iPad Application Development For Dummies
- ISBN13: 9780470584477
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Turn your iPad ideas into amazing apps with this exciting new guide! Whether you’re app development amateur or programming professional, you’ll discover how to get in on the App Store development gold rush and start developing for the iPad with this fun and easy guide. The iPad offers developers of all levels more opportunities than ever before to be a part of the app development game, and this book is your ticket to joining in the fun. You’ll learn the basics of getting started, down
Rating: 
(out of 2 reviews)
List Price: $ 29.99
Price: $ 16.95
Review by Anthony Lawrence for iPad Application Development For Dummies
Rating:
I just couldn’t get interested in the iPhone – the small screen size just turned me off entirely and the pricey, locked in data plans didn’t help either. When Apple announced the iPad I immediately saw the potential, ordered a 3G iPad (not shipped yet as I write this review), and set out to learn to program in the iPhone/iPad SDK.
Toward that end, I’ve been reading stacks of iPhone development books and while many of them are very good, none are as good as this as an overall introduction. That it focuses on iPad is important to me, but even without that focus I would still be praising this.
What I found most valuable were the chapters devoted to explaining how an app all fits together – what does what, when and how. That explanation has been missing from every other book I’ve read – hinted at, but never spelled out step by step. That’s very important for someone like me just coming into this world.
I was also very appreciative of the advice about not thinking of the iPad as just a larger iPhone. I realized that already, but concrete examples really hammered that point home.
(Interestingly, the app I have in mind needs too much screen real estate to run on an iPhone, but the iPad is really too big for it – the book made me realize that I need to rethink the design completely.)
I noticed that the reviews of the authors “iPhone Application Development For Dummies” are a mixed bag and I assume that the same wide range of “love it/hate it” will be seen here. As a rank beginner who has never done ANY programming of this type (all command line apps before this), I’m firmly in the “loved it” camp. No, it doesn’t tell me everything I need to know – what does? It DOES give me a very clear roadmap and introduction and does so much more effectively than anything else I have read so far.
Review by Joonbeams for iPad Application Development For Dummies
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//ARE YOU LIKE ME?//
Who am I? (Feel free to skip this part. I only provide this for those who are noobs like me). I’m a busy working professional and tech hobbyist who built his computer from the ground up, hacks or “jailbreaks” any device I can, uses the “advanced” features of intricate software suites such as Adobe CS4, feels equally comfy in Mac and PC world, etc. and blah blah, who learned everything the hard way – trial and error, countless hours of slamming my head in the wall, support forums, etc. Much of my woes come from the fact that I have the attention span of a 3 year old. Oh, and I’ve never taken a formal “tech” class, I’m not an engineer, and I know NOTHING, ZILCH, NADA about programming. I’ve never ever ever written even a single line of code (save again for pretty decent websites I’ve built using Dreamweaver, which writes the code for you). Anyway, I love Apple products (but don’t worship them), yet I’ve never had an itch to “program” for any of them until the iPad. I simply love (okay, maybe it is worship) the way the iPad lays out content and media. So much so, that I’m determined, for no clear reason, to write an app for it. So like I normally do with these impulses, I registered and downloaded the iPhone SDK and Apple videos and jumped right in to writing my app because I was told it was “easy” – ah, not so fast. After the first Apple video and barrage of error messages in the SDK, I realized I was in over my head – way over. So, given the fact that I’ve already “built my app in my head” and that I’m impatiently trying to put it in action, I wanted something quick to get me there, because like my virtuoso guitar solos “in my head,” my product is not quite performing like it is in my mind’s eye. So I looked for help doing what I normally do – buying a bunch of books that I never read (I have a whole library of books on various “teach yourself” topics). Fortunately for me, as of this post, there were only a few that were geared toward someone like me, and only one that was dedicated to the iPad. I say fortunately for me, b/c I’ve never been a fan of the “Dummies” series, but picked this up b/c it was all there was. I’m thanking my lucky stars.
//BEGIN REVIEW//
This particular book is about as much – no, even more – than you can expect from a book introducing something like Objective-C, the iPhone SDK/xcode, and Cocoa Touch to an absolute programming “dummy”. Again, in typical fashion, I quickly glossed over the beginning and tried to jump right into the “fun stuff”. DON’T DO THAT. This book is so well organized and easy to read that you actually SAVE TIME by starting from the beginning and working your way through the examples and chapters. It doesn’t take long at all. I’ve made my way through 3/4 of it in about 4-5 days (only in free time) and I can say that I’m not even the same person today that I was 4 days ago – it really is that good. The book is calibrated to someone who knows NOTHING about any of this, but yet it doesn’t leave out the important things that everyone needs to know (e.g. the code examples). And when it’s “glossing over” something, it tells you – exactly what someone like me needs. By the time you’re 3/4 of the way through this book, you will understand about 3/4 of what you need to know to be dangerous with xCode/interface builder, and the rest of iPhone SDK. Unfortunately, that 3/4 is not enough to get you to that killer app – and that 1/4 remaining is where the wheat is separated. You will eventually need to learn Objective C programming. BOTTOM LINE: if you want a quick orientation into iPad/iPhone programming, enough to orient you and set you on course, this is a GREAT start. With this foundation, you can easily build your skills in no time using additional resources which I mention below. The same thing is true if you’re new to Objective C but you’ve programmed other languages, such as C++. Only for those like that, you will get even more out of this book. I can’t recommend this enough.
I will update when my killer app is online!!!
//END REVIEW//
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: If you are a beginner like me, I suggest you get a book on Objective-C and one on Cocoa Touch Programming, in addition to this one. Now, based on what others have said here, I avoided Neil Goldstein’s book on Obj-C, but I am now strongly reconsidering after reading iPad for Dummies. That said, I’m also reading “Programming in Objective-C 2.0” by Stephen Kochan and that has been invaluable for filling in the gaps; it’s outstanding for the total beginner. I also picked up Sams Teach Yourself “Cocoa Touch Programming” in 24 hours which has been pretty good, but assumes some very basic knowledge. I usually read a chapter or so of each book at a time and find that this pace seems to work. I also downloaded all of Apple’s videos which are so so. The MUCH BETTER series is done by Stanford and is available free on iTunes U – definitely download those for additional help. There are other resources too, but start with iPad for Dummies and build from there.