iPhone Cool Projects |  | Authors: Gary Bennett, Wolfgang Ante, Benjamin Jackson, Neil Mix, Steven Peterson, Matthew Rosenfeld, Michael Ash
Brand: Apress
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
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Rating:  15 reviews
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.9 x 0.7
MPN: 1-4302-2357-X
ISBN: 143022357X
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.26
EAN: 9781430223573
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The iPhone and iPod touch have provided all software developers with a level playing fieldÑdevelopers working alone have the same access to consumers as multinational software publishers. Very cool indeed! To make your application stand out from the crowd, though, it has to have that something extra. You must learn the skills to take your apps from being App Store filler to download chart-topping blockbusters. Developers with years of experience helped write this book. Spend some time understanding their code and why they took the approach they did. You will find the writing, illustrations, code, and sample applications second to none. No matter what type of application you are writing, you will find something in this book to help you make your app that little bit cooler. The book opens with Wolfgang Ante, the developer behind the Frenzic puzzle game, showing how timers, animation, and intelligence are used to make game play engaging. It moves on to Rogue Amoeba's Mike Ash explaining how to design a network protocol using UDP, and demonstrating its use in a peer-to-peer applicationÑa topic not normally for the faint of heart, but explained here in a way that makes sense to mere mortals. Gary Bennett then covers the important task of multithreading. Multithreading can be used to keep the user interface responsive while working on other tasks in the background. Gary demonstrates how to do this and highlights traps to avoid along the way.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
 Your next step in iPhone SDK programming October 5, 2009
H. Wu (Brooklyn, NY USA)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I have to admit I initially overlooked what a great book it is, given its meager 200-page content ;)
When I got the book, I thought: oh nice paper and colorful prints. But maybe it just looks fancy instead of offering real substance.
I was wrong. Once I started reading, I couldn't put the book off. While reading it, it's both satisfying and addictive at the same time.
All the chapter authors have practical real-world experience building successful iPhone apps.
They showed you complete working programs while demonstrating their experience and expertise in their respective fields.
Wolfgang Ante - Designing a Simple, Frenzic-Style Puzzle Game
It shows you how a little game is built from concept to finish, with complete game flow, handling on different logic/paths, and how to use Quartz and Core Animation to build simple animations w/o using Open GL ES. I really liked how he also revealed his thought-processing in designing the game.
Mike Ash - Mike Ash's Deep Dive Into Peer-to-Peer Networking
Peer-to-Peer networking using Bonjour is very interesting. Mike not only showed how Bonjour/CFNetwork works, but also went ahead to build out a simple yet effective network protocol to demonstrate his point. It's very thought-provoking and reminded me poking UNIX networking stuff back in my college days. I'm very eager to try out some p2p trick in my next app after reading this chapter!
Gary Bennett - Doing Several Things at Once: Performance Enhancements with Threading
This chapter is a bit *easy*. It shows you how to work with multiple threads, and showed a simple program to demonstrate different points.
However, I was expecting some more *real-world* app, instead of a toy program.
Matthew "Canis" Rosenfeld - All Fingers and Thumbs: Multitouch Interface Design and Implementation
Matt has done a wonderful job in explaining how to handle gesture events in great details, as well as how to make the decision of what events to use during his design of Stage Hand. This is a great chapter for anyone who wants to design how to capture their own custom gesture events.
Benjamin Jackson - Physics, Sprites, and Animation with the cocos2d-iPhone Framework
Cocos2d is a very popular physics game engine on iPhone. Ben leads us to the door in this chapter. Cocos2d along deserves a whole book for it.
I really would like to have more content on this chapter. 20 pages just don't cut it ;)
Neil Mix - Serious Streaming Audio the Pandora Radio Way
Neil has a great piece in explaining how to design an effective audio streaming algorithm in this chapter. Coming from the Pandora team, I expect nothing but greatness from his experience and expertise. Handling slow network and dropped connection are very interesting to read.
Steven Peterson - Going the Routesy Way with Core Location, XML, and SQLite
This is a good chapter, comparing to others in the book. Probably I've already built apps using CoreLocation, XML Parsing and SQLite, I find it an easy read. But it's still pretty good in showing you how to build an app from start to finish.
Overall, this little book offers more value than many 600-plus-pages of bible-books out there on the market.
I highly recommend it to anyone who's passed the initial iPhone SDK programming newbie stage, and ready to take on more advanced features.
I just wish this book would contain more chapters and more interesting topics. Hopefully APress can come out with a new edition?
Great concepts for beyond the basics November 6, 2009
Louis J. Dicarro
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
When reading introductory books in any language, it is easy to learn the language elements and concepts, but it is hard to see how everything fits together. What is great about the cool projects series from Apress is being able to see the elements and concepts in practice with projects from professionals who are active in the field.
Each chapter is written by a different author, so every project covers a different experience and topic. These range from touch interfaces to streaming audio over the network. Some of the projects presented are based on the author's live applications that are currently available through the App Store. A wide range of the topics are covered in the book with practical examples of the concepts.
This book is definitely not an introduction to Cocoa or iPhone programming. It is more geared toward the intermediate reader who has learned the basics and needs practical, real-life examples. It can also be of use to a more experienced iPhone programmer who wants to explore some of the topics in the book without having to dig through the documentation.
I would highly recommend this book because it is easy to read and does not get bogged down with basic concepts. Code is provided on the book's site and is easy to follow the code with the explanations in the book. As a beginning iPhone programmer, I found this book to be a lot of help to work out some of the concepts I was having trouble with.
book is very useful September 22, 2009
James (Washington, DC)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
It is neither a beginner's how to book nor is it an advanced book. But its a useful book because it shows real-world projects and real-world solutions. I liked the book. Felt my money was well-parted buying this book. Again, though, it is not a beginner's "how to" book.
James
Great Book for Developers wanting More October 19, 2009
B. Lees
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot from it. I thought the chapter on Multithreading was especially good. That chapter alone was worth the cost of the book. It is amazing the stuff you can do on the iphone and the power once you understand how to develop for it.
I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to get started with iPhone development or those who want to take their development to the next level.
Perfect book to follow "Beginning iPhone Development" September 12, 2009
Aaron (Portland, OR)
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
If you're like me--learning Cocoa, know some C from way back in college, but otherwise a beginner--and you've gone through Mark and LaMarche's Beginning iPhone Development, then this is your next book. Whereas the Beginning iPhone book goes into detail on the basics, this book shows how to stitch those basics together to solve more complex, more "real world" iPhone problems. Another value to beginners like me is that this book introduces various, generic programming concepts (such as threading, sockets programming, transferring audio data over a network, game timing, etc) that experienced programmers take for granted.
For example, the first chapter does not only show you how to make a simple Quartz-based game, but also addresses issues such as synchronizing game timing with program timing. The second chapter (Peer to Peer Networking) combines the sockets API with Apple's NSNetService networking framework. Before reading this, I didn't know a socket from Shinola.
What I like about this book is that each chapter is self contained, so you can jump around and read the stuff that is more immediately important to you.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
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