Preface

When it came time to write a revised edition of iPhone in Action, Shannon and Christopher had their hands tied with other projects. This is when Manning decided to seek out another author to perform the necessary updates. They eventually stumbled on me on Twitter.

I had started programming when I was a junior in high school and spent most of my time writing web applications and silly Java games. After high school, I attended the University of New Mexico and acquired a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science.

When Apple launched the original iPhone, I drooled over the device and longed to own one. It wasn’t until Apple came out with the iPhone 3G that I could actually afford it. Knowing that I wanted to write software for the iPhone, I began learning to program for it and started a popular development blog called iCodeBlog.com before I even had a device in hand. Because I was used to reading Javadocs in college, I was able to learn a lot from the Apple API documentation.

When I began working on this book, I quickly realized that quite a few of the chapters from the first edition had to go. Although the web applications were a crucial part of the iPhone apps’ startup, they can no longer compete with native apps. So I removed the web chapters from the original text and added new ones based on the newest iPhone SDK features.

Just as the book was completed, Apple made another big announcement: the company revealed its newest device, the iPad. Manning and I had a decision to make: either spend another couple of months on the book, or release a book that would become a dinosaur the moment it hit the shelves. Fortunately, we chose the former option.

BRANDON TREBITOWSKI