I registered to this book because I received an invitation from Google. I don’t regret. I’m now doing chapter 18 (deploy on iOS) after succeeding all other chapters. It’s really well done.
But the weakest part of the book is chapter 1, Getting started. The instructions to setup Android Studio, Flutter, Xcode and CocoaPods are vague and send the reader to the respective web sites of the products. No good.
I took notes of what I went through and I plan to make a few Medium articles with handholding instructions to get started on a MacBook Pro M1. But this is only worthwhile if the book remains free. If I understood well, the free period ends on January 15th, 2022. Correct?
send the reader to the respective web sites of the products. No good.
The reason we chose to send readers to the respective web sites is because installation instructions change, especially if a new model of a device is launched (e.g. MacBook Pro M1).
If we’d included very specific instructions it is possible that our book would be out-of-date as soon as we release it. Also, Google provides excellent documentation on installations. If something changes then it only needs to be updated in one location.
With this reasoning you can send also the reader straight to the Google Flutter development web site instead of reading the book.
Each provider is focused on its own tool. The added value of a book like yours is to merge the information of several tools as seen from the Flutter development purpose.
The Getting Started is the gate to the rest. If the reader is blocked there, the rest, however well written, is pointless. And it’d be a pity because the chapters are good.
Specially when some instruction are quite hard to the users when talking about, for instance, how to configurate X-code, which is not easy neither intuitive!!
To be fair, Xcode by itself is quite complex and I don’t expect to have a complete tutorial inside Flutter Apprentice.
However, it is possible to configure it a minimum, for use in the context of Flutter Apprentice. I say that because I did it, knowing really nothing of Xcode before I started this book. This remark is valid for Chapter 1 and for Chapter 8.
Of course, it’s not easy for a guru, who masters Xcode, to explain to a beginner who knows nothing. The authors of this book did an amazing job in general, except for chapters 1 and 8. I was left struggling by myself, with the help of Stack Exchange
I’m finished with Chapter 19: Firebase. I’d like to thank all the authors of the book. The challenge is big because it involves explaining quickly Android, Dart, Xcode, Pods, Firebase, cryptographic signature and still as a complete beginner I could follow the exercises. You did a great job.
I had also to do my homework because I’m on MacBook Pro with ARM64, Monterey 12.1 and Android Studio 2020.3.1 patch 4, so I had to transpose some of the instructions but there was no blocking error.
Now I can start making my own App. Thanks.
@kvutien congratulations on finishing our book! I’m so glad our book was able to help you on your Flutter app development journey.
Be sure to share with us your progress.
Regarding developing on anM1, I have ordered a MacBook Pro M1 and will be using it and my current Intel MacBook Pro when I do my tech editing on future revisions.
I still have my old (2017) MacBook Pro Intel.
I’ll try and run the chapter 19, where we launch both an Android emulator and an iOS simulator on top of Android Studio, and have them post messages simultaneously on Firebase.
We’ll see the difference between the 2, in CPU/memory/disk swap and the energy signature.
