Book Review: The iPhone Developer's Cookbook

Overwhelming, reviewers have both praised Erica Sadun's book The iPhone Developer's Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK and warned that it's not for beginners. We found this book very helpful during the development of our first iPhone app (Phone Alarm) and were pleased that it came in both paperback and PDF. I particularly like books that come with a companion PDF version.

Erica Sadun first explores the iPhone delivery platform and SDK, helping you set up your development environment, and then shows you how iPhone applications are constructed. Next, she offers single-task recipes for the full spectrum of iPhone/iPod touch programming jobs:

• Utilize views and tables
• Organize interface elements
• Alert and respond to users
• Access the Address Book (people), Core Location (places), and Sensors (things)
• Connect to the Internet and Web services
• Display media content
• Create secure Keychain entries

I thought it was a great book whether you had experience or not, but I found several other reviews that disagree:

Jason R. Weiss (Katy, TX USA) writes: New to Apple's Developer Tools? This book is not for you!, The book states it is aimed "squarely at anyone just getting started with iPhone programming." It is not...

Perfect for seasoned programmers, writes J. Badger. If you're an accomplished Objective C programmer then this book really helps you understand the fine points of iPhone programming...

Bernhard Müller cleary warns that This should be your SECOND iPhone programming book!She shows a lot of tricks you won't see in the standard books. But to really enjoy this book, you should know iPhone programming at least basically...