This hands-on guide, for aspiring Apple iPhone developers, presents a learn-while-doing approach to writing software applications. Its content comes from a popular iPhone development class taught at the Big Nerd Ranch. Before beginning this book, readers should set aside a significant amount of time, be familiar with the relevant programming languages (C and Objective-C), and have access to a Mac. With regard to time, the authors suggest a chapter a day and at least an hour of quality (uninterrupted) time. Furthermore, in order to download the necessary Apple development tools (Xcode and Interface Builder), readers must join the Apple Developer Connection (ADC) network.

Chapters 1 through 3 briefly introduce the topic and some theory. Chapter 1 introduces readers to iPhone programming, and chapters 2 and 3 provide an overview of Objective-C and memory management. Readers will learn about a design pattern of delegation, working with protocols, frameworks, and object diagrams in chapters 4 and 5.

Next, in chapters 6 through 22, the authors cover user interfaces (UIs) and move beyond theory. Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the iPhone UI: views, view controllers, scrolling, zooming, paging, and navigating between screens. Chapter 8 covers motion events, including shakes with the iPhone’s accelerometer. In chapters 9 and 10, readers can create both a small application and the largest application found in the book. Chapters 11 to 22 discuss various iPhone capabilities and key frameworks, including its camera, memory management, multi-touch functionality, animation, audio, video, Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based Web services, and address book functions and People Picker.

Lastly, chapters 23 to 28 provide a mix of concepts, techniques, and fundamentals, and extend the discussion beyond the iPhone to the iPad. Chapter 23 introduces readers to internationalization and location concepts and techniques. In chapter 24, readers will learn how to publish a service on Bonjour, a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. (Bonjour is Apple’s implementation of a service discovery protocol.) Chapter 25 explores customizable application settings and preferences. Chapter 26 introduces the SQLite library for storing and fetching data on the iPhone. Chapter 27 provides readers with a good background in the use of Core Data--a data management framework--to store and access data in an iPhone. Chapter 28 introduces the iPad and some of its features.

The authors cover the material with a reasonable amount of breadth and depth, making this book well suited for developers who are ready to face the challenge of writing iPhone and iPod Touch software applications. Since the book does not cover OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES), the authors recommend looking elsewhere for information on it.

I recommend this book to readers who want to become iPhone developers, as long as they are comfortable with a hands-on learning approach. However, readers who don’t learn in this fashion should explore other iPhone programming tutorials.