A thorough guide to the world of Mac and iOS app development, this book carefully tackles the different functionalities of Xcode 4, describes its user interface, and offers useful hints to make the most of this powerful development platform. Anderson covers general topics related to the tool, but also engages in the ambitious task of explaining underlying concepts and teaching the reader sound application development techniques for mobile devices based on iOS and for devices supporting Mac OS X.

The book is divided into four sections. The first section presents a guided tour through the Xcode user interface, and describes the process of getting and installing Xcode on your computer, as well as some basic functionality such as debugging, compiling, and version control. The second part describes writing iOS applications, explains the underlying programming philosophy of the model-view-controller, talks extensively about views, and goes on to tackle issues such as unit testing and performance tracking and enhancement. Section 3 explains the path to develop in Mac OS X, in the same detailed manner as the previous section. The last section of the book is especially intended for experienced Xcode users, covering topics that need more extensive treatment than was provided in the previous sections. Finally, the author includes appendices containing reference information about Objective-C, helpful hints, and source references.

I would recommend reading the book with a computer at hand in order to better follow the explanations as you read, and subsequently type in and run the code suggested in the several examples.

One major drawback to this edition is that it only covers up through version 4.2 of Xcode. Since its first publication, Apple has made several upgrades to the development tools and to the devices and operating systems, which might render some of the advice in the book obsolete. Nevertheless, it is a great starting point for those interested in developing apps, and makes a good reference for the experienced developer trying to catch up on the new tools and technologies offered by Apple. Some degree of experience with object-oriented programming is recommended to get the most out of this book.