Introduced in 2014, the Swift programming language is becoming the language of choice for programming on Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 8. Combined with Cocoa Frameworks and Xcode 6 development tools, it forms a set of leading-edge technologies for creating apps for deployment on Apple’s mobile platforms such as iPhone, iPad, and iPod.

This book consists of nine chapters. The first chapter is an introduction to the iOS 8 app development environment that includes the Xcode 6 integrated development environment (IDE) and a set of reusable frameworks known as Cocoa Touch. It also gives a quick overview of object-oriented programming (OOP) and discusses some of the salient features of the Swift programming language. Chapters 2 to 8 progress through topics with an introduction to iOS app development using visual programming with no code, then linking the visual interface to simple Swift code to make it interactive, and finally moving on to advanced concepts that leverage frameworks and patterns. Along the way, readers explore in great detail how to use Xcode 6 for development and the iOS simulator for executing the apps. Chapter 9 concludes with an introduction to the iOS Developer Program and iTunes Connect, which allows users to submit a completed app to Apple’s App Store for approval and distribution.

Upon completion of the book, the reader ends up systematically developing seven complete apps that can be deployed on Apple’s mobile platforms. These apps range from a simple tip calculator to more sophisticated game and drawing apps that use animations, graphics, sound, physics, collision detection, scene transitions, multi-touch, accelerometer sensor, and motion event handling.

This is an excellent book for professional programmers experienced in OOP in a C-based language with some familiarity with OS X who want to quickly become proficient in using Swift for app development on iOS 8. While it does provide broad exposure to the Swift programming language, the book is not meant to be a comprehensive tutorial for the language. Readers interested in learning or teaching iOS app development with extensive treatment of the Swift programming language may want to look at the academic bundle [1] provided by the same authors. This bundle includes an additional book on Swift, video tutorials for Swift-based iOS programming, and a code to access programming exercises and projects.

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