Beginning iOS 5 Games Development: Using the iOS SDK for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch (Beginning Apress) [ペーパーバック]

This book is rife with errors and omission. Some of the concepts expressed are decent, but I wouldn't have been able to work my way through the book without a solid understanding of iOS/ Xcode fundamentals. There are typos galore, and many of the sample code segments are incomplete. If you just follow the code the way it's presented in this book, you'll never end up with a single piece of functioning code. Overall, it comes across as a frantic, hurried rush to meet a publication deadline rather than a thoughtful approach to iOS game development.

I am an intermediate level iPhone programmer with four apps up on the iTunes app store. I have purchased several books on iPhone programming for comparison and to see how other people do things. This book is just about the worst programming book for coding for the iPhone that I own. How do you have a whole book on iPhone programming and never explain such key things as @synchronize? He just throws a bunch of screen shots and chunks of code at you and says things like how simple it is. If you are a beginner, stay away from this book. You will not learn how to program games for the iPhone.

In addition, the author's explanations for things like how to use interface builder, model, view, controller, Objective C syntax, keywords, data types, how to use conditional statements, messaging, delegates, implementation vs. header files, and just about everything else are very poorly explained. He doesn't take the time to step you through code, or explain what it is he is doing or why he is doing it.

For example, in iOS 5 we have a great new feature called automatic reference counting. In chapter two he actually sets up a new project and leaves ARC off, but then never bothers to explain to you that memory management is now completely your burden to manage and that you now have to manually release all of your objects from memory when you are finished with them. To make things worse, he shows you where he has put his release code, but doesn't bother telling you what it actually does, why it is there, and the consequences of not releasing your objects (hard crash in some instances and a memory leak in all instances). Memory leak? Oh yeah? what's that? You won't learn about it in this book.

Another example of how bad this book is can be shown from an example in chapter one, where you build your first "game" for the iPhone. There is absolutely no programming involved at all as all you do is drag in previously coded .h and .m files and copy them into the project. Then he goes on to great lengths to explain how to make a universal application that can run on both the iPhone and the iPad by using different .xib files. Believe me, when you are just starting out, you don't even care about that stuff at first... you just want to be able to type some code and watch it run in the simulator.

Well, ok, bottom line... don't waste your money on this book. If you are serious about learning how to actually program the iPhone, go to iTunes University and download Stanford University's fall 2011 semester class by Paul Hegarty about iPhone programming. There you will get the real skinny on how to do this stuff, and for free!

I'm still trying to complete the book, it is difficult. and I am noob programmer. I does contain valuable "iOS Game Dev" info. But this book is not for beginner programmers. [and the book never makes any claim to be for beginners programmers] But because of the following problems I cannot give 5 stars
The main problem is the book is poorly written, has missing instructions, and confusing steps process. If you are a "beginner programmer" it will be close to impossible the complete the 2nd chapter. And, since the 3rd chapter hinges on what you would have learned from the 2nd chapter, you will probably not be able to complete chapter 3. Those chapters attempt to teach how to build a basic game navigation architecture. With a little work an intermediate programmer will figure out how to handle the gaps. The concepts are easy to understand, and are essential to for iOS games. But the instructions they provided are very poorly organized, and incomplete. Even assuming one should have some knowledge of programming in objective-c, the book has to many errors. You will be trying to find work arounds to get the program to work.

The word beginner implies you don't need any previous knowledge of the material to complete the course, because it will be all explained to you. This book is not providing that.
Suggestions:

I think the title would be more suitable if the word "Beginning" is replaced with "Foundation".

Note: I'm glad I bought the book.

-Lawrence