Two New iOS 7 Books: Preorders Now Available!

iOS 7 is one of the most massive and exciting set of changes that we’ve seen as developers so far.

As others have mentioned, iOS 7 is super-exciting because it is a fertile ground of opportunity – the type seen only every 3-5 years.

However, there’s a ton of new stuff in iOS 7, and it’s difficult for a single developer to make sense of it all.

That’s why ever since the first day of WWDC, the Tutorial Team and I have been hard at work to help make this all fun and easy to learn – by developing the high quality tutorials you know and love.

Today we have some very good news – we are pleased to announce that this year we will be making not one, but two new iOS 7 books!

We think you are going to love this year’s books. We’ve been working very hard to make our books the best we’ve done yet, and we have some surprises up our sleeve we think you are going to love.

Keep reading to find out more about the books – and how you can preorder your copies to be one of the first to get access – while saving money to boot!

iOS 7 by Tutorials

If you’re a regular reader of our site, you probably guessed this was coming! :]

That’s right – for the third year in a row, we are making a book of tutorials on all of the new APIs in iOS 7, like:

• UIKit Dynamics
• Text Kit
• Background Fetch
• NSURLSession
• And much more!

This year we wanted to take things above and beyond what we did in the last two years, so we’re increasing our focus on two aspects: design and engagement.

Increased focus on design

One of the most important aspects of iOS 7 is the new minimalistic design style, and increased focus on content, typography, and animation.

As such, we wanted our book to reflect that, so we’ve made three huge efforts:

• Custom designed sample projects. We hired an amazing designer to work with us on all the sample projects in the book, so you can get some inspiration and practice designing for the new look and feel!
• Designer guest author. We are working with a well-known and respected guest author to write a chapter on “Designing for iOS 7” that will kick off the book. We’ll announce exactly who soon. :] The chapter is looking spectacular so far, and we think you will love it!
• Transitioning to iOS 7. At the beginning of the book we’ll have a chapter that shows you how take an app with a heavily skeuomorphic iOS 6 look and transition it to the new iOS 7 style.

We’ll announce who the designers are soon! :]

Increased focus on engagement

With our previous books we’ve noticed that we were so eager to pack in a ton of useful material, that our books and chapters sometimes became overly long.

We know your time is valuable, so we don’t want to take more time than necessary to cover a new topic. So this year we’ve been making more of an effort to keep our chapters concise and approachable, so you can master a new topic as quickly as possible.

In addition, we’ve realized that although the step-by-step tutorials are a great way to learn, actually trying something by yourself helps you learn even better. So for the first time, we are adding challenges to the end of each chapter to give you practice with the new material!

We are working hard to make our challenges fun and educational, and we will be providing solutions for all challenges so you can check your work afterwards. You’ll really enjoy the challenges, and you will leave well prepared to apply the techniques in your own apps!

And that’s just a bonus…

These two things are just a bonus on everything on top of everything else. We’ve got tons of fun tutorials, some incredibly useful and practical sample projects, and a great line-up of authors.

If you’re a fan of our site or our previous books, you will simply love this book!

But wait… there’s one more thing.

Sprite Kit by Tutorials

iOS 7 also released a new framework for making 2D games called Sprite Kit.

We quickly realized that this topic was so huge and so important that it warranted a book of its own. Hence, Sprite Kit by Tutorials was born!

This book teaches you how to make 2D games with Sprite Kit by making over 5 minigames, such as:

• Zombie Conga: A side-scrolling action game about a zombie who just wants to party!
• Cat Nap: A physics puzzle game about a cat who can’t seem to get any shut-eye.
• Pest Control: A tile-based action game about a bad-ass bug exterminator.
• XBlaster: A space shooter with particle systems and ASCII art.
• Circuit Racer: A top-down 2D racing game with full Game Center integration.
• And more!: We have a few other tricks up our sleeve as well – stay tuned!

Sprite Kit by Tutorials is a book for all developers, whether you’re a complete beginner or an advanced Cocos2D developer looking to get up to speed with Sprite Kit. Sprite Kit by Tutorials includes:

• Beginner Topics: Like sprites, actions, and basic 2D vector math
• Intermediate Topics: Like physics, video and shape nodes, and UIKit integration
• Advanced Topics: Like making your own level editor, using AirPlay to use the phone as a controller, applying Core Image filters, and more!

And the best part is we have an all-star team working on this book – some of the best authors on the Tutorial Team, along with some special guest authors and a talented artist and musician. Stay tuned for the official announcement on that! :]

Preorders Available!

I’m also happy to announce that you can preorder these new iOS 7 books today!

You can either preorder the books individually from the raywenderlich.com Store, or you can save $10 by buying the bundle of both new books.

We hope to release the books soon after the NDA lifts (whenever that may be). By preordering the books, you will receive the books the minute they become available, and become one of the first to use these techniques (and our sample project code) in your own apps.

Note that this special bundle discount will expire once NDA lifts and the books are released. There are no other special discounts other than this.

We hope you are as excited about these books as we are – we really think you are going to love these, we’ve put a lot of heart and soul into them.

To lock in your discount and get the books as soon as possible, preorder now!