Introduction
The easy part of software development is knowing how to write code in the programming language at hand. The tougher part is mastering the programming interfaces of the platform and getting to the level where you can effectively turn ideas into working features with real values.
iOS 6, although extremely powerful and easy to use, is no exception to this. Objective-C, by many considered a rather “funky” programming language, is something you’ll get your head around rather quickly, even learn to appreciate. However, you’re likely to spend a lot of time learning the various APIs and frameworks.
We believe the best way to acquire the necessary knowledge and reach that plateau of high productivity, is through hands-on experience. We think the best way to learn is to code along, creating small projects in which you can test and tweek the features, get a feeling for them before you implement them in your real projects.
With this idea in mind, we created iOS 6 Recipes. It contains over 600 pages of sample code accompanied by instructions on how to create small test apps that allow you to run the code on your iOS 6 device or in the iOS Simulator.
We have tried to cover as many topics as possible using the features of iOS 6. We hope it provides the basic fundament you need to start converting your great ideas into fantastic apps.
Who This Book Is For
When you read this book, it will help if you have a basic knowledge of Objective-C, have taken your first steps in Xcode, and written a couple of Hello World apps. If you haven’t, don’t worry; just pay extra attention to the first eight recipes of Chapter 1. They should provide most of the basics you need to follow along.
How This Book Is Structured
The example-based chapters of this book do not particularly build off of one another, in the hope that you can simply open up to any chapter of specific interest and start building a certain type of application. It is recommended that you at least skim Chapter 1, “Application Recipes,” and then Chapter 2, “Autolayout Recipes,” before moving on. The first chapter contains recipes for common tasks, such as creating outlets and actions, which are referenced throughout the text and should be fully understood. The second chapter provides basic knowledge of the new layout scheme of iOS 6. Reading that chapter might prove helpful when you create the user interfaces of the recipes later on.
Throughout this book, it is assumed that you are developing in the latest versions of iOS (6.0) and Xcode (4.5) at the time of writing. This means that every recipe in this text assumes that you will be using Automatic Reference Counting (ARC), and as such does not include significant memory management. This also means that depending on when you are reading this, your results may look slightly different, although the basic functionality should remain similar.
Many of the recipes in this book cannot be fully tested on the iOS simulator, and as such will require both an iOS device and a provisioning profile, which can be acquired when you subscribe to the iOS Developer Program. We’ve pointed out each recipe that cannot be tested in the iOS Simulator.
Note With the introduction of iPhone 5, Apple has added a new screen size to the iPhone family. The new 4 inch screen has the same width but is slightly taller than the old 3.5 inch screen. The recipes in this book use the Retina 3.5 Full Screen size metric for their user interfaces. However, thanks to the new Autolayout feature of iOS 6, they will work just as well with the new Retina 4 Full Screen size metric. You can freely choose whichever metric works for you.
Downloading the Code
The code for the examples shown in this book is available on the Apress web site, www.apress.com. A link can be found on the book’s information page under the Source Code/Downloads tab. This tab is located underneath the Related Titles section of the page.
Contacting the Author
If you have any questions or comments regarding this book, I’d be happy to hear them. Contact me at [email protected], or write a comment at my blog, http://www.hans-eric.com.