@Joe & Aaron,
Could you post the TOC to version 3 of the iOS book, or at least elaborate on what new iOS features are covered. I’m very interested in iCloud and ARC, cause right now I can’t seem to release the reference counting blues I’m retaining.
@Both of those guys and everyone else,
Can anybody recommend a good follow up book for “iOS Programming” to take things to the next level? I would like to find more on interface building with things like the datePicker and some of the other items not covered here. I would also like to learn more about iCloud syncing for document’s, core data and key/value pairs. I would also like to find some good material on really customizing your app’s UI. What can be done with simple images in the background and foreground. When it’s best to subclass or just use UI customization available, Ive read about and used apps where somebody did a terrible job on the UI because they re-invented the wheel so to speak, with regard to tableviews etc. Does BNR ever have any plans to release such a book? I’m thinking the BNR Guide to Advanced iOS Programming.
Can anyone tell me which BNR book would be the best to learn Mac apps after the iOS Programming book? Is it still best to start with the entry level book or one of the other BNR Mac books. I think I counted like 3. Do any of them discuss making iOS companion apps for the Mac using iCloud or other means for data syncing?
The new iOS book has a chapter on iCloud, though I haven’t looked at it yet. It is also up to date on ARC - although that basically means that (for the most part) that code just misses the retain and release calls. Apparently the LLVM compiler performs ARC in two passes - the first it seems to just dump crazy amounts of retain and release calls into the code (sometimes even creating temporary variables), then on the second pass it seems to cull everything down to something that looks much more sane.
As regards your next question: I hope I don’t get in trouble for this as I’ve mentioned this before (I think the new bnr iOS book is superb by the way) but I’ve also fallen in love with the iOS book by Matt Neuburg. He was a once-latin-linguist at MIT, if I remember correctly, and his writing style is very good. It’s very heavy in detail, but if you’re ready for the next level, I’d take a look at that.
Take your iOS skills/confidence to next level?
Then build bunch of Apps. The book makes more sense when you return to it…and go deeper into areas covered widely in the book.
if you want to just-read-more-about-it…
’‘Advanced OS X Programming’ by Mark Dalrymple, is the book I’m personally Looking at, to get my iOS skills to next level. Getting under the hood and all.
I have skeptically scanned the other books and I like BNR approach and depth. You might like something else. From another book I have read Mark Dalrymple’s approach is ‘ok let’s great cracking with code and let me show you how to do it’. Well suited if you want to learn how to do it, instead of reading about how to do it.
Or build Apps and go to “Advanced OS X Programming”.
If you are going down Cocoa path, then ‘Cocoa programming’ by Aaron.
Thanks for the feedback. I have been giving Advanced OSX Programming a lot of consideration. But I am curious what you mean about if you want to go the cocoa path.
[quote]Or build Apps and go to “Advanced OS X Programming”.
If you are going down Cocoa path, then ‘Cocoa programming’ by Aaron.[/quote]Isn’t the advance OSX book cocoa and just a few miles further down the same path?
It covers much of the lower-level stuff that exists on iOS and Mac OS - signals, sockets, Bonjour, pthreads, NSFileManager, NSOperation, Grand Central Dispatch, along with a lot of depth about the language and so on. Some chapters are not terribly relevant, such as the coverage of NSTask and FSEvents, but a great deal is common. There is also specific iOS coverage here and there as appropriate.
