Off and Running
May 6th, 2010
Wow! Response to the book has been way beyond what any of us expected. It’s currently ranked #131 among ALL books sold by Amazon. Thanks to everyone who pre-ordered, your printed book should be shipped sometime around May 14th!
Many people have been asking about the availability of the book on the iPad. That’s not surprising: if you’re interested in the iPhone OS you’re probably like me and have a bunch of devices sitting on your desk.
I’m happy to report that O’Reilly’s Ebook bundle includes an edition in the ePub format used by iBooks. Once you’ve purchased this book, it’s a simple matter of dragging and dropping it onto iTunes and then syncing to your iPad. You can purchase the Ebook bundle today from the O’Reilly catalog.
Once you’ve installed the ePub, you’ll see the book on the iBooks shelf:
(Click on any image to view at full size.)
Source code looks great on the iPad:
As do tables and pictures:
(Don’t worry, that’s as close as you’re going to get to the fleshy palm while reading the book!)
The Ebook editions are DRM-free, so you can view the PDF file in Preview instead of Adobe Reader. It also makes it easy to copy code and other text out of the book. You probably won’t need to use that feature though: the text was written so that you can follow along in Xcode, not wade through pages and pages of source. (Chapter 6, in particular, is a guided tour through the source code used to create Safety Light.)
Unfortunately, some production delays prevented those Xcode projects from appearing on the Missing CD site. Hold tight, we’re working to get them uploaded as soon as possible. Once we do, you’ll find it really nice to check out the code on your Mac with the Missing Manual by your side!
Thanks again for all the support and well wishes—they’re very much appreciated!
Updated May 7th, 2010: The source code and other collateral for the book are now available on the Missing CD.