Name: iPhone Cool ProjectsAuthor: Gary Bennet et alPublisher: APressPrice: $39.99Pages: 209Reviewed by: Pete GoodliffeVerdict: RecommendedLink: Publisher's website
iPhone programming is one of the current "hot topics" and we're seeing an increasing number of books published on this topic. This one is a bit of a mixed bag.
This is not an introductory tome; it requires significant prior understanding of the iPhone toolset and development environment. Instead, the book presents a number of complete fully-working iPhone applications covering various core iPhone technologies. It fits into a series of other Apress iPhone titles. Not having seem the other books, I can't say how well it complements the other titles in the series.
The book is effectively a collection essays by many authors, one per chapter, all "experts" at various aspects of iPhone development. Some of them have produced very successful iPhone applications.
The topics covered are: simple game programming, peer-to-peer networking, multi threaded applications, creating multi-touch interfaces, physics and 2D animation libraries, audio streaming, and creating a location-aware application with navigation-based UI. There are no topics covered that you can't fathom relatively easily from the free Apple documentation and a bit of careful thought. However the useful piece of the jigsaw is seeing how other developers have already learnt iPhone OS and solved the common problems.
The production quality of the book is high. It has been very well presented, in full colour throughout, with many iPhone and Xcode screen shots. On the whole, the writing is good. Some chapters appear to have been better proof read than others.
Perhaps the most useful part of the book is the availability of the source code for all the sample applications (from the publisher's website), so you can run and take apart the projects at your leisure. There is no bundled CD, and I'm more than happy with that.
As with many such multi-authored books, some chapters are better than others. Each chapter is relatively short, and they all basically provide an overview of their topic - enough to pique your interest, but not enough to answer any serious questions. For some topics this works better than others.
Highlights are the first game-writing chapter, the multi-touch interface chapters, and the location-based application chapter. These present useful information about how to write a "real" iPhone application. I felt let down by the threading chapter which presents a fairly glib and un-thorough overview of the perils of writing threaded apps. The networking chapter is a very simplistic introduction; nothing it says is wrong, but to write your own serious networked application you'd really need to know a lot more about network technologies.
If you're an experienced programmer who wants a casual introduction to some more meaty iPhone projects than you've seen in the introductory tests, this book may be interesting for you. It's easy to read, fast paced, and pretty.
