Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition)

Concise, well organized, accurate, and beautifully written. An absolute joy to read. THE book for Cocoa programming.

This is the book I have been waiting for!

I am a recent convert to Macs. Ever since I fell in love with my Mac (now two Macs actually), I have yearning to do some experimental application development on it. I should also add that I have extensive programming experience on Windows.

Anyway, I downloaded Xcode, went to numerous websites, saw YouTube video all to try and understand how to create apps for the Mac. Yes, I was able to create an application with some buttons on it that updated a text box. But anything beyond that just didn't make any sense.

Then I ordered this book. I had to wait a couple months as it hadn't been released yet. But boy, was it worth the wait. I got so into the book, I ended up doing a semi-cursory pass of the entire book in about 2 hours. Then I went through the chapters again, reading chapters in-depth and experimented with the code side-by-side. I am happy to say - I finally get it. There are still questions I have, but I feel that I have a much better shot of finding answers in Apple's documentation as well as the numerous Cocoa-related websites.

Note that while the book does teach you the basics of Objective-C, it's not meant to be a complete reference. But between what I read in the book, Wikipedia and Apple's excellent introduction to Objective-C 2.0 PDF, you should be all set.

To summarize, just order this book if you are new to the world of Mac programming but still don't "get it". You will be glad you did.

Probably the most popular book on Cocoa programming. A somewhat more gentle (but less in-depth) introduction than "Cocoa Programming" by Scott Anguish et al. More of a tutorial and guide than a reference work. Published in 2001, it is probably starting to fall out of date a bit, but most of the changes in OS X 10.2 and 10.3 versus 10.1 will not affect the typical beginner much. It sounds like the next edition, out soon, will update it well; it might be worth waiting for that.

I was sooo close to buying this book, and then found out a new edition is due out this month. Looks like I'll need to wait a week or two to get my copy. My guess is that, in addition to other changes, the book will use Xcode instead of Project Builder in the examples.

I've never had the privilege of attending Aaron's highly-regarded 'Big Nerd Ranch' training program, but I have to believe that working through this book is the next best thing. The book is presented in tutorial form, with a nice flow between examples, discussion and exercises.

The author doesn't hesitate to share his opinions, good or bad--particularly on subjects like Cocoa Java. The result is a frank, incisive introduction to Cocoa programming that helps beginners understand 'the right way' to do things, and will make Apple's object-oriented environment accessible to people with a wide variety of skill levels.