Book Description

Game apps on iPhone and now iPad remain one of the most popular type of apps in the Apple iTunes App Store.  Does Angry Birds ring a bell?  What you were once able to do just for the iPhone (and iPod touch) is now possible for the popular iPad, using the new iOS 5 SDK.

Beginning iOS 5 Games Development provides a clear path for you to create games using the iOS 5 SDK platform for the iPad, iPhone, and iPad touch. You’ll learn how to use classes to create game apps, including graphics, and animations. The latest version of Xcode will be used in parts of the book to guide you along the way of building your apps.

Other topics include iOS 5 game apps development with the newest iOS Game Center update, persisting user data, and designing a compelling user experience. After reading this book, you’ll come away with the skills and techniques for building a game app, top to bottom, that could perhaps even be sold on the Apple iTunes App Store.

What you’ll learn

• How to use UIViews to display game assets
• How to create frame-by-frame animations for action games
• How to integrate with Game Center and other social media services

Who this book is for
This book is for new iOS developers who want to create compelling 2D games. Download Now »

Book Description

Today’s .NET developers are intrigued by what the iPhone and iPad apps landscape has to offer. Admit it: you’re one of them. Apple’s App Store has hundreds of thousands of apps, and yours can be among them. iPhone and iPad app development using the iOS software development kit is one of the most appealing environments available for mobile technology.

Migrating to iPhone and iPad for .NET Developers helps .NET programmers get started creating iPhone and iPad apps using the iOS software development kit. Start with a crash course on development using iOS. Then, find out whether you want to use Xcode instead of Visual Studio, and prepare yourself for the migration from C# to Objective-C! You’ll learn how your existing .NET skills can map most efficiently to the iOS development environment.

Next, you’ll really get coding with Objective-C and the iOS software development kit. You’ll build your skills and enhance your apps with visually appealing, dynamic user interfaces and pushing/pulling data from a database though events and more. Discover the wonders of the Cocoa library, and learn new ways to do things you already know like the back of your hand in the .NET environment.

Nearing the finish line, you’ll build your first complete iPhone or iPad app, and extend your iPhone app features—for example, by using third-party libraries. Once you have created that first iPhone or iPad app, we’ll walk you through making it available on the App Store. Migrating to iPhone and iPad for .NET Developers even offers tips on how to market your apps to new customers.

When you finish reading Migrating to iPhone and iPad for .NET Developers Download Now »

Book Description

Create compelling 2D games with Learn cocos2d Game Development with iOS 5. This book shows you how to use the powerful cocos2d game engine to develop games for iPhone and iPad with tilemaps, virtual joypads, Game Center, and more.

It teaches you:

• The process and best practices of mobile game development, including sprite batching, texture atlases, parallax scrolling, touch and accelerometer input.
• How to enhance your games using the Box2D and Chipmunk physics engines and other cocos2d-related tools and libraries.
• How to add UIKit views to cocos2d and how to add cocos2d to UIKit apps.
• The ins and outs of the Kobold2D development environment for cocos2d and its preconfigured libraries, including cocos3d and Lua.

Best of all, Learn cocos2d Game Development with iOS 5 will have you making games right from the very start. It guides you step-by-step through the creation of sample games. These fun examples are modeled after popular App Store games and teach you key concepts of the cocos2d game engine and relevant tools like TexturePacker (texture atlas), PhysicsEditor (physics collision shapes), Particle Designer (particle effects), Glyph Designer (bitmap fonts), and others.

This book offers a rock-solid introduction to creating games made entirely with cocos2d and little or no iOS 5 SDK and OpenGL code. It also details alternative implementations, identifies the best free and commercial tools for cocos2d game development Download Now »

Book Description

Develop applications for Mac OS X with this Developer Reference guide

Make a clean transition to programming in Apple environments using the elegant and dynamic programming API Cocoa and this practical guide. Written by aseasoned Mac expert, this book shows you how to write programs in Cocoa for the rapidly expanding world of Macintosh users.

Part of the Developer Reference series, this book prepares you for a productive programming experience on today’s fastest-growing platform.

• Cocoa is a programming framework for developing in Apple environments, including Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
• This book covers all the major information you need to start developing dynamic applications for Mac OS X
• Master all Cocoa tools, including Xcode and working with Objective-C
• Includes full coverage of the Cocoa API, Xcode, and Objective-C, as well as programming for Apple’s latest OS X, Snow Leopard
• Companion Web site includes all code files

Programming for Apple’s Macintosh is a growing career field. This essential guide, one of the most comprehensive on Cocoa, will help you quickly become productive.

Download Now »

Book Description

Bring Your iPhone Apps and Skills to Windows Phone 7–or Build Apps for Both Mobile Platforms at Once

If you’ve been developing for the competitive iPhone marketplace, this book will help you leverage your iOS skills on a fast-growing new platform: Windows Phone 7 (WP7). If you’re a .NET programmer, it will help you build advanced WP7 mobile solutions that reflect valuable lessons learned by iOS developers. If you’re a mobile development manager, it offers indispensable insights for planning cross-platform projects.

Kevin Hoffman guides you through the entire WP7 Software Development Kit (SDK), showing how it resembles Apple’s iOS SDK, where it differs, and how to build production-quality WP7 apps that sell. Step by step, you’ll master each technology you’ll need, including C#, Silverlight, and XAML. Every new concept is introduced along with all the tools and background needed to apply it.

Hoffman’s practical insights extend into every facet of WP7 development: building user interfaces; hardware and device services; WP7’s unique Application Tiles; Push Notifications; the Phone Execution Model, local storage, smart clients, Model-View-View Model (MVVM) design, security, social gaming, testing, debugging, deployment, and more. A pleasure to read and packed with realistic examples, this is the most useful WP7 development book you can find.

• Compare Apple’s Objective-C and Microsoft’s C#: “second cousins twice removed”
• Build rich, compelling user interfaces based on Silverlight, XAML, and events Download Now »

Book Description

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 handsets have injected a new vibrancy into the smartphone marketplace and provided bold new opportunities for the Microsoft development community.

Now in its second edition, Beginning Windows Phone 7 Development has been written to help you identify those opportunities and to learn the skills you’ll need to harness them. It covers the very latest developments in the field, including the extended APIs offered in Microsoft’s automatic platform update, so you’ll have timely, accurate information at your fingertips.

Beginning Windows Phone 7 Development, Second Edition starts with the basics, walking you through the process of downloading and setting up the right development tools, including Visual Studio, Expression Blend, Silverlight SDK, and Windows Phone SDK. It then takes you step-by-step though the development process as you build and deploy a working application, complete with a sophisticated user interface. Finally, you’ll receive step-by-step instructions on selling your applications through the Windows Phone Marketplace.

What you’ll learn

• How to create effective networked applications
• How to leverage your phone’s GPS capabilities from within your application
• How to interact with the phone’s built-in functionalities (camera, contacts, maps, accelerometer, video and web browser to name but a few)
• How to construct highly graphical and responsive user interfaces quickly and easily using these features Download Now »