Metal by Tutorials

Build your own low-level game engine in Metal!

Metal is a unified application programming interface (API) for the graphics processing unit, or GPU. It’s unified because it applies to both 3D graphics and data-parallel computation paradigms. Metal is a low-level API because it provides programmers near-direct access to the GPU. Finally, Metal is a low-overhead API because it reduces the central processing unit (CPU) cost by multi-threading and pre-compiling of resources.

But beyond the technical definition, Metal is the most appropriate way to use the GPU’s parallel processing power to visualize data or solve numerical challenges. It’s also tailored to be used for machine learning, image/video processing or, as this book describes, graphics rendering.

This book will introduce you to low-level graphics programming in Metal — Apple’s framework for programming on the graphics processing unit (GPU). As you progress through this book, you’ll learn many of the fundamentals that go into making a game engine and gradually put together your own engine. Once your game engine is complete, you’ll be able to put together 3D scenes and program your own simple 3D games. Because you’ll have built your 3D game engine from scratch, you’ll be able to customize every aspect of what you see on your screen.

This book is for intermediate Swift developers interested in learning 3D graphics or gaining a deeper understanding of how game engines work.

Advanced Apple Debugging & Reverse Engineering

Learn the powerful secrets of Apple’s software debugger, LLDB!

In Advanced Apple Debugging & Reverse Engineering, you’ll come to realize debugging is an enjoyable process to help you better understand software. Not only will you learn to find bugs faster, but you’ll also learn how other developers have solved problems similar to yours.

You’ll also learn how to create custom, powerful debugging scripts that will help you quickly find the secrets behind any bit of code that piques your interest.

After reading this book, you’ll have the tools and knowledge to answer even the most obscure question about your code — or someone else’s.

This book is for intermediate-to-advanced iOS/macOS developers who are already familiar with either Swift or Objective-C and want to take their debugging skills to the next level.

Advanced iOS App Architecture

Implement Modern Clean Architectures in Your iOS Apps!

Apps are becoming more complex, and development teams are being pressured to deliver faster results in the face of constantly changing requirements. Now, more than ever, you need to understand and apply good software architecture practices in your projects.

Advanced iOS App Architecture thoroughly explains multiple modern iOS architectures, and demonstrates their usage in real-world apps.

The first half of the book introduces you to different aspects of iOS app architectures. We recommend reading these chapters before diving into any of the specific architecture chapters to get a good handle on the concepts involved.

The second half of the book explores multiple architectures, one per chapter. Each architecture chapter begins with a little history, followed by a detailed theory walkthrough. The remainder of each architecture chapter focuses on applying the theory to iOS app development.

Each architecture chapter concludes by covering the pros and cons of that architecture. You can read this section in order — or jump straight to the architecture that interests you. It’s your choice!

This book is for iOS developers who build apps using Swift. The material in this book assumes familiarity with design patterns and with basic architectures — such as MVC — and basic architecture concepts, such as inversion of control.

Expert Swift

Master the Swift language with the Expert Swift book!

Swift is a rich language with a plethora of features to offer. Reading the official documentation or entry-level books is important, but it’s not enough to grasp the true power of the language.

Expert Swift is here to help, by showing you how to harness the full power of Swift. You’ll learn about advanced usages of protocols, generics, functional reactive programming, API design and more.