Upshot: If you want to learn programming & have fun, learn to make games. This is a great book to start you on your way, suitable for beginner to intermediate. Cons: None, other than it’s a draft (as of this writing).

I really enjoyed reading Tap, Move, Shake, even though (at this time) I don’t have any interest in developing a game. Where does it start? With the most basic game of all: Creating a Pong game. From there, Todd has you modify the game to make it into an air-hockey game, adding graphics, physics, and sound.

That being said, there *are* things in this book that non-game developers can use that’s worth the price of admission: Chapter 3 about creating images and they become UI elements would be VERY helpful to beginning developers; Chapter 5 about creating & using sounds would be helpful to any developer who wants to add audio feedback to the UI experience of their App.

One thing missing which I hope Todd will cover is to add a Chapter on Game Center to the app lessons. But (at least to me) this is a small peeve with a great book. Highly recommended, even in Draft form.

Disclosure: I received the eBook download(s) from O’Reilly for review purposes.