I had a strange problem. In iTunes, the Other was using up 7GB of my iPad capacity. Not good. Seems like it’s a corruption issue. To get this space back, on your iPad, go to the Settings app->General->Reset->Reset Network Settings.
Do NOT do Reset ALL Settings. I saw some posts on this. It’s overkill and forces you to restore, and waste a lot of time.
So, the iPad will show the big progress bar on the screen, and will reboot. Then sync with iTunes again. That should fix it.
Problem: I had a strange problem after upgrading to Lion (OS X 10.7). Any .mpkg files wouldn’t open Installer but instead would open Terminal, and no installation would happen at all. I saw someone else post that updating to 10.7.1 would fix it. For me, this didn’t work. Whatever happened to me, it happened after the update.
Clue: The problem is noticeable in Finder, as I could see that the file extension icon was not the gold/tan box icon that goes with Installer. That’s not good. It means that Installer.app is no longer the default application for the file extension.
Solution: There are two ways to do this.
1) In Finder, right-click, or get to the property window, and “Open With” and navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Installer.app. There is a checkbox to always open with this app. Check it, and let Installer run.
-or-
2) Open Installer itself and drag the .mpkg file into it. Run Installer.
Both of these options will cause Installer.app to run, and saves the new app default back to Installer. To check that it’s working, go back into Finder, and view the file extension. If you see the gold/tan icon on the file, it’s fixed.
This is the most enjoyable computer book I have ever read. That is not a typo, it’s not an exaggeration. I have read more computer books than I can count, spanning decades. I have not had a more fun, immersive, reasonably comprehensive, easy to understand, software development book. This book has taken longer for me to review than any other I can remember. Learning a new platform can be challenging, but with this book, it was incredibly enjoyable. If you are getting started with iPhone/iTouch programming, and you are looking for a book, this one is easily at the top of the list. Start here first, you won’t regret it. Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK is outstanding in every way.
So why is this book so great?
The journey is rich. This book has a very clear purpose, to get you up and running with the iPhoneSDK quickly and competently. It succeeds masterfully. If you’re coming from the outside, with no Objective-C or Mac experience, you have a lot to learn. You have a new platform, new language, new development tools, new APIs, new GUI expectations, and (if you are so lucky) a new Mac. With all those challenges, I cannot be more impressed with how well this book handles that potential scenario without losing any focus or trying to do too much.
This book never gets distracted. It has incredible flow. It doesn’t waste time. There is so much to try and explore and understand in these pages, that you just get caught up in it. I have read a lot of books that whole chapters were just fluffy, or there to simply cover the territory. You can skim through the chapter without feeling any sense of loss. This book isn’t like that at all. I found I couldn’t breeze through this book. I was having too much fun.
Comprehension is the key
It’s easy to go over some basic concepts, and apply them with some examples. I’ve read lots of really good books that have done that. If you’re going to really become skilled, you have to have some comprehension of what is going on and why. While it wold be easy to just blaze through all the templates, like a TabBar application, this book has you build things yourself. This way you get to understand what is connected to what, and why. I think this is a critical benefit. I think its more important in the long term to understand what is going on, rather than a how-to of project templates.
MVC and Interface Builder
In order to do any Cocoa programming well, you need to embrace the model-view-controller pattern (MVC). This book does an outstanding job of connecting the objects, where, when, and why. After you get through a couple of chapters, this gets easy, and puts you in a positive work flow. I’ve found in learning Objective-C and Cocoa, that the better you embrace this, the better off you’ll be.
If you are a sloppy, Microsoft Windows kinda programmer, you are in for a rude awakening. Mac-based development requires a high level of discipline and quality just to get successful compiling. As for myself, I completely love it. I enjoy the discipline, and I’m rewarded with performance and stability. This book reinforces everything I love about Mac programming in general, as well as letting me extend it to a new platform. This book keeps you on the right track, out of trouble, and doesn’t let you go astray.
Covering the SDK territory
One of the strengths of this book is how much of the SDK is covered. You would expect a lot less from a “beginning” book. This book is for someone who is beginning, so the title is appropriate. But the reward is how MUCH of a beginning you get from this book. It’s like a collection of goodies being handed to you one at a time, and they just keep coming.
I really appreciated that there was a chapter on Quartz and OpenGL ES. The coverage of themultitouch architecture was well written. I was just engulfed with fun things to test, and it was easy to absorb. Core Location was covered, which gives you all kinds of creative ideas about using the GPS in the iPhone 3G. The Accelerometer chapter is one of the best parts of the book. It also covers the camera, which is another item that relates to the iPhone, but not the iTouch.
Comparisons
The part that was lacking, compared to other iPhone books, is not covering video and audio. But it more than makes up for it in its coverage of localization. With the iPhone in 80 countries now, it’s best to have that understood from your first iPhone app. I’m also glad it didn’t waste my time talking about web apps for iPhone. The mood of the book is not intimidating, which can happen in computer books in general. The prose never gets “nerdy.”
Another comparison I want to make is to the expensive iPhone camps and webinars. Personally, I felt I got a much better experience from this book than the online seminars I’ve been in. The value of this book in comparison is amazing. If you want to do a seminar, great, but bring this book with you.
Conclusion
The strength in Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK is how well it covers the SDK from a dead start. It gets you doing good habits now for those things you NEED to know now. This book has style and substance. It’s wonderful, polished, and relaxed. I would compare this book to Girardelli premium chocolate squares. It’s a great experience, that makes you happy, that you can’t scarf down, that you simply enjoy slowly because it’s so rich. For beginning iPhone development, you could not ask for a better book than this one.
