Android Apps with Eclipse

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6 responses to “Android Apps with Eclipse”

1. 

   Hans L. “Hans”

   January 16, 2014

   51 of 52 people found the following review helpful

   
   Misleading Title – You will not learn how to develop Android Apps, February 11, 2013

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   Hans L. “Hans” –

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   This review is from: Android Apps with Eclipse (Paperback)

   I have been developing in C++, Java, C# and iOS for years and have taught myself most of these skills using good development books. While I agree with other reviewers that Android Apps with Eclipse is very well written, it is not an outstanding development book in my view. The title lead me to believe that working through this book will enable me to develop Android Apps using Eclipse (with Java, which is not explicitly stated in the title but is a fair assumptions given Java’s predominant role in Android application development).

   After I had worked myself through about 180 pages (more than 50% of the book), I had completed exactly one example application. The first 150 pages are largely dedicated to Eclipse with a brief primer on Android. Excited to be building upon my first Android App, I discovered that the next chapter covers Android Native Development on a stunning 50(!!) pages, a topic which should be covered in such depth only in a book for advanced Android Development. The remaining chapters 8-10 cover a little more Java development before the author moves on to scripting, HTML and JavaScript.

   Bottom-line: If you are looking for a cross section of the different technologies you can use with Eclipse to develop for Android, this is your book. However, if you are looking to have a solid introduction to developing Android Apps with Java, I suggest you look for other titles!

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2. 

   Robin T. Wernick

   January 16, 2014

   8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

   
   A Very Good Practical Guide to developing Android Apps Using E, January 31, 2013

   By 

   Robin T. Wernick (San Jose) –
   
     

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   This review is from: Android Apps with Eclipse (Paperback)

   “Android Apps with Eclipse” fills a very necessary niche in the Android developers library. Too many of the previous Android programming books swept by the start-up process and deluged the programmer with Android internals and failed to insure that the most important step was never completed. Although Intellij and MotoDev have there adherents, Eclipse is the primary introductory tool for Android development and following the instructions of these older references insures that your Eclipse will never work with Android. The problem is that there are over a dozen versions of Eclipse, and all but two of them are completely unsuited to work with Android. This book was the first Android reference to note that Classic and Eclipse for Java Developers(my research) should be the focus for Android development. I have installed three other Eclipse candidates and all of them have failed to attach to the Android Tools download despite repeated attempts. This manual provides 110 pages of Eclipse general training and 20 pages in chapter 5 specifically how to attach the Android Development Tools to Eclipse. I am so relieved that I won’t have to spend countless hours trying to understand why Eclipse won’t work with Android. Problem solved.

   Unfortunately, the book takes 150 pages of its 332 page length to get started on a project. Its a pretty good project since it involves playing movies and we all like the slick effect of running media. But, it’s about the only project in the whole book. However, there is a very bright side to this singular project. I found that chapters 7 and 8 were devoted to applying the Android NDK to the movie player. This is a valuable and fairly detailed exploration of applying professional coding to Eclipse projects. The NDK is a highly valuable support tool that can give an overloaded project the performance needed to take it to the next level. There are hints around the internet that indicate that cell phones are not considered powerful enough to do serious computing applications. Being able to apply the NDK to give your new design up to a 10X performance boost could raise its competence to the level that draws the attention needed to make a succesful business out of it. And mobile GPU computations are just the place to find hidden abilities in your phone or tablet.

   So, although I wanted this book to keep climbing into even higher levels of Android application design, it was cut short by the book’s short length. On final reflection though, I felt very satisfied that it had delivered the best introduction on how to get the most out of using Eclipse as a development tool and had delivered the best introduction on how to use the mysterious NDK that I was forced to admit that it deserved a full five stars.

   I wish that this book had been available a year ago when I started working with Android. It could have saved me dozens of hours of frustration and I would be a better Android programmer if it had been published then. However, its here now and I have an automobile engine analysis application that I can’t wait to finish using Eclipse.and the Android NDK. Happy computing.

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3. 

   Nothing but the source code

   January 16, 2014

   7 of 9 people found the following review helpful

   
   Extremely well written, July 20, 2012

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   Nothing but the source code –

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   This review is from: Android Apps with Eclipse (Paperback)

   The author writes with a straight forward, easy to ingest style that makes this book a joy to pick up and difficult to put down. The book gives a comprehensive overview of all things android, going into the details of the NDK and offering insight on scripting using SL4A. I am a seasoned Java developer with over 14 years of professional experience and I found the book incredibly helpful as I transition from several years of iOS development back into Java and Android.

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4. 

   Michele

   January 17, 2014

   9 of 11 people found the following review helpful

   
   At last a book on Core Audio, and a good one!, April 30, 2012

   By 

   Michele (Italy, Milan) –

   This review is from: Learning Core Audio: A Hands-On Guide to Audio Programming for Mac and iOS (Paperback)

   First let’s start with stating how satisfied I am of having found that this book exists. Core audio is one of the most difficult programming topic I ever found, because of the subject matter and because of arcane, not very well documented, obscure and often inconsistent Api conventions and naming. OpenGl is difficult as it requires loads of mathematics, but is wery well documented. Core Audio is as difficult as OpenGL, mayebe more, but knowledge about it is much harder to be found.

   The authors take their time to tell their readers what this book is not, it is not a book for wannabe programmers, it is not a beginners guide, beginners and less than determined programmers, please look elswhere. Audio is not for everybody, it involves doing computations in real time and is an order of magnitude more difficult than say, Ruby web based design.

