In fact some books are good(+) and others are terrible(-).
I recently have read a few O'Reilly books on iPhone programming.
+ Head First iPhone Development: The authors' penetrating and clear explanation is the reason why we pay for a book where there are very good and free documents. Fairly good book and I have recommended this book to all of my friends.
- Learning iPhone Programming: Terrible. The author is fairly incompetent. He should have read Head First iPhone Development not to mention Apple's document in the first place.
- iOS 4 Programming Cookbook: The most terrible book that I have ever read. The author is not even accustomed to C besides Objective-C. Who says procedure in C? Some explanation is completely wrong. Vandad also deleted the readers' errata. I have seen many erratas submitted and removed silently. Even if the errata was wrong this should never ever happen because other readers can also misunderstand that point.
If O'Reilly have ever have a decent technical reviewers in mobile programming, they should have these books reviewed by them before these books published to the world.
Finally O'Reilly should know that nowadays nobody refers to reviews in the oreilly.com. Many of the reviews are fake and blindly friendly.
I hope to see much better ("worth the money") books from O'Reilly in the future.
+ Head First iPhone Development: The authors' penetrating and clear explanation is the reason why we pay for a book where there are very good and free documents. Fairly good book and I have recommended this book to all of my friends.
- Learning iPhone Programming: Terrible. The author is fairly incompetent. He should have read Head First iPhone Development not to mention Apple's document in the first place.
- iOS 4 Programming Cookbook: The most terrible book that I have ever read. The author is not even accustomed to C besides Objective-C. Who says procedure in C? Some explanation is completely wrong. Vandad also deleted the readers' errata. I have seen many erratas submitted and removed silently. Even if the errata was wrong this should never ever happen because other readers can also misunderstand that point.
If O'Reilly have ever have a decent technical reviewers in mobile programming, they should have these books reviewed by them before these books published to the world.
Finally O'Reilly should know that nowadays nobody refers to reviews in the oreilly.com. Many of the reviews are fake and blindly friendly.
I hope to see much better ("worth the money") books from O'Reilly in the future.