Preface

Hard as it is for us to believe, you now hold in your hands (or see on your screen) the fourth edition of this book. In the years since we set out on this journey, we've poured more blood, sweat, and tears than we ever imagined into this book, in an attempt to give developers the best introduction to the fantastic and sometimes surprising world of Cocoa Touch development. We've also had a lot of fun along the way, and we hope that you will, too.

This edition of the book has been rebuilt from the ground up to cover the exciting new changes Xcode 4 brings to the table. Apple reengineered huge portions of Xcode when transitioning from Xcode 3 to Xcode 4, and again as it moved to the current version (as of this writing), Xcode 4.2. We've followed suit. Every project in the book has been written from scratch using the amazing technology built into Xcode 4.2.

And, of course, as the title of this new edition implies, each and every project was designed to work properly under iOS 5. The iOS SDK has evolved significantly with this latest iOS release. As you might expect, there are many new changes to the project templates and a lot of new ways to do the things you've always done. And, of course, there's a lot of new technology to master. We've written entirely new chapters on using both storyboards and iCloud, we've covered new strategies for dealing with table views, and we've re-created every example project using the Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) feature to simplify memory management.

In short, we've made this latest edition the biggest, most substantial version of the book so far. Whether you're new to iOS development or have been working with it for a while, we think you'll like the new material covered by this volume. If you haven't made it through a previous edition of this book yet, if you feel a bit fuzzy still, or if youjust want to help us out as authors, by all means, pick up this fourth edition. We doappreciate your support. Be sure to check out the book's official community forum at http://iphonedevbook.com, and drop usa line to let us know about your amazing new apps. We look forward to seeing you on theforum. Happy coding!

Dave, Jack, and Jeff