The Advanced iOS 6 Developer's Cookbook Book Review

This book is what it claims to be and that is a cookbook on advanced topics. I would follow the author's advice and if you are a beginner with Objective-C or iOS, this book is not the one you want to start with. This book is however an excellent book for experienced developers. The first chapter kicks right into overdrive with a really nice overview of device specific development. It shows you how to get device capabilities and how to take advantage of that information in your applications. It continues on with 12 more excellent chapters which I have listed below. 1. Device-Specific Development 2. Documents and Data Sharing 3. Core Text 4. Geometry 5. Networking 6. Images 7. Cameras 8. Audio 9. Connecting to the Address Book 10. Location 11. GameKit 12. StoreKit 13. Push Notifications One of my favorite chapters in the book was on the use of attributed strings and Core Text. That is probably because I needed to use the knowledge in that chapter in an application immediately. It was perfect timing and it does a great job of showing how iOS 6 has been updated. I also used the chapter on Push Notifications immediately. I needed to understand how they work because we are using Airwatch which requires an Apple Push Notification Service Certificate. The chapter really helped clarify how they work, when to use them, and when not to use them. This book picks up where the authors book The Core iOS 6 Developer's Cookbook left off with networking. The chapter on networking included in this book covers handling authentication challenges, using the system keychain, and working with OAuth. I did not bother doing all the iTunes Connect registration required by Apple to use the GameKit chapter. Apple needs to fix this process. I only breezed through the GameKit chapter and the StoreKit chapter. I have no requirements for either in the applications I am currently building. Like the author's other books, this book is much more than just a cookbook with a bunch of recipes in it. I have used plenty of cookbooks and they are never readable from cover to cover. I usually just familiarize myself with the recipes that are available, read the ones interesting to me at the time, and throw them on the shelf until I need them. This one is both a great cover to cover read as well as a great reference. The author does a great job of mixing a traditional book with a recipe book. Each chapters contain both background information and recipes. This book lives up to the cookbook title. There is tons of code that comes with it and it is all very well organized and usable. The only thing I didn't like was that the author used HelloWorld.xcodeproj for the project name every time. After you open a few projects you have to go to Finder and the actual folder to reopen a specific one because all your shortcuts are HelloWorld.xcodeproj. Over all I found this to be an excellent book for experienced developers. It is a perfect addition to her The Core iOS 6 Developer's Cookbook.

The Advanced iOS 6 Developer's Cookbook (4th Edition)