Comments on: iPhone Application Development For Dummies

By: Black Hat

Black Hat — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:55:25 +0000

This book was a very bad experience for me. I’ve taught myself a great deal of computing through books, and this one doesn’t come up to the Dummies standard. The author assumes proficiency with Objective-C, but also that you don’t know what API means, and his examples are poor, with poor walkthroughs and directions. I would never download any app mentioned in the book. He gives you almost a preposterous amount of background to execute simple tasks, in an annoying presentation, as if you had to be a plumber to take a shower. I have never been so upset with a For Dummies book. I most enjoyed theorizing as to the nature of the person he thought he was writing too. I wish I could give it 0 stars, or an F-.

I also recommend the Apress book, which is a real and effective resource.
Rating: 1 / 5

By: Darricke Rayl

Darricke Rayl — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:31:39 +0000

I appreciate this book being a newbie to developing apps on the iPhone and a relative newbie to Xcode and Objective-C.

This book does a good job stepping you through everything you need to know to create your first iPhone Application using a couple of real world examples.

I dd not give it 5 stars because of the editing/proofreading. There are several glaring typos and grammatical errors (and I’m not the best with grammar!).
Rating: 4 / 5

By: B. Heintz

B. Heintz — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:22:41 +0000

I’m sure the author of this meant the writing to be chatty and witty personable, but the end result is that he tries too hard (and still fails) at those things to the detriment of actually teaching you anything useful about building iPhone applications. The pace is so slow as to disrupt any continuity in the material presented, and frustrate anyone actually trying to get something done.

If you want to learn at a pace that lets you start getting things done quickly, I recommend the excellent Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK and the Stanford CS193P course videos (available for free on iTunes).
Rating: 1 / 5

By: C. Harper

C. Harper — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:25:13 +0000

This book is horrible if you are just getting started with iPhone application development and Objective-C. I bought it after flipping through all the other iPhone for beginner books thinking it had more explainations after each step. Little did i realize that the explainations needed more explaining!!!!

Horribley dissappointed by what this book assumes you know with just the nomenclature of Objective C and XCode. Spends more time going over the history of NeXT computers than any real syntax of Objective-C. Obviously, the author is juat another clueless fan boy!!!!
Rating: 1 / 5

By: Mr. N. F. Ker

Mr. N. F. Ker — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:10:24 +0000

This book is fine if you are either a) an experienced programmer (i. e. not a ‘dummy’) or b) very interested in the science of programming. When I bought this book I just wanted to learn how to program the iPhone but it spends FAR TOO LONG explaining, in mind-numbing detail, all about the environment before you actually get down to do some coding.

They need to get people who find coding HARD to write these books.
Rating: 2 / 5