Great Price "Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition)" for $26.99 Today
I own this book and worked through it fairly diligently. Having come out the other end of the book, I would say it provides a good foundation for continuing on, but I don't think this book is enough to start writing your own apps without some more assistance. I think it *almost* gets you there, but falls short in a couple of areas. I think if you buy this book with the intention of picking up one or more additional books to continue on, then this book will serve it's purpose, but I do think if you try and start programming just from this book, you'll be a bit lost when your done. I myself picked up Cocoa Design Patterns, which seems like a good next step so far. It provides a LOT less hand holding, but if you've gone through Hillebrands book, you should be ready for that anyway.
I think if I could sit down with Hillebrand and make any recommendation it would be to either have put more into this book, or break it up into 2-3 books, with some additional details along the way. In many cases as I diligently typed in the code examples I was often somewhat lost as I went along. Some things became more clear as the book progressed, but others remained somewhat murky. For instance the chapter on drag-drop. There was a lot of code there, and not a lot of explanation. I see that there is a follow up book to this by him coming out in July, which I intend to purchase, and I recently bought his iPhone book, which while I haven't gone through it in detail appears to be improved over this in it's flow, or perhaps it's just that I know more about Cocoa in general that it's not overwhelming me.
I can't say how difficult this book would have been without extensive OOP experience, but if your considering this as a starting point for programming, don't. This book, Cocoa itself is *not* for beginners. I would say you really need to cut your teeth with some general OOP concepts and put your time into programming them before you try and tackle Cocoa. PHP could be a pretty good way to build up your knowledge. It would allow you to learn programming and OOP while not getting bogged down with having to try and tackle interfaces, messaging etc. If you do already have oop experience, but don't know Objective-C, it's certainly different than other OOP languages I've used (Java, C++, PHP) but it's more syntactical than anything else. This book provides a decent primer on Obj-C and by the time I got past those primer chapters I was pretty set with regard to Obj-C itself.
I did really like this book. I have a good foundation on Cocoa now and while I am still in need of more books to start filling in the gaps and continue on my journey, this served as a good start for that, and I would most definately recommend this book. You should definately goto the book website and download the example/source code, I found on some of the challenges that I didn't figure out, it was helpful to see his examples and then move on, rather than spend time trying to find the needle in the haystack, at some point you do need to punt and move on...
It's worth mentioning that while I'd say 80-85% of what he talks about re: the Interface Builder was still relevant, this being from 2008, the IB has changed with the most recent version just enough that when I started this book as a complete newbie, I got stuck in a couple places until I could gather the knowledge to understand where his instructions were no longer accurate. In the end for me some googling solved my hickups. So for anyone starting with this book and using XCode 3.2 or newer, know that you'll find a few things work differently, and also know that once you see what you need to do differently and understand it, the differences are pretty minor, it's just when your totally new and don't know the IB well enough, it can seem impossible at first. A little perseverance will get you through. It would have been nice if the author had provided a bit more updates on his website about the differences, he gave some info, but it was pretty cursory.
FInally, even with my criticisms, I want to say I didn't intend the criticisms to be reasons not to get the book, but rather heads-up about where you would need to find other resources to keep you chugging along, and also to say that as good as this book is, I do think additional more advanced books are required afterward to ensure you move along on your journey.
Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition) Features
- ISBN13: 9780321503619
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Rating : 
Price : $49.99
Offer Price : $26.99
Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition) Overviews
The best-selling introduction to Cocoa, once again updated to cover the latest Mac programming technologies, and still enthusiastically recommended by experienced Mac OS X developers.
“Aaron’s book is the gold standard for Mac OS X programming books—beautifully written, and thoughtfully sculpted. The best book on Leopard development.”
—Scott Stevenson, www.theocacao.com
“This is the first book I’d recommend for anyone wanting to learn Cocoa from scratch. Aaron’s one of the few (perhaps only) full-time professional Cocoa instructors, and his teaching experience shows in the book.”
—Tim Burks, software developer and creator of the Nu programming language, www.programming.nu
“If you’re a UNIX or Windows developer who picked up a Mac OS X machine recently in hopes of developing new apps or porting your apps to Mac users, this book should be strongly considered as one of your essential reference and training tomes.”
—Kevin H. Spencer, Apple Certified Technical Coordinator
If you’re developing applications for Mac OS X, Cocoa® Programming for Mac® OS X, Third Edition, is the book you’ve been waiting to get your hands on. If you’re new to the Mac environment, it’s probably the book you’ve been told to read first. Covering the bulk of what you need to know to develop full-featured applications for OS X, written in an engaging tutorial style, and thoroughly class-tested to assure clarity and accuracy, it is an invaluable resource for any Mac programmer.
Specifically, Aaron Hillegass introduces the three most commonly used Mac developer tools: Xcode, Interface Builder, and Instruments. He also covers the Objective-C language and the major design patterns of Cocoa. Aaron illustrates his explanations with exemplary code, written in the idioms of the Cocoa community, to show you how Mac programs should be written. After reading this book, you will know enough to understand and utilize Apple’s online documentation for your own unique needs. And you will know enough to write your own stylish code.
