Chris Adamson - iOS SDK Development

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This book starts with all the people who asked for it. The relevance and accuracy of our previous edition, iPhone SDK Development, diminished as Apple piled on language innovations like blocks, tool changes like Xcode 4, and all sorts of neat stuff to play with. Readers of the first edition wondered when wed get an update out, or theyd send us screenshots of Xcode 4 and say, How do I make my windows look like the screenshots in your book? It didnt take long for us to think that our old book was doing a disservice to new readers and cried out for a up-to-date do-over.

Writing a book is a huge undertaking. But of course its not just the authors that worked hard. Our editor, Brian Hogan, was an invaluable partner in the tasks of bringing this book home with just the right amount of encouragement and chiding to get us over the hump and of rescuing this book when we were foolishly targeting two different audiences and not reaching either of them. So thanks to Brian for his work throughout this process and converting sometimes-messy prose into something our readers could understand.

We have a number of individual thanks to hand out in this edition. Jonathan Penn turned us onto UI Automation testing (covered in Section 9.3, Hes a designer-turned-programmer (with the help of the Pragmatic Studios iOS programming courses), and youll see his pixels near the end of the book.

Its been comfortable working again with the Prags and their innovative and practical publishing system. Buildingand more importantly, updatingprogramming books with this system is a breeze, and writing markup is second nature to developers like us. For what its worth, I wrote a bunch of my stuff on an iPad at a standing desk with a dock keyboard and the Textastic app (http://www.textasticapp.com). Its inspiring to think that were writing about how to build the tools we use every day; maybe someone reading this book will write my next favorite app.

Im grateful to my family for putting up with both my absence and my stress through one more book and to all the readers of the first edition who wrote in or posted on the forums as they got their first apps up on the store. Thats the kind of thrill that keeps us going.

Obligatory end-of-book tune check: this time it was Sarah Slean, Rich Aucoin, Coeur de Pirate, Fitz and the Tantrums, and Metric. Up-to-date stats at http://www.last.fm/user/invalidname.

Id like to thank the many folks who have been to the Pragmatic iOS Studios (http://pragmaticstudio.com/ios). Your questions, insights, and struggles have been an inspiration for much of the material in this book. I always love walking into a class early on the first day and feeling the energy of people excited to learn something new. Listening to the questions and watching the victories helped me immensely in understanding how to present iOS to developers new to the platform.

Any mention of the Studios requires a heartfelt thanks to my co-teachers, Daniel Steinberg and Matt Drance. I learn something new every time I deliver the class with them.

My family put up with a distracted father and husband all too often throughout the writing of this book. But Id like to say a special thanks to my wife, Sarah, for all her help in editing my first, second, and all-too-often third drafts. Id also like to thank a 2,000-year-old Jewish carpenter for touching my life and making it so much more than it might have been.

Finally, wed both like to thank Steve Jobs for having given up so much of his life to pursue something he believed in. Computers should be easy to use. He inspired a team of brilliant people to work beyond what they ever thought they could do. And they delivered some great things: the Macintosh in 1984, the NeXT in 1988, the iMac in 1998, and the iPhone in 2007. He did not settle for anyone doing less than his or her best. He was one of a kind and the world is a brighter place for him having been in it.

Some people ask us if the gold rush is over. As Bill always says, its just beginning, but instead of a gold rush we are in the midst of another economic revolution. iOS, and therefore mobile, is defining a whole new way that we can use computers to keep us better connected to things that matter. Even with 700,000-plus apps in the store, we have only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible. The iOS platform is crying out for you to make something spectacularplease let us know when you do!