In keeping with Dave Mark's excellent track record for introductory Mac development books (referring to his Learn C on the Mac classic) and Jeff LaMarche's obvious talents, this book is THE book for those new (and really, who isn't?) to iPhone Development.
I'll start by saying that relative to the Apple samples, the authors are heavily into Interface Builder usage, which is good to force separation of your Views from your Controller logic, but a challenge when you fumble hooking up an outlet and things don't work as you expect. Understanding how IB outlets & actions interact with source code is different than other programming most of us not from a NextStep heritage are used to. That is to say, for most programmers, debugging and changing behavior in source code is a much more familiar method to follow than trying to fix a NIB file. Not necessarily a better one mind you, but a significantly different one that'll take some getting used to.
That said, from my own brief experience, it seems starting off with a strong fundamental understanding of Apple-flavored MVC from this book, enforced via Interface Builder views and managed via controller source code, is preferable to trying to structure it correctly just in source code (as Apple usually shows it).
With respect to IB, the authors do a great job covering the common mistakes we all make and what you should do to resolve them (i.e. in Chap 6 they mention that if you don't see the proper action popup, you probably control-dragged from the wrong IB component. Nice touch.)
A minor nit, when I read the chapter on autorotation, I didn't find mention of the very handy "autoresizingMask" property of a view (UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight
UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth), which handles the changing sizes of a view for you. They mention it in passing, but it's such a nicely done feature that more people should use, it might deserve a project sample. Bonus: they explain why Apple discourages use of the "upside-down portrait" mode, which is good to know.
The authors wisely emphasize the importance of TableViews, which are so central to so many iPhone app interfaces for a reason. I've skimmed those chapters (8 & 9) and they're the best available anywhere on explaining tables and how they interact with Navigation Controllers and subviews. I'm really looking forward to digging into them. My initial concerns that like a compelling preview to a bad movie (I'm looking at you Zohan) I was worried that Chapter 3 [which Apress has available on their website, google for it if you're looking for a representative sample] would be the best in the book. Chapters 6-9 put those fears to rest.
The remaining chapter coverage is conducive to arming you with the basics to create a solid, stable, fully-featured iPhone/iPod Touch application that combined with your own creativity and hard-work, you'd be proud to display in the App Store.
So, in sum, this is the book to get right now if you're just starting out on developing Cocoa Touch apps. Even after I've learned the basics, I can see myself referring back to this book for refreshers. Thanks Dave & Jeff!
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