Reviews for Programming the iPhone User Experience

1. Rather Obvious

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2009

   This thin manual (165 pages) excited me initially, because I thought it would give me an advantage over other iPhone developers who were developing apps for the iPhone. As a developer, you really crave insights into what works, what doesn't, and what you should, and should not do in an app.
   
   The author does explain some good design "patterns" and advises against other patterns that are undesirable. However, very little of what I read was original, or showed great insight. Most of the author's comments about what constitues good (or bad) design are pretty obvious to anyone who has ever programmed before. For example, Toby recommends that splash screens are not used, because they will distract the user and delay program start/resume, and are not consistent with other iPhone apps. I think that this kind of advice is unnecessary. He even repeats this advice several times, which makes the book seem rather lacking in knowledge.
   
   To his credit, he does give step-by-step instructions for implementing complete examples. But, like a lot of so-called "iPhone experts", he skims the important details of *why* he uses certain classes. You are expected to know quite a lot about the iPhone design and development process. At times, you feel that he is showing off because he managed to work our how to build an app using Xcode. That's great for him, but not much use to those of us who are absolute beginners with the iPhone, iPod touch, Xcode, Objective C, and the Cocoa run-time.
   
   In conclusion, this book has some useful observations to make, but you may end up thinking: "Yes, but that's obvious, I knew that already".