Until a few months ago, the only source of information for iPhone development was the official SDK documentation and the sample code. Moreover, all developers had to accept an NDA agreement which among other things prohibited discussing or sharing information related to iPhone development. However, in October 2008, Apple lifted the NDA and within a month or so books on iPhone development started hitting the shelves.
The two books that really helped me understand the iPhone SDK are Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche and
The iPhone Developer's Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK (Developer's Library) by Erica Sadun.
"Beginning iPhone Development", as the reviews show, is an excellent introduction to iPhone development. The book is well laid out and the book logically progresses from writing a simple "Hello World" application to taking advantage of the iPhone hardware. I don't think I would have been as comfortable with iPhone development, as I am now, without this book. But (there is always a but), the book does not cover any topics beyond the basics. This is understandable because the book is meant as an introduction, but they do not cover controls like UIScrollView or UIPageControl.
In contrast, "The iPhone Developer's Cookbook" is great at covering some not so basic topics. There are some good examples on animation, custom controls and undocumented APIs like cover flow.
Neither of these books cover advanced topics like memory management, debugging, optimizing with Instruments etc.
I am sure we will see newer editions of these books coming out sometime later this year and I hope they get better. I highly recommend getting both the books if you are considering serious iPhone development.
P.S.: Check this out. I just subscribed to it and I am hoping it covers some advanced topics.
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