What book should an absolute beginner choose for getting started with iPhone development?!?
I’ve been asked this question a few times by users here so I just wanted to post my thoughts on this subject. Out of the many choices, there really are few good books for the absolute beginner to get started with iPhone development. The main reason is most will assume an understanding of Objective-C and some experience programming for Mac OS X.
In my opinion most of the best resources for beginning iPhone development are free, but you have to understand that to truly do this stuff you will have to at least know something about Objective-C and Object Oriented programming. If you want to get into 3D game programming on the iPhone (which some of you have messaged me about) you will need to know something about Opengl ES, and that is a completely different matter.
Apple has their getting started documentation which is pretty good itself, and better than most books. Often, I’ve found that books will simply copy the apple documentation simply making slight modifications to examples and then distributing as their own. Learning to use and understand the apple documentation is very important as any new functionality will be explained here long before it is in a book. I suggest you attempt to go through this documentation before you spend a dime on any book.
An excellent free book I’ve found is BecomeAnXcoder. While this book does not get into iPhone development, it does get into developing with Xcode using Objective-C, and once you can understand this the transition to developing for the iPhone is fairly simple.
Now, if you must purchase a book I suggest Programming Objective-C 2.0 2nd edition (2nd edition adds iPhone development). This book starts from the very beginning, brings you through the basics of Objective-C, Object Oriented Programming, XCode, and iPhone programming. In my opinion this is one of the few books on this topic actually worth the money, and from there you can continue on into Apple’s iPhone code.
That’s it for my recommendations. Of course, you can also keep coming back to this website for more Objective-C and iPhone development information.
I have to say that i disagree with books not being good for this stuff
I found alot of good books out there on objective-c and the iphone.
I agree with your suggestion on programming objective c 2.0 2nd edition. that was the book that got me going.
Hey TJ, thanks for posting. The thing about many books is that I’ve found them simply to not be better than the Apple documentation. Seriously, if you’re going to charge me for something I expect it to give me something different… I’m not one to pay $40 just because the documentation was printed out and slapped inside a nice cover without being upset by it.
Hi, I'm from Uruguay, I'm studing to be an analyst in systems, but here we don't study Objetive-C. We study .net java C++ C# an all that stuff, but not Mac
. So I'm on of the switchers in my class 
, I think Mac OS X and all Apple stuff is just fantastic! I love it, sooo I have an iPhone 3G and I would really like to learn how to create an app cause I have a good idea on my mind 
. The website is cool, I'm going to checking it always for updates 
. Seeu from Uruguay.
Pablo =).
Even though Apple's documentation is considerably more superior than most books, the key reason I buy books is to make life easier! reading from a book is a lot easier than logging onto the apple dev site and scrolling through page after page! I also feel that finishing a book gives a lot more satisfaction, compared to a website. Finally, your books will always be there as a reference, or just to remind you of what you accomplished, which is great for moral and keeping up the development! Just my two cents!
So true Scott, I didn't actually want to come off as being anti-book, it's just that total beginners often want to go straight to the book, or just drill another programmer and never get used to the documentation. I've seen it time and time again with programmers switching to a new language, and ultimately it ends up with time being wasted as the end up trying to get others to explain everything to them, but if they were to actually spend the time, it's not that long to learn how to properly utilize the documentation provided by Apple, which many people don't they'd have a better understanding themselves, and have a massive edge over programmers who don't take that time.
That being said, I subscribe to Safari which gives me a mass amount of books, I buy books frequently.. I try to spend at least 5 hours a week reading programming books, but ultimately Apple has the most up to date resources. It is especialy vital in the case of the iPhone to be able to utilize Apple's documentation properly because their non-disclosure policy slows the release of books on newer topics.
As someone who got started recently, I found Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430216263 by Mark & LaMarche to be the #1 most helpful getting started and plenty sufficient to get an (admittedly simple) iPhone app written and published in the store. (The app is Towel http://bit.ly/frood, thank you veddy much.) But I'm now also reading Programming Obj C 2.0 and it is also excellent.
Great Post. I found the article very helpful.