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Book Summary InformationAuthor: Benjamin Jackson, Gary Bennett, Matthew Rosenfeld, Michael Ash, Neil Mix, Steven Peterson, Wolfgang Ante Brand: Apress Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2009-08-13 ISBN: 143022357X Number of pages: 240 Publisher: Apress Product features: - ISBN13: 9781430223573
- Condition: Used - Very Good
- Notes: 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of iPhone Cool ProjectsBook Review: Your next step in iPhone SDK programming Summary: 5 Stars
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?
Summary of iPhone Cool ProjectsThe iPhone and iPod touch have provided all software developers with a level playing field?developers 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 application?a 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. Next up, Canis Lupus (aka Matthew Rosenfeld) describes the development of the Keynote-controlling application Stage Hand, how the user interface has evolved, and the lessons he has learned from that experience. Benjamin Jackson then introduces two open source libraries: cocos2d, for 2D gaming; and Chipmunk, for rigid body physics (think ?collisions?). He describes the development of Arcade Hockey, an air hockey game, and explains some of the code used for this. Neil Mix of Pandora Radio reveals the science behind processing streaming audio. How do you debug what you can't see? Neil guides you through the toughest challenges, sharing his experience of what works and what to watch out for when working with audio. Finally, Steven Peterson demonstrates a comprehensive integration of iPhone technologies. He weaves Core Location, networking, XML, XPath, and SQLite into a solid and very useful application. Software development can be hard work. Introductory books lay the foundation, but it can be challenging to understand where to go next. This book shows some of the pieces that can be brought together to make complete, cool applications. What you?ll learn - Add multitouch controls to your applications.
- Detect motion for spatial application interaction.
- Build applications that use both Wi-Fi and cellular connections.
- Understand and use GPS information for geo-location.
- Use the built-in microphone and play sounds and alerts.
- Optimize your use of limited screen real estate.
Who this book is for All iPhone application developers with any level of experience or coming from any development platform. Table of Contents - Designing a Simple, Frenzic-Style Puzzle Game
- Mike Ash?s Deep Dive Into Peer-to-Peer Networking
- Doing Several Things at Once: Performance Enhancements with Threading
- All Fingers and Thumbs: Multitouch Interface Design and Implementation
- Physics, Sprites, and Animation with the cocos2d-iPhone Framework
- Serious Streaming Audio the Pandora Radio Way
- Going the Routesy Way with Core Location, XML, and SQLite
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