What this book covers

Chapter 1, What's New in iOS5, introduces the developer to the Xcode developer set of tools, the new features of iOS 5, as well as an introduction into Newsstand and the MessageUI framework.

Chapter 2, Using iCloud and the Storage APIs, introduces you to the benefits of using iCloud, and how to incorporate iCloud functionality into your applications to store and retrieve files, and its data through the use of the storage APIs. This chapter will also give you some insight into how to go about handling file-version conflicts when multiple copies of the same file are being updated on more than one iOS device.

Chapter 3, Debugging with OpenGL ES, focuses on the differences between vertex shaders and fragment shaders, and their relationship with one another. We will become familiar with the OpenGL ES 2.0 Programmable pipeline, and look into the new debugging features of OpenGL ES that enables us to track down issues specific to OpenGL ES, right within the Xcode IDE. We will learn more about the OpenGL ES frame capture tool and its ability to stop execution of a program, that will enable the developer to grab the current frame contents that are being rendered on the iOS device, so that program issues can be tracked down and corrected, by taking a closer look at the program state information of objects, by scrolling through the debug navigator stack trace with the ability to see all of the textures and shaders that are currently being used by the application.

Chapter 4, Using Storyboards, gains an understanding of what Storyboards are and how we can apply the various transitions between views. We will take a look into how we are able to create and configure scenes and storyboard files, to present these programmatically. We will also look at how to go about building and integrating Twitter capabilities into our application to tweet photos and standard messages.

Chapter 5, Using AirPlay and Core Image, focuses on learning about the AirPlay and Core Image frameworks, and how we go about using and implementing these into our applications. This chapter also explains the different image filter effects, how to adjust the brightness of an image, as well as how to go about producing a water ripple effect. It also covers how to incorporate AirPlay functionality into your application, so that you can have your application displayed out to an external device, such as an Apple TV.

Chapter 6, Xcode Tools - Improvements, focuses on learning about the improvements that have been made to the Xcode development tools. We will take a look at Automatic Reference Counting (ARC), which is the latest addition that has been made to the LLVM compiler, and how this can help improve application performance, by minimizing issues with our applications. It also covers improvements that have been made to Interface Builder, the iOS Location simulator, and the set of debugging tools for OpenGL ES.

Chapter 7, Making your Applications Run Smoothly Using Instruments, focuses on how we can effectively use Instruments within our applications to track down memory leaks and bottlenecks within our applications that could potentially cause our application to crash on the user's iOS device. We will take a look into each of the different types of built-in instruments that come as part of the Instruments application, learn how we can use the System Trace instrument to monitor system calls, and track down performance issues within an application.