The iPhone Developer's Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK (Developer's Library)

The book states it is aimed "squarely at anyone just getting started with iPhone programming." It is not.

At the time of purchase, I was a brand new iPhone developer with zero exposure to Apple's developer tools and their iPhone SDK. That said, I am a very seasoned Java and C# developer, I have used Eclipse and VS.NET extensively for numerous years to build some very sophisticated applications. Apple's developer tools, XCode and Interface Builder, are radically different tools unlike either of these development environments. Instead of a singular IDE, the Apple tools are a hodgepodge of separate applications filling your screen with a plethora of small tool and inspector windows. If you are brand new to XCode and Interface Builder, this book simply doesn't have enough horse power to properly educate you on the pitfalls newbies will face.

If you are already familiar with Apple's developer tools, then the book may be better received by you then by someone who had no exposure to them.

As a newbie you need to realize a very, very important point: copying code out of a book and into XCode is simply not enough to get a demo working out of this or any iPhone developer book! The trick is knowing how to "link" within Interface Builder- how to establish what I now know to be IBAction and IBOutlet property decorators. The IB stands for "Interface Builder" and these two markers provide "hints" from XCode to Interface Builder. For example, to "link" a button from Interface Builder to a property in XCode, the @property would have to be properly decorated (with IBOutlet) and then you must physically establish the link in Interface Builder, using a control-click-drag metaphor from source to destination. To my point- therein lies the problem with "recipe" books like this one- unless you already have a grasp on this concept and how it works (which I didn't when I bought the book several weeks ago), this book will leave you very frustrated. You have verbatim code in XCode, but things don't work! Worse, you have no idea why. [bang head on desk repeatedly here]

My recommendation is to look at the forthcoming book from the guys over at Pragmatic Programmer- iPhone SDK Development I purchased their book, and while it still left me to figure out some holes and some of the Interface Builder nuances, it was much more targeted for someone who has never used any of Apple's developer tools. The Pragmatic book isn't a panacea for all newbie problems, but it is far better suited then this "recipe" book.

I'm confident (well, hoping) that as my iPhone developer experiences grow and I become more accustomed to Apple's developer tools, the recipes presented in this book might be of more value.

It is my opinion that its stated objective should have read "...squarely at anyone just getting started with iPhone programming who is already comfortable with the nuances of XCode, Interface Builder, and the other Apple developer tools."

I've been working through this book since it came out and had to write a review. I'll be short.

Pro's: This is one of the first, and for awhile only books on the iPhone SDK available. It is written in a friendly manner, and if you understand Xcode and Object Oriented Programming, you'll do OK.It does cover things more clearly than many of the code SDK snippet sites, and is often better organized.

Con's: Boy, this thing was PUSHED out the door. There are many errors in the book that you'll be able to fix yourself. Novices beware of keying in the examples. It may not be your typing that's causing the error. The level of detail in the book jumps from highly precise to woefully lacking. Often on the same page. Many concepts and terms are used without any attempt to explain them.

Make sure you download the code samples from the author web site (ericasadun.com) they have been updated, commented, and actually compile. However, they often mix bad practices, like not breaking out headers, or naming things clearly, in with the code.

At this point in time (2008), this is a very valuable book, because there are so few good references out there. The second edition needs to be much more solid, or it will quickly be eclipsed by other books coming onto the market.

I'am not a begginer but I thought that some explanations should be there.
When explaining code I expected more detailed information, especially when using some classes for the first time in the book.
What I love in a book when I read it, is when the author mention some variations of his own code, or for example, I love when something like "by doing *** you would have ***" is written. Just a line, no code necessary.
I have to say that this time I read the book carefuller and realized that is actually a "Mister" book.

The last time I wrote about the "too simple samples" of this book but, I gave this book a second chance, And realized that the way of reading this book is by doing the examples.
In other books I have read I just read the samples and got the idea, but this book is a maybe a little bit more complicated, (?) or don't know but the key is doing the examples.
The actually key is when you see the hole structure of the program and not only one method implementation like in book.
I still think that this book is not for begginers.
This book does not explain its code as you might expect.
Also this book does not explain CoreGraphics , CoreAnimation in depth. But for me, I think is was just what I needed. I just did not realize because I didn't do it the samples.

Really helped me a lot. (When reading it for the second time)
I gave this one star but Now I think is much better than that. Maybe 4 stars?

I forgot to say that the samples of this book does not use Interface Builder in most of (maybe 95%) the cases.

While I can understand the considerable effort that may have gone into writing this book and compiling it's 100+ "recipes" for iPhone SDK development, this book ultimately falls flat and feels quite thin for the price.

Wait for a more comprehensive book that actually tackles some sample applications complex enough to warrant more than 1 source code file. This is really only quick examples of Cocoa Touch framework classes. Hardly worthy of the claim of being a cookbook.

Somewhere in the description - preferably in bold upper case letters - it should say,

KNOWLEDGE of OBJECTIVE C IS A PRE-REQUISITE