I want to learn to write apps for the iPad and iPhone. Can anyone recommend a good book or two to read and learn from?

If you feel like learning how to develop your own apps you can do so for free. Go to iTunes on your iPad, click on 'iTunesU' at the bottom right hand side, select 'Universities and Colleges', then scroll to Stanford. Scroll right through the courses and you'll find a two-part, 25 lectures per part, course on programming iPad apps. It's free and, by the end of the course, you'll be able to program some simple apps yourself. It's a great resource from one of the best Universities in the world.

Tim

Thank you again Tim for your advice

I've also been (trying) to learn a little on the side, and (trying) to follow the Stanford course. It's good, but maybe I'm not.

Before I did that I got the book "Cocoa and Objective-C: Up and Running" which I like.

Apple also has some guides and learning aid in the iBooks Store. Very dry reading, but last time I checked they were free. Here's the list:

Cocoa Fundamentals Guide
iOS Human Interface Guidelines
iOS Application Programing Guide
iOS Technology Overview
Object-Oriented Programing with Objective-C
The Objective-C Programing Language

Some other links that I found when searching around. Not so good as the Stanford course or the book, but useful for extra exercises.

Objective-C Programming - Wikibooks, open books for an open world
Rory Lewis, KDD

I think the fundamental things of programming for IPad and IPhone you can get from this article
How to learn Objective-C

I'm started from it by myself.

Thanks for the page. It looks good. I'll read it in detail later. I'm always looking for one more approach to the subject.