Errata for iPhone SDK Development

#36116: All of the projects in Chapter 2 use the View-Based Application template which creates (Hello, Button, Starter)AppDelegate.h and .m, main.m, MainWindow.xib, and other files. The role and function of these files are never discussed. Please try to include a broader discussion so that we can understand the MVC framework that we are using and how these files fit into it. A diagram(s) would be great! It is a huge jump to go from Hello iPhone to view controllers without the context and understanding of the framework. It could be a separate chapter on its own. --Danton Chin

#35358: Although the overall book is great, i think explaining the "limitations" of both iPhone and its SDK (storage limits, memory limits etc.) before starting to explain other subjects may be a great addition for readers...--S.Çağlar Onur

#34885: The overall book is great, but I think there needs to be a short primer on Cocoa in general. Since I only know the very basics of Cocoa, I did get a little lost.--Saurabh Sharan

#34953: While it's great to have ANY book on the SDK at this time, may I suggest that you give your PDF a good spelling and grammar check even at this point. Nearly every page has irritating errors.

it would be a good idea to point out right in the introduction that the sample code is available on the website and that it is most helpful if people access it when trying to overcome roadblocks.

Looking forward to all the chapters ahead and the final masterpiece!

Grandpa Brian - publisher of apps for serious hockey folks.--Brian Beninger

#35021: Your coverage of tables is, frankly, really weak. This is one of the key features of this platform and needs substantial focus. I would like to at least see the addition of table indexes along the right-hand side of the screen and doing anything more than displaying a simple text line in a cell.

Thanks for considering. Elia--Elia Freedman

#36163: I would love to see some exercises at the back of each chapter. It would make it palatable to CS professors (such as yours truly) considering adopting it as a textbook.--Michael Rogers

#35156: from the preceding page, it states: "Figure 1.7, on the following page shows"

Since the words "Figure 1.7, on" was on page 17, I interpreted "the following page" to be page 18, but the figure is on page 19. Would be better to specify "Figure 1.7, on page 19, shows" (also note the comma after the page number)

"superview" is used without explicitly explaining what it is.

"If its easier to find what you are looking for you can
hold down the option key and click and Xcode will display the symbols in alphabetical order."

The above sentence is confusing. It does not tell you that you need to be clicking on the symbols pulldown. It should also be rewritten to explain at the *beginning* the purpose of this alternative.

For example: If it would be easier to find the symbol from an alphabetical list of symbols, you can option-click the symbols pulldown, and Xcode will display the symbols in the code in alphabetical order.

You can add a special feature to explain to people who don't know how to "option-click" or "control-click" something so that you can use these more concise terms in the rest of the book.--EY

#34856: After clicking on "Download HelloiPhone/Hello/Classes/HelloViewController.m", the browser doesn't show the file contents properly, as though the web server doesn't know how to display the file as code or whatever.--Damian Haslam

#36140: Section 1.5 really glosses over the certificate and profiling process. I think you should cover it in detail. I am realizing now there are some best practices like using a .* for the app id which Apple does not explain well. I think you have an opportunity to make it clear and make your reader's transition to iPhone development easier.--Christopher M. Judd

#36139: The first paragraph suggest selecting the Active SDK Device - iPhone OS 2.0. But this may not be correct depending on which OS you have on your device. So first, I think it should say to select the appropriate version that matches your device. Second, I think you might want to explain the SDK concept and how you might need to install new SDK's to match your device. I know I got bizarre error messages before I knew to install the new SDK and selected the right version.--Christopher M. Judd

#35137: It would be rather helpful, in chapter 2, to give an illustration summarizing what we are going to do before we do it. Show both controllers, both xib files, and the relationships between then. Then, describe how to make these files. As it is, I feel like I'm just blindly wandering about, with no sense that of our overall goal.--Michael Rogers

#35094: [Note: I really want this book to succeed, so take this and all my future suggestions in the constructive way in which they are intended.] There's no explanation of what a File Owner is: a "Joe Asks" would be really appreciated here.

--Michael Rogers

#35741: Incredibly minor: The sidebar entitled "Target/Action Paradigm" should come after the code sample. As currently laid out, the @end tag from the "EditorViewController.h" sample isn't readily visible and could be the source of a typo by someone who is either cutting and pasting the code directly, or just following along exactly with each example.--Randall Thomas

#35960: While this shows an example of a modal view, the question I was left with was "Is this how I link all views from a button?" In other words- I've seen Apple examples about addSubView- how does that differ from modal? Why would I choose model over the addSubView? It would be great if this section could provide a bit more meat around the differences here, or at least an explanation as to why one would want to use the modal view approach.--Jason Weiss

#35459: Second paragraph in 2.6 is not clear to me why I would do this. I would like a longer discussion about why I am doing the steps indicated.

