Apple posts free developer documentation for iBooks users
If your resolutions for 2011 include teaching yourself to be a Mac or iOS developer, then Apple just gave you a very nice Christmas present.
According to a tip from our old friend Nik Fletcher at Realmac Software, Apple has recently put a number of Apple Developer Publications books into the iBookstore for free. This makes it simple to grab these books, which range from "The Objective-C Programming Language" to "iOS Application Programming Guide," for reading on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
As our resident developer and iOS guru Erica Sadun points out, it's "kinda dumb" to have the books running on the device you're trying to develop for. It would be nice if Apple eventually made a version of iBooks available for Mac OS X. Although, as commenter Nick points out, once you have the books downloaded, you can open them with any app that supports the EPUB format, like Adobe's Digital Editions product.
You can also get a Mac-compatible version of the books by going to the developer site and then selecting the PDF option to download them. The PDFs can also be used on the iPad or iPhone, but since Apple has done the work to convert these documents into nice EPUB-formatted iBooks, why not take advantage of their effort?
By my count, there are six books available. To grab them, launch iBooks on your device, tap the Store button, tap the Search icon and then type in "apple developer publications." The books range in length from 44 to 200 pages, and they are great references to use with many of the other developer books from Pearson and Peachpit Press that can also be purchased in the iBookstore.
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If your resolutions for 2011 include teaching yourself to be a Mac or iOS developer, then Apple just gave you a very nice Christmas...
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It's not dumb to have docs on a device you are developing for if you have multiple iPads. It would be nice to see an official reader for OS X though. Adobe Digital Editions is awful.
December 20 2010 at 12:51 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplySounds good to me!
December 20 2010 at 5:23 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyAnd ePub is also better than PDF in iBooks because you can highlight text and add notes.
I wrote a blog post a while back about wanting Apple dev materials in ePub format: http://blog.crushapps.com/2010/07/ipads-ibooks-and-epubs-oh-my/
What's still missing (I think?) is some way to automatically update your books if a newer version comes out. Since Apple is constantly revising their programming guides, that would be extremely helpful. Maybe that's one reason they haven't released all of their technical docs yet.
You can make annotations and mark up text in pdf as well. GoodReader and other pdfreaders allows tjis
December 19 2010 at 11:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI think this is great. This is exactly the kind of reading it's useful to carry around and read while commuting or standing in line or on the beach. And an ePUB option is much better than PDF because you can change font size and have all the text re-wrap.
December 19 2010 at 10:38 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThe 'Human Interface Guidelines' book doesn’t seem to be in the UK store. I'll have to download the PDF and transfer it across. What a pain.
December 19 2010 at 5:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyePUB reader, a free Firefox extension, well... reads ePUBs... for free... on OSX.
Oh wait, you'd have to install Firefox.
Seriously the complaints that various TUAW writers have are beginning to become really tired. I get that your a Mac centric blog but maybe thinking outside the RDF once in a while might do some good.
It's a perfectly valid complaint that there is no native iBooks reader in OS X.
Amazon's Kindle and B&N's nook each have OS X, Windows, and smartphone apps as well.
And if those books were purchased instead of free, you wouldn't be reading them in just any ePUB-compatible reader, either.
After you sync to your computer, you should be able to just open them in any program that reads EPUB books. I was able to open them in Adobe Digital Editions.
The free books from the iBookstore usually don't have DRM on them.
quote:
"As our resident developer and iOS guru-ette Erica Sadun points out, it's "kinda dumb" to have the books running on the device you're trying to develop for. It would be nice if Apple eventually made a version of iBooks available for Mac OS X."
Apple is just "motivating" you to buy another iPad/iPhone so you can read and develop without troubles!
These have been available as PDFs on developer.apple.com for a while.
December 19 2010 at 5:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWhere are these PDFs on developer.apple.com? I couldn't find them.
December 19 2010 at 10:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply@ ChrisM http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/navigation/index.html
December 20 2010 at 1:42 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyYou program on the simulator, you test on the device. Having an always accessible reference is useful if you don't want to waste screen real estate, or if you want to check something out while at the gym.
December 19 2010 at 5:13 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWhy would you want to be checking programming reference at the gym?
December 19 2010 at 11:45 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyDon't think he goes to the gym ;)
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TUAW (or The Unofficial Apple Weblog) is a website devoted to tips, reviews, news, analysis and opinion on everything Apple.
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