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PACKT recently provided the opportunity for me to review the Xcode 4 Cookbook by Steven Daniel. As primarily a Titanium developer I spend most of my time in Sublime Text or Titanium Studio so I thought it would provide a good opportunity to spend more time in Xcode.
First, the book title is alittle misleading. I found this book to be more about iOS development then Xcode itself. The author does cover Xcode in detail, but always in the context of building or profiling an app. This approach made it both easier to read and to remember.
The book starts with covering the basics and then moves into creating user interfaces. Having built most of my UIs through code it I found the content on Interface Builder and Storyboards helpful. The recipes are easy to follow and very detailed, perfect for beginners.
My favorite section of the book is around instruments. Again the author walks us through these recipes in a very detailed easy to follow way. As a side note, you can use the same steps outlined in these recipes in your Titanium project. You just need to generate a full Xcode project using transport.py as detailed here. Coming from a non Xcode background, the navigation and descriptions of the options available for profiling made Xcode’s sometimes challenging interface easy to understand.
The chapter on iCloud provided a great “getting started” guide with a clear easy to understand recipe showing on to implement Document based storage using NSUbiquitousKeyValueStore. This was a good introduction to iCloud and very easy for someone new to iCloud to follow along. I do wish the author would have gone further on this topic and provided more details on storing greater the 64k documents.
The recipe using CoreImage provides a nice introduction to the topic and discusses a few of the common available filters. This recipe provided a nice transition from the earlier CoreGraphic recipe. I do wish the author would have provides a multi filter example though.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book and found the recipes helpful. The detail and direction provided by the author makes all of the recipes easy to follow and quick to perform. If you are new to iOS development or Xcode this book provides the resources needed to tackle that learning curve quickly.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
