What do acknowledgments have to do with learning iOS development? I used to be likely to skim or skip this section of a book—and you might be tempted to do that as well. Who are these people? Why do I care? You care because your ability to get things done really depends on who you know. And I am about to thank people who have helped me, many of whom enjoy helping. You may know some of them or know someone who does. I am often surprised how close I am to the truly great people on LinkedIn. So read on, note the names, and see how close you are to someone who may be able to help you solve your most pressing problem.
First, my deep thanks to Erica Sadun (series editor and code goddess) and Trina MacDonald (editor) for the opportunity to write most of this book. When they asked me to contribute, my first thought was “I have never written anything this big, but how hard could it be?” I found out, and their support, along with that of Rod Strougo, Chris Zahn (please correct my grammar some more), Jovana Shirley (so that is production editing), Kitty Wilson (are you sure you do not know how to code?), Anne Goebel (may I use might, or might I use may?), both Olivia Basegio and Betsy Gratner (if only I were that organized), and the entire production staff (I fed them sketches; they produced the beautiful diagrams). All of you started my journey of learning to be an author. I have always been a helper. Developer Technical Support enabled me to help thousands. This book is an opportunity to help a wider audience. Thank you, all.
I am also deeply grateful to friends old and new for answering technical questions: Mike Engber, a superstar coder at Apple, showed me the light on blocks as well as answering other questions. Others took time to answer questions or talk about possible solutions: Thanks to Tim Burks, Lucien Dupont, Aleksey Novicov, Jeremy Olson (@jerols, inspired UX!), Tim Roadley (Mr. Core Data), and Robert Shoemate (Telerik/TestStudio). Thanks also to Marc Antonio and Mark H. Granoff for reviewing every chapter and giving suggestions and corrections on things technical. And an extra shout out to Gemma Barlow and Scott Gruby for checking the iOS 7/Xcode 5 changes in addition to all the other feedback.
Contributors are not limited to engineers. German translations are from Oliver Drobnik and David Fedor, a longtime friend. Arabic is from Jane Ann Day...take her course; she is very good. Glyphish, aka Joseph Wain, provided the beautiful icons and user interface (UI) element graphics. Get some great icons for your app at www.glyphish.com. The 11 car photos first used in Chapter 6, “Scrolling,” are courtesy of Sunipix.com.
Thanks to those at Couchsurfing (www.couchsurfing.org) for giving me time to work on this book, including our CEO Tony Espinoza, my friend Andrew Geweke, and the whole mobile design and development team: Gemma Barlow, David Berrios, Evan Lange, Hass Lunsford, Nicolas Milliard, Nathaniel Wolf, and Alex Woolf. You are a joy to serve.
Thanks to those who have taught, inspired, and challenged me along my technical journey. Listing them all would take a whole book, but some include the faculty and fellow students at the University of Calgary computer science department, as well as Dan Freedman, Scott Golubock, Bruce Thompson, Jim Spohrer, Bob Ebert, Steve Lemke, Brian Criscuolo, and many more from Apple, Palm, eBay, Intuit, Mark/Space, ShopWell, and Couchsurfing.
Then there is one man who taught me how to be a steward (some say leader or manager): Gabriel Acosta-Mikulasek, a coworker, then manager, and now close friend: Querido hermano. He now teaches leadership and living, and you could not ask for a better coach. Find him at www.aculasek.com.
Oddly, I’d like to also thank our kittens (now cats), who continually tried to rewrite content, typing secret cat code such as “vev uiscmr[//I’64.” And many thanks to my family, who stood beside me and gave me the time to work, and even provided content. My 10-year-old daughter drew the r graphic used in Chapter 12, “Touch Basics.”
—Maurice Sharp