   A prerequisite for a beginner’s book on Audio on Mac OsX and iOS, is being a rather advanced programmer in all three major languages required by the platform: Objective C, C (on which Core audio is based) and C++ (because of OpenAl 3d audio). You should be proficient enough to be familiar with structs, pointers and memory allocation.
   The approach of the authors is keeping the UI side to a bare minimum, as UI is not what this book is all about: on the Mac side this choice implies having to deal with command line programs, and ignoring the Cocoa side of things. As this book is centered on Audio programming this choice is very logical. On the iOS chapter, a barebone simple View controller is used (as iOS does not support CLI.).
   Learning Core Audio explains how to use all the major audio engines available on Apple platforms, which are basic Core Audio services, Core audio queues, Audio units and Open Al.
   Differences between the iOS and Mac approach is detailed in the 10th chapter, after the Mac platform has been explained.
   What you won’t find in this book: this is not a complete treatment of the matter, which would have been simply impossible, but is rather gentle (as gentle as possible, not too much) introduction to as much as possible of the main aspects of the matter. The authors do attempt to let the reader acquire a full view on the general phylosophy, unwritten conventions and way of thinking necessary in order to deal with the frameworks, enabling the reader to go on and research further on his or her own after reading this book. The authors do manage to render Core audio understandable and practically approachable by determined and cabable programmers, and out of the restricted circle of über-Hackers and programming demi-gods. At least a book on Core Audio for us normal humans, the authors seem to discourage casual potential readers by stating how difficult Core Audio is, well I do believe the subject is difficult, but they did an excellent job in making it practically understandable.

   How to build a complete commercial Audio Unit is not dealt with, nor is in any way treated the required knowledge of electronic music principles and digital signal processing. These subjects require separate reading of the typical well known and usually large tomes on the subject (e.g. Boulanger, Openheim-Shafer).

   I cannot but recommend this book as required reading on the matter of Core Audio programming.
   Personally I would have liked to see at least an introductory chapter on DSP and some coverage of Audio Unit development, but these subjects were obviously either too complex or not completely related to Core Audio learning, for which this book is THE starting point.
   I am also very grateful to the publisher, for the courage shown in publishing a book which will not be of interest for a very large audience, but which was nonetheless desperately needed.

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5. 

   Todd Stewart

   January 17, 2014

   4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

   
   Clearing away the fear, uncertainty, and doubt., May 21, 2012

   By 

   Todd Stewart –

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   This review is from: Learning Core Audio: A Hands-On Guide to Audio Programming for Mac and iOS (Paperback)

   I’ve been working with AudioQueue microphone input (IOS) for over a year, but found myself avoiding anything deeper (properties, listener callback notifications, metering, audio units, …). After running through this tutorial, I now understand what is going on under the hood, and have moved down into working directly with audio units.

   For me the most useful tips were:

   1) Simple CheckError() logic to decrypt the 4 character mode and error code constants used throughout.

   2) Clear explanation of file formats, audio formats, converters, and native PCM representations on IOS and OSX.

   3) Pointers for where to find CoreAudio documentation (much of it can be found only in header file comments)

   4) Clear pattern for required lifecycle sequence of constructing an audio units graph of nodes, which must be defined before open, opened before starting to set properties, and properties setup before initialize.

   5) Reusable patterns for the sometimes awkward pointer arithmetic required to assemble AudioBufferLists on the fly.

   6) Unkinking the awkward syntax of Output units, which are used for both hardware output and hardware input. Both the outbound bus #0 and inbound bus #1 have input and output scopes, which relate to where the unit fits into the graph. Clear description of threading, buffering, and clocking issues which must be handled in OSX context which may include multiple external audio accessories from different vendors, with different clocking and timing. After completing this tutorial I now “get it”.

   7) Clear description of the differences between OSX and IOS implementations.

   8) The quick intro to OpenAL and Midi were interesting, and enough for me to understand how these work, though they aren’t part of what I do.

   Overall this book was a great help to me. I highly recommend it to anyone already experienced with OSX or IOS development, but wanting to dig deeper into audio. Not much audio background is required (the first chapters cover the basics), though you will need to be comfortable with working almost entirely in C with nary an NS* in sight. Even the file I/O operations use CoreFoundation (not Foundation) methods. If you are looking for a higher level interface, you may want to explore the AVFoundation or MediaPLayer frameworks, which are nicely documented in Xcode docs, but are not covered by this lower level tutorial.

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6. 

   Ken Zheng

   January 17, 2014

   2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

   
   I wouldn’t know what i would do without this., April 13, 2013

   By 

   Ken Zheng (Oakland, CA) –

   Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

   This review is from: Learning Core Audio: A Hands-On Guide to Audio Programming for Mac and iOS (Paperback)

   I’m an iOS developer fir a VoIP company and needed to build an audio engine for Mac OS platform. Apple’s documentation and online forums helped a little but the information was scattered so much that it was hard to wrap your head around CoreAudio API. I found this book, locked myself in my room for a month, and built the audio engine from the ground up. I wouldn’t know what I would have done without it. Also, I know nothing about sound and audio but this book filled in the blanks just enough for me to understand how it works. I thank the authors so much for their hard work and dedication in bringing all of this information into one book. Seriously, these guys found essential information that was only found in a comment in one of Apple’s sample projects. Great resource!

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