Being someone who works with Flash and video as my profession, this is obviously an appropriate book for me to read. I am happy to say that this is a really good book, and touches on some subjects where previous Flash video books have not gone before.
As with all Flash video books, they start with the usual “Here’s how to slap in a video, encoded, and running in an FLVPlayback component. Standard stuff, not unexpected, and yes, I’d say obligatory.
They also go into how to create some video content and editing with iMovie and Movie Maker. I was surprised that this actually well done, and had the right length.
Where things start to get interesting is in the “Talking Heads” chapter. It was really good to see a much more expanded explanation of how to approach this common technique. They go into more detail about creating alpha channels with After Effects and Final Cut Pro than I’d seen before. Instead of just showing how to do it, they also discuss how to do it with some flare. This includes applying filters, blends, shadows, video-on-video, and video reflections. The book really goes to some places I really hadn’t considered trying with video. There is a nice explanation of using a matrix and how to apply a Convolution Transform.
This book shows masks and effects in much more detail than previous books I’ve read. They do examples of moving masks, rotoscoping, aging and more. Although I prefer to use After Effects for video effects, this is a good alternative if you don’t have video production products to do that.
I like the section on playing multiple videos. It gives you some different ways to do that. The interactive video of the guy slapping himself was hysterical. If you have a kid who likes slapstick, this interactive approach to video abuse is pretty entertaining.
The chapter on going small and going big is excellent. While I’m not into video for the phone — yet, this is covered fairly well. Much more appropriate for my work is going big, and that’s looking at fullscreen h.264. This is the only Flash video book at this time that really dedicates space to this subject, and does a good job. There has been a lot of moaning and crying over Flash Player and it only supporting flv and mp4, and how that’s not “acceptable.” Grow up already! AVIs, WMVs and MPG (2) are ancient, obsolete formats, and are the video equivalent of the 8-track tape. The difference in compression, bit density and quality is absolutely huge. Don’t believe me? Standard video on an HDTV looks terrible, but that is not stopping sales, is it? It’s the same thing. If you are a Microsoft guy, and you’re trying to do video — I pity you. In stark contrast, the Apple MOV format is identical to mp4, and their video tools are incredible. They are in great shape!
The last section they have that is unique is using the camera object. But they really go a lot further, using video for boxes, flipping them, and inserting them into various displays. The effects and things you can do are very similar to iPhoto and iMovie effects, only you can do them from Flash. I can just see some security guy wanting to use the motion capture example.
Summary FriendsOfEd Foundation Flash CS3 Video is an excellent book, with a lot of solid detail. It covers a lot of territory, as far as techniques that someone can use. Other Flash video books cover a lot more video production and encoding than this book does. But if you are doing any video with alpha channel production, fullscreen, mp4, or cameras, this is the right book for you. That’s where this book shines.
I’ve been meaning to do more online book reviews, and blogging in general, but it’s always hard to find the time. First, a big thanks to FriendsOfEd and John Lindquist at the Utah Director and Flash User Group for providing the book for this review. Thanks!
This book is intended for the advanced developer, as indicated by the AdvancEd moniker. It’s always helpful to have the level easy to find, and FriendsOfEd are great at this. I’ll be reviewing this as a senior developer, who is new to Flex itself, but experienced in Actionscript. This book is available at Amazon.
The authors are the guys at Almer/Blank, which is an Adobe Solution Partner. They describe in detail how they developed the LAFlash.org site. They were also featured in an interview on episode 31 of The Flex Show, which is a Flex podcast. So what about the book?
This is a fantastic book
It’s organized well, takes concepts into practical application, and touches on some unique topics not found elsewhere. I didn’t find the material very intimidating at all. It was an easy read. If you are managing a user group site, there’s a lot of direct how-to to take your site to the next level. One of the benefits of this book is how easily it shows the practicality and power of using Flex for web development.
What’s typical?
For completeness, they cover project planning, working with databases and web services, and navigation. Your typical developer will find a lot to love about the first half of the book. They touch on some of the Flex 3 features that make a big impact as well. Things like styling, Flex components and SWCs, RSLs (runtime shared libraries) and framework caching. To be honest, they’ve done an excellent job in describing these subjects with clarity.
What’s unique about it?
If you have several Flex books, what’s new here that hasn’t already been covered? The most obvious is SEO (search engine optimization). I can’t count how many times I’ve had people dismiss Flash platform development for this one reason alone. Now, thanks in large part to Google and the Sitemaps protocol, those excuses are over. You can deliver searchable content, and there’s a whole chapter in this book about it. While the first reaction may be “What’s this got to do with a web application?”, there is a place for content delivered in a rich way.
I haven’t seen another book do a Flash-based, step-by-step user group site, including blogs, job boards, event calendar, sharing of video content, and advertising models. More than a Flex book, they cover combining technologies like PHP, Drupal, and OpenAds. That’s one of the core pieces of this book, how to integrate with Flex. The section on video is also well done, and makes suggestions about closed-captioning, which also has an SEO element to it.
Done almost apologetically, they touch on how to monetize a site with a Flex front-end. That is really unique to this book, and it has an importance that may get lost on the typical developer. It’s the later part of the book that will appeal to the more sophisticated or business-savvy developer. It’s a major part of the value of this book, because the other Flex books just don’t go there.
Is it worth buying?
Yes, I think so. It’s got something for everyone. But especially if you manage a user’s group, are dealing with aggregating media and content, or doing something that relies on advertising and traffic. While they do not cover eCommerce in this book specifically, this is a really big deal if you are building an eCommerce site in Flex. It outlines how to enhance a Flex-based online store. That information alone is worth the price of the book.
