What are your personal opinions of the Ipad? Will you start developing software for that? I think it’ll be a big FLOP!

Zapster R.

Don’t love some of the other iPhone content I have from that publisher but the reviews for that book look great. I haven’t read it so I can’t endorse it either way. If you end up checking it out, let me know how it goes for you.

Good point on the iTunes U iPhone content. I don’t love video lessons myself — books work better for me — but it’s a good for someone who prefers classroom style instruction to get started once they have the basics of C and Objective-C.

Thanks for the comment. While Apple has an engineering team specifically dedicated to ensure ongoing compatibility on new versions of iPhone OS with older frameworks, that doesn’t mean mean binaries compiled against those frameworks are guaranteed to be future proof. The problem is that when you trust someone else’s code to stand between your work and the finished product, if something doesn’t work quite right, you’re either at the mercy of the community to fix it quickly or you’ve got to sort out the fix yourself. Neither is an appealing proposition to me.

Moreover, when Apple releases a new SDK with new/enhanced APIs, anyone comfortable with previous versions can get to work with the new APIs immediately, instead of waiting around for someone else.

As for doing things that raise Apple’s ire, dunno what to tell you. PhoneGap apps were being rejected for awhile. There’s nothing unresearched about this — here’s a post on the subject. The FUD you complained about was created by Apple. I’m glad to hear that Apple has changed their view of PhoneGap. But I’m afraid Apple’s overall opacity means that any tool that stands between the developer and Apple’s officially-sanctioned methods of creating iPhone applications is a risk I can’t encourage anyone to take. Apple may bless PhoneGap today. They may change their mind tomorrow. I truly hope that we’re headed toward a more flexible and tolerant review process. Until that happens, though, it’s worth minimizing risk.

Do I fear wasting a lot of development effort that gets rejected because Apple can be a control freak? Yup. Am I uncertain of Apple’s overall view of such things? Of course, we all are. Do I doubt that it’s a good idea to use anything but Apple-sanctioned tools? 100%, yes. Don’t take this personally, though. I’d say it about PhoneGap or anything else that wasn’t the real deal. And that doesn’t even get into the inherent compromises that come from writing an application that tries to be everything for every platform.

While I get that PhoneGap is meant to be a cross platform solution, it bills itself thusly:

“If you’re a web developer who wants to build mobile applications in HTML and JavaScript while still taking advantage of the core features in the iPhone, Android, Palm, Symbian and Blackberry SDKs, PhoneGap is for you.”

I read that as “Hey, you web guys! Shortcut to mobile!” Because I don’t really concern myself with other mobile platforms at this stage, the fact that it can be a shortcut for other devices, too, is beside the point.

Look, your company wants to make money selling services around PhoneGap. I get that. Way to be out there protecting its reputation. But making something that works on every platform is a surefire ticket to mediocre software that doesn’t look or work great on any platform. I think we can look to Java’s resounding success on the desktop as proof of that fact. What’s worse is that it’s risky for iPhone developers in particular, given Apple’s track record on “not invented here” intermediate code.

Glad we’re in agreement, though, that using the official tools and APIs is the best way to build a great application.

Apress also has a deep discount on the eBook versions ($10) if you own the dead tree version. Like Roger said, I find it handy to be able to copy and paste code when I want to–worth $10 to me.

Also, highly recommend Dave and Jeff’s books. I remember Dave’s Mac Programming Primer books from eons ago.

The purpose of PhoneGap is to be a cross platform mobile solution for iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Symbian and Palm; not just an ‘easier’ iPhone solution!

All that said, I agree, its great to learn the base programming languages to get the most out of the platforms they target.

I would also like to suggest going to iTunes U and subscribing to the Stanford iPhone Applications Programming class. That’s also one very useful resource indeed.

Thanks.

On a first run-through, I find it more useful to hand-type whatever code is in an exercise. Afterward, if harvesting something useful to add to an existing project, being able to copy/paste is really handy.