Well, last month Eric Bariaux gave a presentation on Automated Testing in an iOS World during our Cocoaheads Belgium Meeting. I did video tape the session, but didn’t really find the time to process it yet … until then end of last week.

So I finally Imported the HDV Tapes, did some color correction, added a few titles, exported the whole thing … and ended up with a 90 GB file. I had to compress this into a smaller format for uploading and ended up with an 700 something Mb file which I uploaded to Vimeo.

Automated testing in an iOS World – Cocoaheads Belgium from Stefaan Lesage on Vimeo.

Audio Quality

I know the audio quality isn’t superb … We did have a lot of noise from the activity in the room next to ours, and I couldn’t really filter that out without messing up the rest of the audio. Next time I’ll try to bring an Audio Interface and a Microphone so we can record the audio separately.

High Quality Version

The file I uploaded had a resolution of about 640 x 360 pixels, which is perfect for displaying on an older iPhone / iPod Touch, but somehow low quality for viewing on the iPad. If people are interested in a higher quality version, I could generate an iPad specific version for you, but I won’t be able to upload that to Vimeo due to the file size.

Next Meeting

Well, since we should have had this months meeting yesterday … we will be skipping it and try to organize the next one on the 20 th December (if that’s find with everyone). We are still looking for a location or a topic, but we could also make it a ‘coding’ session if we can’t find someone to give a presentation.

Final Note

If anyone thinks he can help us out with one of the ideas mentioned in this topic, please do contact us. If you still have more ideas … well contact us as well., or even better … start organizing

Regards,

Stefaan

It was my first thought when I read Apress had a new book coming out on iPad development called Beginning iPad Development for iPhone Developers – Mastering the iPad SDK.

I was wrong.

After my review of “Learn Cocoa on the Mac”, I got in touch with one of the authors – Jack Nutting – who told me I could get a free copy of this new book as a thank you. Since then, we’ve had few mails going back and forth and Jack feels like a friend I haven’t met yet. If you’re reading this, Jack, I very much look forward to meeting you for a few drinks and a good chat.

When I got my iPad and started playing with the sdk I focused a lot on the new split view and the popovers. I don’t know why, but for me they seemed like the biggest “new thing” on the iPad. I’ve also played with movieplayer controllers a bit while doing some work for a customer but so far, that’s been it on the iPad.

I’ve been spending a lot of time learning more general Cocoa frameworks which work on iPhone, iPad and osx like Core Data and haven’t really studied much of the iPad sdk since.

I really didn’t know what to expect from this book and found it hard to see how an entire book could be filled with iPad specific stuff. There is – of course – a lot of new stuff in the iPad sdk such as bezier paths, creation of pdf files, a new framework called Core Text, Popovers, enhanced movie player controllers, split view controllers, modal presentation styles, new input methods, gesture recognizers, document support and you’ll be happy to hear that this book covers them all.

The book shows most of the new functionalities by building a graphics app called Dudel. As the chapters in the book progress, more and more new features are added to Dudel. I’ve seen this approach in more books and I like it: not only does it give a more practical understanding of new functionality, you also learn how the authors structure their apps. There’s much to be learnt from just that.

Apress continues to deliver quality books for iPhone and iPad development. I’ve been through this book about 3 times now and everytime I find something new. If you have been playing with iPhone development and are considering stepping up to the iPad, then this book will be a _very_ good companion.

I’m a big fan of Apress books as I find they offer very good value for money. I visit the Apress site on regular basis to check out upcoming titles on iPhone and Mac development. There was one book that was announced quite some months ago, but the release date kept slipping and slipping.

That book is the one I’d like to review today and it’s called “Learn Cocoa on the Mac”.

First of all, I’d like to point out that this book does *not* cover iPhone development. This is about Cocoa and Mac applications. Of course, with Cocoa Touch being a subset of Cocoa, you will recognize design patterns that you use on the iPhone and of course topics like Core Data can be used in both Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.

