Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK

Are you a programmer looking for a new challenge? Does the thought of building your very own iPhone app make your heart race and your pulse quicken? If so, then Beginning iPhone Development is just the book for you.

Assuming only a minimal working knowledge of Objective-C, and written in a friendly, easy-to-follow style, Beginning iPhone Development offers a complete soup-to-nuts course in iPhone and iPod Touch programming.

The book starts with the basics, walking you through the process of downloading and installing Apple's free iPhone software development kit, then stepping you though the creation of your first simple iPhone application. You'll move on from there, mastering all the iPhone interface elements that you've come to know and love, such as buttons, switches, pickers, toolbars, sliders, etc.

You'll master a variety of design patterns, from the simplest single view to complex hierarchical drill-downs. You'll master the art of table-building and learn how to save your data using the iPhone file system. You'll also learn how to save and retrieve your data using SQLite, iPhone's built-in database management system.

You'll learn how to draw using Quartz 2D and OpenGL ES. You'll add multi-touch gesture support (pinches and swipes) to your applications, and work with the Camera, photo library, and Accelerometer. You'll master application preferences, learn how to localize your apps into other languages, and so much more.

Apple's iPhone SDK, this book, and your imagination are all you'll need to start building your very own best-selling iPhone applications.

Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK is the second beginning level book from Apress that is written for developers who want to program Apple’s iPhone, this time focusing on how to take advantage of the powerful new SDK that Apple are due to release in the second half of 2008.

So while our first book (Beginning iPhone Application Development 978-1-4302-1051-1) was a general introduction to application development on the iPhone with general introductions to the tools of the trade such as Objective-C, the platform APIs and developer tools, this second book focuses specifically on the new iPhone 2 SDK, which will give developers new ways to create experiences for iPhone users.

Readers will discover how to create programs for the iPhone using Apple's official Software Development Kit (SDK). Readers will learn to design user interfaces using Apple's Interface Builder tool, starting with simple interfaces and progressing to complex, professional-quality multi-view applications. Using a practical step-by-step approach, the readers will see how to implement common iPhone application interfaces and learn about about the Model-View-Controller approach to programming used throughout the iPhone SDK. Readers will also see how to interact with the user through the iPhone's multitouch screen as well as learn how to save data using the iPhone's file system and the embedded SQLite database. The book is packed with information and code samples showing how to exploit all the goodness of the new SDK from the iPhone's built-in accelerometer to the built-in camera and everything in between.

Dave Mark is a long-time Mac developer and author and has written a number of books on Macintosh development, including Learn C on the Macintosh, The Macintosh Programming Primer series, and Ultimate Mac Programming. His blog can be found at www.davemark.com.

Jeff LaMarche is a longtime Mac developer, and Apple iPhone Developer. With over 20 years of programming experience, he’s written on Cocoa and Objective-C for MacTech Magazine, as well as articles for Apple’s Developer Technical Services website. He has experience working in Enterprise software, both as a developer for PeopleSoft starting in the late 1990s, and then later as an independent consultant.