Beginning iPhone 3 Development

This book is the next step up from the "Hello, World" examples you can find all over the Internet. I bought it in conjunction with The iPhone Developers Cookbook. That brought my current iPhone/iPad SDK arsenal to six: these two, plus Programming in Objective-C 2.0, Stephen Kochan's Programming Principles and Practice Using C++, X-Code 3 Unleashed and iPad Application Development (these last two to be reviewed soon).

I've mentioned before the frustrations inherent in learning iPhone programming - there is a steep learning curve against a moving target and there is too much out of date information on the web and in books. This book won't answer all your questions and will still leave you confused at some points, but it does jump right in to teach you how to do many of the basic things any prospective programmer would wonder about when first exposed to this SDK environment.

For example, after introducing basics in the first three chapters, chapter 4 jumps into using buttons, sliders, switches and the keyboard along with alerts and action sheets. In other words, throw in a pile of stuff and learn how it all works. The next chapter gets into rotation and resizing and the book moves on from there to more complicated views and controls.

By itself, this isn't enough. But what is? I found answers here - not for every question I have, but it's all part of the puzzle. Worth buying.