iPhone Cool Projects Review
When reading introductory books in any language, it is easy to learn the language elements and concepts, but it is hard to see how everything fits together. What is great about the cool projects series from Apress is being able to see the elements and concepts in practice with projects from professionals who are active in the field.
Each chapter is written by a different author, so every project covers a different experience and topic. These range from touch interfaces to streaming audio over the network. Some of the projects presented are based on the author's live applications that are currently available through the App Store. A wide range of the topics are covered in the book with practical examples of the concepts.
This book is definitely not an introduction to Cocoa or iPhone programming. It is more geared toward the intermediate reader who has learned the basics and needs practical, real-life examples. It can also be of use to a more experienced iPhone programmer who wants to explore some of the topics in the book without having to dig through the documentation.
I would highly recommend this book because it is easy to read and does not get bogged down with basic concepts. Code is provided on the book's site and is easy to follow the code with the explanations in the book. As a beginning iPhone programmer, I found this book to be a lot of help to work out some of the concepts I was having trouble with.
iPhone Cool Projects Features
- ISBN13: 9781430223573
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Rating :
Price : $39.99
Offer Price : $13.00
Overviews
The iPhone and iPod touch have provided all software developers with a level playing field—developers working alone have the same access to consumers as multinational software publishers. Very cool indeed! To make your application stand out from the crowd, though, it has to have that something extra. You must learn the skills to take your apps from being App Store filler to download chart-topping blockbusters.
Developers with years of experience helped write this book. Spend some time understanding their code and why they took the approach they did. You will find the writing, illustrations, code, and sample applications second to none. No matter what type of application you are writing, you will find something in this book to help you make your app that little bit cooler.
The book opens with Wolfgang Ante, the developer behind the Frenzic puzzle game, showing how timers, animation, and intelligence are used to make game play engaging. It moves on to Rogue Amoeba's Mike Ash explaining how to design a network protocol using UDP, and demonstrating its use in a peer-to-peer application—a topic not normally for the faint of heart, but explained here in a way that makes sense to mere mortals. Gary Bennett then covers the important task of multithreading. Multithreading can be used to keep the user interface responsive while working on other tasks in the background. Gary demonstrates how to do this and highlights traps to avoid along the way.
Next up, Canis Lupus (aka Matthew Rosenfeld) describes the development of the Keynote-controlling application Stage Hand, how the user interface has evolved, and the lessons he has learned from that experience. Benjamin Jackson then introduces two open source libraries: cocos2d, for 2D gaming; and Chipmunk, for rigid body physics (think “collisions”). He describes the development of Arcade Hockey, an air hockey game, and explains some of the code used for this.
Neil Mix of Pandora Radio reveals the science behind processing streaming audio. How do you debug what you can't see? Neil guides you through the toughest challenges, sharing his experience of what works and what to watch out for when working with audio. Finally, Steven Peterson demonstrates a comprehensive integration of iPhone technologies. He weaves Core Location, networking, XML, XPath, and SQLite into a solid and very useful application.
Software development can be hard work. Introductory books lay the foundation, but it can be challenging to understand where to go next. This book shows some of the pieces that can be brought together to make complete, cool applications.
Who is this book for?
All iPhone application developers with any level of experience or coming from any development platform
Summary of Contents
- Wolfgang Ante - Designing a Simple, Frenzic-Style Puzzle Game
- Mike Ash - Mike Ash’s Deep Dive Into Peer-to-Peer Networking
- Gary Bennett - Doing Several Things at Once: Performance Enhancements with Threading
- Matthew “Canis” Rosenfeld - All Fingers and Thumbs: Multitouch Interface Design and Implementation
- Benjamin Jackson - Physics, Sprites, and Animation with the cocos2d-iPhone Framework
- Neil Mix - Serious Streaming Audio the Pandora Radio Way
- Steven Peterson - Going the Routesy Way with Core Location, XML, and SQLite
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Customer Review
Poorly Written - Christopher Morris -
I bought this book because I wanted to see code that successful iPhone developers had written. I guess I was looking for "best practices" sort of information and I was hoping that I might get insight on how to tackle some problems I have run into when developing my own applications.
Book Flow
The biggest disappointment in this book is that developers wrote it (I am assuming). The book lacks the continuity you would normally find when one or two people collaborate on an entire book. When a different person writes each chapter, you get seven different styles in this book. I found a couple of the chapters very well written, but the rest I found to be, well, written by developers. I'm not saying that developers are inherently bad at writing, but it takes a certain something to relay information to other developers effectively. Most of the writers of this book just do not have it.
Code Samples
I got very frustrated reading chapters with code snippets from applications the various authors had written. If a working application had been available to provide context to the snippets, then I would have been less frustrated. For example, in Chapter 5, the first 12 pages of the chapter provide code snippets with very brief explanations of what the code is supposed to do. No working example is provided for context. I couldn't even play with the code to see what was going on. It was almost like I was expected just to know the context because I was on the team that wrote the application. The last 10 pages actually create a working sample. I would have rather spent the entire chapter creating the application with better explanations of each step and theory behind the code.
Proofreading
I wish I had a dollar for all the typos I've seen in this book. Again, in chapter 5, page 118 there is a screen shot of the application the author wrote. The caption says it's a screen shot of the application that you will be writing at the end of the chapter. Sloppy.
Conclusion
I feel like I did get some useful information from this book. Was it worth the frustration of reading poorly written text, no context for code snippets, and numerous errors? Not in my opinion.
Looks good on paper, but the devil's in the details - David Ruedger -
I bought this after seeing the high reviews from others on this site. Unfortunately, the content doesn't quite live up to the hype for me. I got this in particular wanting more details about threading having come from the Windows world where I have implemented very robust networking applications that require UI responsiveness while results are cached in the background. I was hoping this book would shed some light on how to go about doing this in the iPhone paradigm, but the example is so rudimentary that it almost isn't even worth putting into the book. Plus, the instructions for building the app are incorrect and contain glaring omissions as well as references to code objects that don't even exist. What's worse is the code itself as listed in the book doesn't even run when built! It causes an unhandled exception due to objects created in the header file not being instantiated or initialized in the implementation file. And no where in the chapter does it say you must download the source code for the example. It walks you through it as if it has been checked and is guaranteed to work as printed. Once you download the source code, it becomes apparent how rushed or poorly thought through this portion of the book was. Whole sections of the header and implementation files are glaringly omitted from the book. Did Bennett even bother proofreading this part of the book, and if so, where were the editors in this process? It's shameful for a book that is marketed as a technical tome to increase a developer's proficiency on the platform.
I'll admit that I haven't delved into other parts of the book in great detail, but the game portion did look pretty interesting at first glance. However, the hands on experience I had with the threading chapter left a very bad first impression and does not leave me all too optimistic on either the usefulness or accuracy of the additional content in the book.
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