BookCocoaProgMacOSX

last edited May 7, 2010 20:16:10 (110.32.94.166)
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CocoaBooks - Votes: BUY IT: [63], BORROW IT: [2], BURY IT: [0] 
 image image Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X ($49.99 - Second edition) 
 







Comments




    

  • MikeTrent: Aaron let me leaf through a draft book at WWDC this year and I thought it looked fantastic! It covers all of the major AppKit topics you need to know with many screen shots and examples. A refreshing change from CurrencyConverter. The book doesn't contain any advanced graphic concepts such as NSOpenGLView though; perhaps Aaron will write another book ;-).

    

  • JoeZobkiw: This book has a great balance for those of us who know how to program the Macintosh but are just getting into Cocoa. Not too simple, not too difficult. Aaron does a nice job of keeping it all in the proper perspective with relevant examples.

    

  • BradSmith: I bought the "Learning Cocoa" book, which was okay I guess but this one is WAY, WAY better. You can just get this one instead. You don't need the Learning Cocoa book as well. Aaron covers all the important stuff and tells you WHY you are doing various things rather than just telling you to "do it this way" and "here's how". Best technical book I've ever read.

    

  • NicholasShanks: Book has been on order from fatbrain for over a month and still not yet received. I want this book! Now!

    

  • awrc: Got this through Bookpool for a nice discount (34%).  Still working through it, but impression so far is that this is much less dry than "Learning Cocoa".  Like the "For The More Curious" sections in some chapters.

    

  • DaveFayram: One of the best things about this book is that it goes through a wide range of material, without jumping around. Everything seems to follow an elegant, logical procession. If you complete the book from start to finish you feel like you've taken a class on the subject, complete with final. The index is good, the TOC is good, I use it as a reference book as well as a learning book.

    

  • BrentGulanowski: Aaron is brilliant. A terrific read. Very informative.

    

  • AdamAtlas: This is the book that first got me started with Cocoa. I tried Apple's book, but I didn't like it. I strongly recommend it as a learning guide for beginning and intermediate Cocoa programmers, and even a reference book for advanced programmers. (If someone tells you to RTFM, turn to this book... :)

    

  • Gabriel Falkenberg: My reason for the "Borrow it" rating is that while the book is a good introduction to Cocoa and covers a lot of subjects it wasn't really as advanced as I had hoped it would be. I know it's mainly a book for Cocoa beginners but with all people praising it I bought it anyway. So if you already feel comfortable using Cocoa you'd probably be better of borrowing the book rather than buying it.

    

  • EnglaBenny: I vote with Gabriel, for sort of the same reason. I really learned a lot (from online tutorials and sites like this) in the three weeks I waited for this book to ship, and that made the book a little bit a disappointment..

    

  • UliKusterer: IMHO the best book for Cocoa beginners. If Currency Converter and Moon Travel Tutorial didn't have enough detail for you, and if Apple's Objective C PDF was too dry, this is the book to get. It took me one weekend to learn Cocoa with this. Saturday to work through the book, Sunday to work on my first own app, referring back to the book. I don't use it much anymore, lent it to my sister, actually, but I'd still say BUY IT if you can afford it. The only thing missing, IIRC, is a closer discussion of advanced features like categories, protocols and stuff like @selector and SEL, which I had to get out of Apple's ObjC PDF.

    

  • Aaron and MarkDalrymple have written a new book:  BookCoreMacOSXandUnix -  http://borkware.com/corebook/

    

  • JoshaChapmanDodson: I've had my share of bad CocoaBooks. But this one is the best! I love it.

    

  • Someone on the CocoaResources page: The definitive guide to Cocoa.  When Apple acquired NeXTSTEP in 1996 they hired Aaron to teach their engineers Cocoa.

    

  •  I just got the new edition yesterday.  I have been learning cocoa for about 2 months now. This book has filled in the gaps so perfectly, that I wish I had it when I first started. I think it would have saved my at least a month of learning. If you want to learn Cocoa developement, this is the best book for that.  What it doesn't do is give you a complete manual of objective-c.  So you should know C or at least Java and learning objective-c is simple.

    

  •  The second edition is very good for starting out.  I love the section on the controller layer! -RossDude

    

  •  The best book to learn Cocoa from. IMO the two essential CocoaBooks are this and BookCocoaProgramming by Anguish, Buck & Yacktmann

    

  •  I bought it in the french edition "Cocoa par la pratique" and i think it's the only cocoa book that have been translated in french. And it's good so go ahead. - StephaneDassieu

    

  •  IMHO the cover pictures and blurb do not do the content justice, it looks insignificant and cursory. Try not to judge this book by its covers. It is the best of breed for the beginner, just ahead of BookCocoaRecipes. The second edition is much better than the first: HillegassCocoaBookFirstVsSecondEd.

    

  •  This is the first cocoa book i got. It is useful for learning how things works and it makes it easy for you to write your own apps by learning from the examples. The objective c explination was a little confusing so i picked up the objective-c pocket reference, but after reading through that the rest of this book made sense. 

    

  •  This book was a real help to learning Cocoa for me. This is a great starting point for anyone who wants to learn Mac OS X programming. It teaches a lot of stuff I'd expect in a book for experts. Great Job Aaron! - PietroGagliardi (added to BUY vote section)

    

  • Criticism: Like many others, this was also the first book I read on Cocoa which made any sense to me, and helped me learn through practical steps which I could apply immediately to real-world projects. Although it was not an 'in-depth' look at Cocoa, it was certainly enough to get me well beyond the 'newbie' stage. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out, that the current (2nd) Edition of this book was written in 2004. Since then, both Cocoa, as well as Objective-C, have undergone some *very major* changes - such as the addition of Core Data to Cocoa, and garbage collection to Objective-C. These additions and enhancements, in my view, change quite fundamentally the way programs are developed on the Mac. It seems to me, therefore, that many of the coding practices and suggestions in the book are now sadly out-of-date. Unfortunately, at this time there is *no* book, to my knowledge, that properly introduce these topics, and the 'new' coding practices. So, here's hoping that Aaron will eventually update this - we're all looking forward to it! - I. Couto

    

  • There is an update to this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/CocoaA-R-Programming-MacA-OS/dp/0321503619/ref=pd_bbs_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200077228&sr=8-6

    

  • The third edition of this book is out now, which I picked up from my local Barnes & Nobel.  This book does an awesome job at explaining Cocoa, I tried reading several online tutorials but didn't really get it until reading Aarons book. The third edition does remedy the problems mentioned in the above criticism.

    

  • Good to begin with. Does not explain Cocoa as deeply as I'd like, but this was the first book which actually helped me learn Cocoa on the Mac.

    








Some moron put spam on this page for ringtones. Reverted. ( edited by PietroGagliardi to escape spam filter when editing this page to include updated second edition cover picture )