The iOS Apprentice (Fourth Edition): Beginning iOS Development with Swift 2

If you are a complete novice, this would be one of the many good books to get started on (but you HAVE to follow it sequentially from front to back or you will soon get lost)This book is 3 books into one (what a bargain!)1) It introduces nearly all the main Swift concepts in the context of building an apps2) It introduces nearly all the xcode concepts in the context of building appsand if that weren't enough...3) it has many programming hints on how to design, implement and programHowever, I must warn you it gets very deep fairly quickly if you are a complete novice...in that case, get as much out of it as you canIf you are not a complete novice, but are just trying to add something to your arsenal, you should probably forget this book because IT HAS NO INDEX (do you believe it) and the table of contents is also very sparse.Otherwise I would have given it 5 stars.However, if you are completely new to programming, or to xcode or Swift,, this would be THE BEST book to start with. The author kind of takes a "favorite uncle" approach as he gently takes you into new areas of xcode and Swift. Even an intermediate xcode user could probably pick up some stuff they should have learned better in the first place. For example, there is one full page explaining "Optionals" and it is the best and clearest explanation I've seen compared to my other Swift books.

Been programming for iOS since SDK 3.0 but stopped by SDK 5 to focus on Android. During these iOS programming periods, I was buying books from only two streams: Big Nerd Ranch (BNR) and Cookbooks from Erika Sadun. At the same time, I had been following Ray's super helpful tutorials.These past few months, I decided to switch back to iOS development with Swift. Bought BNR 5th edition and the Swift Apprentice. The former was pretty much the same style as the traditional BNR books, while the latter prompted me to dig deeper into that series due to its style of writing and thoroughness.Enters iOS Apprentice. What an amazing book. Why? As you read it, you can clearly see it was written by a programmer for other programmers learning or getting back to it. The topics come up as needed and simply flow very naturally (i.e. optionals, multiple ways of creating a table cell, etc...). In addition, the sequence and flow diagrams are used very well to explain important concepts (i.e. reference cycles, delegation pattern, etc...).Everything in that book is presented in a clear fashion, written simply and yet efficiently. There is no magic statements leaving you questioning whether you've skipped pages for instance.So why not 5 starts then? There is no index on the back of the book. I've even perused Ray's store page to see if there was a cheat sheet but none I could locate. That impairs going back to specific topics and forces the use of sticky tabs.I have one more chapter to read and put into action, but already ordered the CoreData book now.Erika's cookbooks have always been extremely valuable to my needs, and so I'll also be buying those (Swift and others).

This book (along with another book) helped me to go from 0 Swift knowledge to creating an App in just under a year. But the lack of an index has made this book useless to me as a desk reference. They offer you 50% off of the PDF copy but last I checked that would only bring down the cost to $25 or so. I bought iOS 9 App Development Essentials at the same time and it has been a great go-to reference because the PDF is free. The content in the Development Essentials book in my opinion is not as in-depth as this book in some areas but because it has AN INDEX and I got the PDF for free I can search for what I need when I need it.So what's the big deal? Throughout the book the Author discusses certain complex topics spread throughout the book chapters. As an example, Optionals are discussed lightly early in one of the chapters but then is revisited in the next chapter. An index would (or at least should) reference each of those different places reducing the time to find them again. I have bookmarked many of the sections but searching without the PDF is of course impossible.If they offer the PDF for free (or at least a reasonable price like $10 or less) to owners of this book then I'd consider raising the rating higher. In the meantime I'm looking for other publishers.

Great book for someone new to iOS and writing code. I'm 4 months new to code and iOS (with a high aptitude for learning) I see this book as a great jumping off point to building a foundation of knowledge to build upon. 100 pages in and everything makes sense.Especially with describing some of the concepts I have learned in the past months as the data starts to sink in.Anyone new to iOS this is a great book that takes you step by step. Which in my opinion is what every good teacher or tutorial based book should do.

Great way to dip your toe into the iOS development waters! Completing this book inspired me to take my learning journey further and enroll in a coding bootcamp. I look forward to purchasing additional RayWenderlich books in the future to learn additional iOS development technologies.My only criticism is that I would appreciate the addition of an index to the book to be able to refer to relevant pages in the book when I need a refresher.

Awesome book. The author is very funny. He wrote a lot of joke that you would not feel boring when you read concepts. This book include all of details, explanations, images and even possible happened bugs. However, this book is not good for people who has swift experience. I strongly recommend you if you are new to IOS and want to start learning swift.

A great book by the RayWenderlich.com tutorial team.900 page tome. But worth every penny. I prefer to buy the book here, and the PDF from them. The book comes boxed from Amazon.

Thank you very much

This book really awesome for beginners cause' it goes along with making of 4 app and let you understand the whole swift programming language. The whole book is based on these 4 apps. It's really because non-programmers will get bored of reading chapters, full of codes and definitions. Go for it!

Rich and up to date content, Very readable writing style. Excellent book for self-study!However, you have to be very patient with the details and the fine-tuning features.

There was a cd missing that holds the train in media. Because of this it has caused great problems near the end of all tutorials.The book itself is good and easy to learn from