You’ve watched plenty of YouTube tutorials on iOS development but feel like you’re not really learning what the code does. Sure, you can write a bit of Swift, but you want to dig deeper to learn how and why the code works. Which books should you use to actually learn iOS so you can build your own apps from scratch?
(Note that there are no affiliate links here – just the best books out there on iOS development.)
iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide is arguably the most popular and most loved book on iOS development. It has excellent reviews and for good reason – it’s a complete guide to iOS development and Cocoa Touch. However, it’s still in Objective-C and hasn’t been updated for iOS 8 or 9, so if that’s a deal-breaker for you, just hang tight and hope for a Swift version – or check out the other options below.
Beginning iPhone Development with Swift: Exploring the iOS SDK is the latest edition of the book I used to learn iOS development six years ago. This is the book that got me started with iOS back in 2009, and today I have the privilige of doing iOS training and consulting full time. I owe a lot to Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche for writing this book and teaching me iOS, so give this one a shot. Like the Big Nerd Ranch guide, it has great reviews, and it’s slightly more up-to-date: it uses iOS 8 and Swift 1.2 with Xcode 6.3.1, released in early 2015.
Chris Adamson & Janie Clayton’s new book, iOS 9 SDK Development, has been updated for the latest versions of the tools: Swift 2.0 and iOS 9. It’s still in beta so there aren’t any reviews yet, but previous editions were well-received. It’s one of the few that’s fully up to date as of this writing, so it’s definitely worth checking out.
Grab one (or more) of these books to dig deep into iOS so you can learn to build your own apps from scratch. And get started with Swift today with the 5-Part Guide to Getting Started with Swift.