Updated for Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, this revised edition includes coverage of Xcode 3, Objective-C 2, Core Data, the garbage collector, and CoreAnimation.
Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition) Specifications
Suitable for anyone with a little C/C++ programming experience who wants to create software for the newest Mac platform, Cocoa Programming for Max OS X provides a slickly packaged and approachable tutorial that will get you started creating state-of-the-art Mac programs.
The smart presentation style and easy-to-understood code examples help make this text an excellent resource. (It also helps that Aaron Hillegass is a truly engaging writer.) He first explains how the legacy NeXTSTEP platform has evolved into Cocoa on the Mac OS X. Beginning with short examples illustrating the actual Cocoa tools in action, the author gets you started with simple programs for a random-number generator, a raise calculator, and other comprehensible examples. Rather than just listing APIs and classes, the emphasis is on hands-on Cocoa development. An early standout section provides a nice tour of essential Objective-C features you'll need to know to use Cocoa effectively.
This book covers the several dozen built-in Cocoa controls, from basic text and buttons to more advanced widgets (including lists and tables). Subsequent sections look at user interface design (using the Interface Builder to create nib files) and how to add programmatic processing behind the visual layout. Along the way, the author introduces coverage of essential Cocoa APIs for strings, arrays, and dictionaries. Later chapters look at saving and loading documents (and user defaults) and how to tap the powerful graphics abilities available in Cocoa. (Besides image and basic drawing, there are short sections on PDF support and printing.)
More advanced user interface features get their due by the end of the book, including cutting and pasting data through the Cocoa pasteboard and also adding drag-and-drop support. Final sections look at creating new controls for use with the Interface Builder palette, and, briefly, how to use Java with Cocoa (an option that the author doesn't necessarily recommend). Throughout this text, the author provides more advanced, challenging problems at the end of each chapter for the "more curious" reader. This approach keeps beginners from getting lost in the details of Cocoa development, but gives the more advanced reader something more to do.
While there are comparably fewer books on Mac OS X compared to other platforms, readers are lucky to have this one available. Anyone who wants to get onboard with Cocoa development will be well served by this title. It's a fine tutorial that earns high marks for its approachable, clear examples and an excellent presentation by an author who knows his stuff and, better yet, knows how to teach it to others. --Richard Dragan
Topics covered: Brief history of the Mac platform (from NeXTSTEP to Mac OS X), basic Cocoa development in Objective-C, using Project Builder and Interface Builder tools, tutorial to Objective-C (instances, variables, using classes, arrays and other containers, custom classes), the Objective-C debugger, basic Cocoa controls (building user interfaces), tables and data sources, event handling and delegates, archiving documents (encoding and decoding, saving and loading documents), Nib files, window panels, saving and retrieving user defaults (including using dictionary classes), notifications (observers and more on delegates), alert panels, localization (including string tables, a English and French example, the nibtool utility), custom views and drawing, drawing images and mouse events (plus coordinates systems and autoscrolling views), responders and keyboard events, fonts and strings (including attributed strings and PDF support), pasteboards and nil-targeted actions, using Objective-C categories (a code reuse feature), drag-and-drop support, timers, sheets and drawers, formatting strings, printing support, on-the-fly menu updating, text editing with text views, basic tutorial for using Java with Cocoa, and custom Interface Builder palettes (and inspectors).
Customer Review
Good for experienced programmers - Darrell - San Francisco, Ca USA
I used to do some programming about 10 yrs ago in C++ and I thought that I was fairly good at it. Well, here I am, now 10 yrs later, and I've forgot a lot of concepts and ideas with C++ especially pointers. Anyways, now I'm on a Mac and thought it would be awesome if I could learn to write applications since I have a growing list of things I'd like to make.
Well, I picked up this book last year and started going through it... unfortunately, my past experience didn't "come back to me" and I was lost very early on in the book. So I ended up purchasing "Programming in Objective-C 2.0" by Stephen G. Kochan because they take you from not knowing anything, to general Objective-C programming (not necessarily Cocoa). But it fulfilled my need, which was to learn Objective-C and brush up on my programming skills in general.
Anyways, now that I've gone through most of that book, I felt that it was time to pick this book back up again. It's going good so far, yes, some things are still a little foreign to me, but it helps to read it more than once and think about what Aaron is saying.
One area that I think this book lacks is in support. The website does a decent job of listing errata and Aaron does point out a couple differences between XCode 3 (when the book was written) to XCode 3.2.1 (which is the current version).
However, on his website, he has "interactive forums" which is not at all a typical forum that one would expect. It's a long list of comments that people can leave back and forth. When it comes to looking for help on a specific topic, you have to search through all the comments -- it's a huge mess.
What I have done as a response to this, is that I have set up my own forums online if anyone else wants to go through this book with me. I know I'm not too experienced with Cocoa, but I'm willing to help anyone as much as I can. The author himself is even invited to come and join if he likes.
The forums are at cocoacommunity{dot}com
Well, it seems that they've updated their forums due to me setting up mine. =(
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