst. But that's not my focus and I figured it out. Again coming from Visual Studio, it really is a big jump. So I've been working in parallel with Kochan's book "Programming in Objective-C", 3rd edition. I'd really recommend this approach if your background is similar to mine. One really reinforces the other.

Head First Iphone ; iPad Development by Dan Pilone and Tracy Pilone is aimed at guiding programmers new to development for iOS though the SDK tools, the fundamentals of Objective-C, and the app development and submission processes.
This book is the fourth Head-First book I have read, and I am a fan of the series and of the communication style they use. They like to employ established cognitive science techniques that aid in understanding and retention, such as using an informal tone, humor, reiteration/rephrasing, active participation / exercises, and they facilitate visual-style learning.
While this particular book does not include a lot of introduction to computer science material, it does walk you through some interface design principles and introduces some of the Apple guidelines for iOS applications. Many of the other Head First books take time to explain some of the basics like how arrays work in a particular language, or the basics of objects in object orient programming, but this book mainly focuses on subjects unique to Objective-C programming for iPhone/iPad, with a some good examples of how to adapt an existing iPhone application to the iPad, or to support both the iPad / iPhone the from the get go and make a universal app.
While not current to iOS5, I am not aware of anything in this book that will not work with iOS5. The examples give a good starting point for people that want to learn Objective-C and include many commonly-used topics such as working with multiple views, the table view, and various UI elements. For storing your data they cover property lists and core data, both of which are pretty easy to get started with. Core data is powerful and makes saving and retrieving data from a MySQL database easy.
The book also covers integrating the camera into your apps, as well as map kit, and core location. It also briefly touches on animation and the accelerometer.

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