The chapters in this book are:

1. Must love Cocoa
2. Hello, World
3. Lights, Camera… Actions!
4. GUI Components
5. Using Table Views
6. Cocoa Bindings
7. Core Data Basics
8. Core Data Relationships
9. Search and Retrieve Core Data with Criteria
10. Windows and Menus and Sheets
11. Document-Based applications
12. Exceptions, signals, errors and debugging
13. Drawing in Cocoa
14. Advanced Drawing Topics
15. Working with files
16. Concurrency
17. Future paths

I’m not going to go through all the chapters in detail as the titles are clear enough.

You can see that the base of subjects is *very* wide and that is what makes this book a really great one. I find the explanations of the subjects and the samples really great. I felt really comfortable and got more confident going through this book, occasionally going through chapters very fast because of my knowledge of Cocoa Touch.

The nature of this book is really great. We all know that there are dedicated books on subjects such as Core Data and graphics. However, “Learn Cocoa on the Mac” does a great job of giving great introductions and clear explanations of what is going on. It goes deep enough into its subjects to make you understand what’s going on.

I love this book. I had great expectations of it and it didn’t disappoint. This goes easily in my personal top 3 of Cocoa books.

]]> http://cocoaheads.be/wordpress/2010/04/book-review-learn-cocoa-on-the-mac/feed/ 3 http://cocoaheads.be/wordpress/2009/11/cocoaheads-belgium-november-meeting/ http://cocoaheads.be/wordpress/2009/11/cocoaheads-belgium-november-meeting/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:29:23 +0000 Stefaan Lesage http://cocoaheads.be/wordpress/?p=204 TInSys. The office is in the building of Solvay Entrepreneurs. Rue de l'industrie, 20 - 1400 Nivelles. ]]> The November meeting will take place in Nijvel on monday the 23 rd of November. Thanks to Eric Bariaux we will be able to use the venue at TInSys. The office is in the building of Solvay Entrepreneurs. Rue de l’industrie, 20 – 1400 Nivelles.

This meeting is a great opportunity to meet up with other Cocoa Heads BE enthousiasts. The schedule for this meeting looks as follows :

• 08:00 PM : As requested during the previous meeting, we have moved the starting time to 8 PM in order for everyone to get here.
• 08:15 PM : Cytil Godefroy has prepared a session on the CLANG static ananlyzer, how it is integrated in XCode and how you can benefit from it. He will also talk a little about some ‘Gotchas’ when using the CLANG static analyzer
• 09:00 PM : We will be using the remaining time to get to know eachoter as quite a few members of the community have suggested. Everyone will get a few minutes to present who they are, what they do, if they are Mac or iPhone developers, what apps they have created and what they expect from CocoaHeads Belgium.

You can find more information on CocoaHeads Belgium a the CocoaHeads Belgium website, in the CocoaHeads Google Groups and I even created a Linked In group for CocoaHeads Belgium.

Registration for the November Meeting can be done on the Eventbrite page. If you have suggestions for future sessions or are willing to give a session, that would be the perfect time to let us know.

Regards,

Stefaan Lesage

Over the past few months, quite a few people have started to show interest in learning Cocoa development. Most of these people are not traditional Mac developers, but the success of the iPhone has captured their imagination. “Oh it’d be cool if I could write something that could do … and I could always have with me”.

Well, good news for those that want to get started: I’ll be giving a 4-part introduction to Cocoa development in november and december, in cooperation with Zeus, the computer science workgroup at Ghent University. The sessions will be held in the S9 building of the Sterre campus of Ghent University, Belgium and will probably be in Dutch (though English is also an option if someone turns up that doesn’t understand Dutch).

The best of all? This introduction is – in true Zeus spirit – completely free!

The dates and topics for the 4 sessions (which start at 8pm) are:

• 05/11/2009: Objective-C, memory management and the Foundation framework
• 19/11/2009: Simple applications using AppKit and Interface Builder
• 03/12/2009: Cocoa tricks (key-value coding, animations,…)
• 10/12/2009: iPhone development

The goal of these sessions is not to give a complete Cocoa course, but rather to get you started, because the only way to really learn something is by actually doing it. So come and have a listen, try things out at home and bring your questions to the next session!

Hope to see you there!

Now this is quite interesting. It’s in Gent, so I might go over there on thursday to check it out myself !!