Thanks

Greg--Greg Robertson

#36075: Why override the initializer when Apple has provided us with:

- (void)awakeFromNib

which is called on every object as it is reconstructed from the nib file. Both ways work, but your point is “Because it’s loaded from a nib file…” so I think it’s best if you use “awakeFromNib” which is designed for this situation.

Please explain the long-term goals of using the initWithCoder because I think you might have some in mind. (serialization or the ability to programmatically initialize).--Lee Hericks

#34860: 3rd line in paragraph for section 3.9, "edit mode and then make the UITableViewdataSourcerableView:commitEditingStyle:forRowAtIndexPath:" should be wrapping in there somewhere - it extends past the margin of the text column.--Damian Haslam

#34883: Personally I would not have added the '(surprise, surprise)' as it implies that everything that has preceded has been really easy.

I would additionally comment that so far in the book I have been getting good at copying and pasting code, but I don't feel you have been really teaching me much to understand what the code I am copying really means, and how I would go about knowing how to implement it when I am creating my own app.

See Hillegass' Cocoa Programming for OS X for a much more instructional style. I heard the authors in a recent podcast episode saying that they were targetting people who are experience developers, but not experienced with cocoa/obj-c/cocoa touch. It actually feels so far like they are really targeting existing mac developers, who just want to expand into iPhone dev as well. My $0.02. :-)--Glenn Rempe

#36076: Apple’s documentation in the TableView Programming Guide removes the data from the array before deleting the row. Done this way, there is no need for [tableView beginUpdates] and [tableView endUpdates].

Perhaps this is just the safest route to take for teaching people new to the platform? Maybe you could put in a word about these wrapper calls, explaining why they might or might not be used?--Lee Hericks

#36205: I found this confusing "Control click the File’s Owner to the “Navigation Item” and assign it to the File’s Owner’s navigationItem outlet." I think it should be expanded - something like "Control click the File Owner Icon to display it's outlets. Drag the NavigationItem outlet to the the Navigation Item.--Chuck Nichols

#34888: "Once saved, go set File’s Owner to be PlayersTableViewController." - being a beginner, I have no idea how to do that, so I imagine you're asking me to check some text previously - be nice to let me know where I can read about it (again - because I forgot).

Same goes for "Assign that table view to be File’s Owner’s view outlet." - yep, no idea...--Damian Haslam

#35193: "We want a table view in this case, so delete the view and replace it with a UITableView."

It would be helpful to be more explicit about how to perform this step. Deleting the view object and adding another view object does not change the view object from the default one provided by IB. Instead, one can set the class of the view to be UITableView in the Identity tab for the view object.--EY

#35196: Would be helpful to note to readers that if one does not see the "view" outlet after assigning the File's Owner to be PlayersTableViewController (so that one cannot assign the table view to be the File Owner's view outlet), then one has forgotten to specify that PlayersTableViewController is a subclass of UITableViewController (since Xcode makes it a subclass of UIViewController by default).--EY

#35197: "You could run this code now but your player’s table view will be empty because we haven’t implemented its UITableViewDataSource methods yet."

This above sentence seems to discourage readers from trying to run the code. It seems to imply that it would not be worthwhile to try running the code now. It would be better to rephrase it so that it encourages readers to run it (and therefore debug up to this point).

As noted in #34847 for B2.0, you need to add
#import "PlayersTableViewController.h"
to the top of "RootViewController.m"
in order to be able to run the code.
This should probably be mentioned and shown at the beginning of 4.6 (on the previous page).
--EY

#35922: Section 4.7 seems out of place to me, wouldn't it be better to do handle it in chapter 3 along with the rest of the table view stuff?
I feel it kind of distracts from the navigation stuff handled in chapter 4...--Bas van Klinkenberg

#35586: Don't mean to be so nit picky here but ...

UITableViewCell *cell;
cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:MyIdentifier];

Can be condensed to...

UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:MyIdentifier];

That is all! As always great job and please keep up the good work. You are all awesome :)--Kent Fenwick

#35843: My iPhone is on O2 in Ireland, and we don't have Visual Voicemail here, so the example quoted in the foonote doesn't work for me. Hitting the Voicemail tab just dials the Voicemail number here,--Dave Guerin

#34851: The end of the second paragraph of the Using a ready-made button section says "... list of basketball teams in the (as yet) unwritten sec.deletingRows." That section exists now so you may want to update this.--Kevin Runde