While this book is not as comprehensive as some have wanted, I found it to be a nice beginners tutorial to writing iPhone applications. The book starts out with an objective-C primer. Since objective-C has such an "interesting" syntax this is badly needed, even though I come from a strong programming background.

Each section includes a reasonably complex sample that puts that section's material to use. Most of the sections also include a "Further Study" area that gives you some homework. This is where the user can expand his knowledge through research and working with the tools.

The book jumps around a bit by first going over simple UI patterns, then spending time talking about audio services and networking, only to come back and spend more time with UI controls, only to jump back into audio/video. Still, one has to remember that this is a reference book and not a novel so jumping around is ok.

The sample applications that I have tried so far are ok and I feel like I have a much better grasp on how the iPhone system works.

This book is not an XCode or Interface Builder tutorial.

I was fairly new to Mac OS and iPhone development. I had done a little bit of Mac OS development in the past year. This book was exactly what I was looking for in terms of getting more familiar with iPhone development.

The issue of digging under the hood, and not using Interface Builder for everything, was something I wanted. People should know what IB is doing for them. The concept of delegates should not be too confusing to anyone looking to do significant Mac/iPhone development.

Both the current books on iPhone development fail to provide an "introduction" to development as I'd call it. Both books (this one, and Beginning iPhone Development by Mark and LaMarche) say, right up front something akin to "the Apple approved and easy way to write for the iPhone is to use Interface Builder, but we're going to start you off with the harder, hand-coded way, so you'll learn the guts of how it works."

Really bad idea. Delegates, controllers et al are different enough without throwing unnecessary hand-coding at the novice first. Further, in both books, the code is usually "just presented" (here: type this) with only modest followup as to what you've just entered actually does and where it fits into a larger picture.

Now it's obvious that I'm new to Xcode and iPhone, but I'm not new to programming per se: I started coding in 1978. I'm also a teacher, and can say that both these books represent the "jump into the lake and while you're gasping for air, I'll teach you how to swim" approach.

The beginner would have been far better served with the inclusion of Interface Builder right up front. That would help understand the whole paradigm used by the frameworks and how it implements MVC.

Once that was understood, -then- is the time to go back and say "... and this is how we hand code that..." - once the basic understanding and overview was in place in the reader's mind.

I'm even monitoring the Stanford class... and what I can say is that between that, and two books, and constant re-reading, I've finally managed to extract the conceptual overview needed to understand WHY thing are done, which any programmer needs to understand to write good, efficient code.

Copy/paste doesn't teach programming. It's like teaching "turn screwdriver clockwise to set screw" first, and expecting that to lead to carpentry skills.

It's a common problem when experts teach, and is why teaching is a profession unto itself.

I've figured it out.. and am still learning... but I should not have to "reverse engineer" it all to learn to do it.

In sum then: at least if you're starting from where I started, get everything you can find on iPhone programming - one book alone won't cut it.

Where do these people learn to program? Just reading the examples in the book tells one how superficial and confused this author's brain is. And don't give me the "...my intention is not to provide the most efficient code..." excuse. This is nothing but bad code. The text itself is no better. Just read the What's Going On sections.

I've read the first 3 chapters and already looking for something else. Don't waste your time and money. I've been programming for 25 years and it is hard to find a worse book than this one. It is the typical "get it out the door" text.

I am new to Mac/iphone development and this book didn't cover a lot of basics. I used a few other books for basics on Objective-C/Coca programming. I tried to read the book by implementing examples but some of the examples didn't work. I contacted the author but didn't get any reply. Overall, I liked first six chapters and they had good examples but last six chapters were just list of APIs and their explanation. Apple has very good reference on iphone development but I was looking for a way to build complete applications using different APIs and in that regard the book failed. Finally, this book completely ignores Interface Builder that is key part of Mac development.