Comments about O'Reilly Media Learning iPhone Programming:

Covers an old version of Xcode, significantly different from the current version.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Learning iPhone Programming:

If you're interested in developing dynamic iOS apps that provide the user with a great experience you have likely considered or already decided to go the native app route rather than the web app route.
Unfortunately for many developers, especially those that are not familiar with Apple's development ecosystem and their tools, developing a native iPhone application that leverages Cocoa Touch and Objective - C can be a daunting task.
Learning iPhone Programming assumes no prior knowledge of the iPhone SDK and the related tools. It is a great primer for programmers that would like to expand to iOS; though it is very basic in its approach to the material. The process of actually registering as an iOS developer and installing the iOS SDK and XCode are covered in significant detail; as are common tasks like creating provisioning and distribution profiles and provisioning devices for testins. This is certainly not aimed at developers who have written a reasonably complex iphone application, as those readers will probably find the text below there level.
Bottom Line: This is a definite read for any developers that are trying to add iOS development to their resume.
Still for all the texts strengths, it is not recommended for someone who has absolutely no programming experience; there are other more appropriate choices both in texts and technologies.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Learning iPhone Programming:

"Learning iPhone Programming" won't teach you programming, the basics of C or object orientation, but if you already have some experience in these areas and you're interested in developing for the iPhone, I would recommend learning from this book.

The book does a good job of explaining Objective-C and topics like memory management on the iPhone. The example applications you will write while working through this book are well chosen and fun to build, and will teach you about working with the development environment, designing and coding GUIs using typical iPhone UI patterns, and performing common tasks such as connecting to Web services on the Internet and reading data fom them.

By the time you've worked your way through this book, you will know enough to design and build your own applications, or at least get started with the outline. If you need more information on specific topics to finish writing your app, the book gives suggestions for further reading.

In a few cases, the book could use more detailed explanation. For example, there is a good section on memory management, but the code samples fail to explain why some objects need to be released while other aren't, which may confuse someone getting started on Objective-C. The reader will pick it up eventually, but some short comments in the first few code samples would be helpful.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Learning iPhone Programming:

I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was well written, easy to follow, and did a great job covering all the major aspects of iPhone programming. This book also does a great job showing how to create a lot of different kinds of apps (from weather to TableView, etc.). The author also goes through how to interact with some of the iPhone hardware, including the GPS.

As other reviewers have mentioned, this book really shines in helping the reader understand the iPhone memory management philosophy. I'd highly recommend this read to anyone trying to begin iPhone application development.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Learning iPhone Programming:

Really good and well explained. Detailed. A "must have"!

Comments about O'Reilly Media Learning iPhone Programming:

I can unequivocally say that without this book, I would not have been able to submit my app AND get it approved. I found myself in a serious funk in mid-February and on a total whim, bought this book (who says Twitter doesn't matter) and the problems that I was having around memory deallocation went away.

I read and re-read the examples (thx for simple, easy to understand, logical steps) and then incorporated them into my app. My beta testers really liked the stability of the app and between you and me, this book is why.

My confidence of how to program within the Apple environment grew and I am getting more comfortable every day. Now, I am not a full-time programmer, but a hobbyiest and if I don't have to read on-line corporate documentation (that's my day job...), I won't. But, we all have to follow the guidelines as laid out by Apple and if implementing the examples in this book, get's my app approved, then it's a good thing.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Learning iPhone Programming:

I'm very negative about this book.

I'd like to make a point of two things in the book.

1. Example
Any object in the Objective-C world should not send an dealloc method to other objects.
IBOutlets should be declared property with retain attributes, that's the recommendation by Apple in their view controller programming guide.

There're many pitfalls, if the readers are not familiar with Objective-C reference counting mechanism. I reckon these examples are harmful to novice Objective-C programmers.

2. Style of explanations
I think there are many tiresome steps to follow, without letting the readers know what it is and why they should do that.
Those kind of explanation are useless, if there are codes. Codes explain themselves.

I think this book should fully rewritten and reviewed by technically competent reviewers.