Great Price Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition) for $27.48 Today

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. =(

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

• ISBN13: 9780321503619
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

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Price : $49.99
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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.

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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

waste of money and time - Lorelei - USA
I regret having purchased this book. It was a waste of money. I previously purchased Programming in Objective-C 2.0 (2nd Edition) by Stephen G. Kochan, which while not perfect is an excellent book to get one started learning Objective C programming. I thought this Cocoa book would be the next step, but it is horrible. The author starts out telling you to do a bunch of steps to write a program and does not explain why you are doing them, but even worse HE LEAVES STEPS OUT so that you then have to try to figure out what steps he failed to mention. I tried to fill in the blanks myself but still could not get his program to run, making the time I spent on the first three chapters a total waste. I really gave it a shot but have decided that this book is not worth continuing with, and it was therefore a waste of my money. I'll be purchasing different books on Cocoa.

Related to Items You've Viewed

• Programming in Objective-C 2.0 (2nd Edition)
• Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK
• Cocoa Design Patterns
• Xcode 3 Unleashed
• Cocoa Programming Developer's Handbook

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Great Price Cocoa Design Patterns for $26.99 Today

This has been a very interesting and easy read. This book covers Cocoa design patterns for Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, as you can see on page xxiv. However, learning the design patterns of Cocoa for Leopard will greatly help your understanding of Snow Leopard and later iterations of Mac OS X. Though it would have been interesting to know of any changes to these design patterns in Snow Leopard, something you might have expected in a 2010 copyright book.

That being said, this book is very easy to read and understand, if you really want to learn Cocoa. Though the learning curve for Cocoa is steep, this book greatly simplifies that process. However, not all the code seems to have been carefully checked for errors.

For example, the terminal colon on a method name taking a parameter was often missing, as you can see on page 212:

[someControl setAction:NSSelectorFromString(@"copy")];

The method "copy:" is very different from "copy". "copy:" takes a parameter while "copy" takes none. A colon in an Objective-C method is part of that method name and indicates a parameter to be inserted after it when invoking the method. A method that takes no parameters has no colons in its name. A method name with any number of parameters has a colon for each parameter and always ends with a colon for the last parameter. The error of leaving out the terminal colon for method names taking a parameter was common in the code in the book.

Another error I found was on page 104 where this method was shown:

- (id) performSelector:(SEL)aSelector
{
IMP methodImplementation = [self methodForSelector:aSelector];
return (*IMP)(self, aSelector);
}

IMP is a function pointer type defined on page 103 as:
typedef id (*IMP)(id self, SEL _cmd, ...);

The error is that the return statement above should be this:

return (*methodImplementation)(self, aSelector);

This error was also from not carefully reviewing the code. It may have been better to test the code before putting it in the book to make sure it compiles and works. If I were to write a book, I think I would copy the code to an IDE first, test it, and then copy it back into the software I would be using to write the book.

However, generally the code is correct, and the code errors are not that unusual for computer books. Also, the book has the right mixture of code and text, and the examples are well thought out. At one point I thought I saw an error, but it was correct. On page 332 in the method + (MYGameHighScoreManager *)sharedInstance I did not see where the static variable myInstance was declared. Then I noticed that it is declared at the top of the code listing on page 331 outside of the @implementation block. Referring to page 154, I found a similar method with the same declaration at the beginning of the method:

static MyGameHighScoreManager *myInstance = nil;

In fact, except for that line the two methods on pages 154 and 332 are identical. The difference is that the method in page 154 declares it within the method statically while the code in page 331 shows the same static declaration made outside both the @implementation and the @interface code blocks, which is the correct way to do it, given the intermixing of C and Objective-C code. Hence, learning Cocoa requires expertise in both Objective-C and C, one reason for the steep learning curve. These languages may be simple to learn, but require a lifetime to master.

Due the code errors I found and for not covering Snow Leopard, I give this book 4 stars, but for the content and the explanations I would give this book 5 stars for the author makes it very easy to read and follow. Overall, I would recommend anyone who wants to learn Cocoa or improve their understanding of it to get this book, and I am glad I bought it. It has increased my understanding and filled many holes in my knowledge of Cocoa, for there really are not many books on the subject.

However, I see on Amazon that newer books are coming out on the subject soon. But I still recommend giving this book a read just to learn the design patterns and to understand how Cocoa works and the proper way to program in it. Whether you are expert at Cocoa or a beginner, you will get a lot out of this book.

Cocoa Design Patterns Features

• ISBN13: 9780321535023
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

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Price : $49.99

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Overviews

“Next time some kid shows up at my door asking for a code review, this is the book that I am going to throw at him.”

 

–Aaron Hillegass, founder of Big Nerd Ranch, Inc., and author of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

 

Unlocking the Secrets of Cocoa and Its Object-Oriented Frameworks

 

Mac and iPhone developers are often overwhelmed by the breadth and sophistication of the Cocoa frameworks. Although Cocoa is indeed huge, once you understand the object-oriented patterns it uses, you’ll find it remarkably elegant, consistent, and simple.

 

Cocoa Design Patterns begins with the mother of all patterns: the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, which is central to all Mac and iPhone development. Encouraged, and in some cases enforced by Apple’s tools, it’s important to have a firm grasp of MVC right from the start.

 

The book’s midsection is a catalog of the essential design patterns you’ll encounter in Cocoa, including

• Fundamental patterns, such as enumerators, accessors, and two-stage creation
• Patterns that empower, such as singleton, delegates, and the responder chain
• Patterns that hide complexity, including bundles, class clusters, proxies and forwarding, and controllers

And that’s not all of them! Cocoa Design Patterns painstakingly isolates 28 design patterns, accompanied with real-world examples and sample code you can apply to your applications today. The book wraps up with coverage of Core Data models, AppKit views, and a chapter on Bindings and Controllers.

 

Cocoa Design Patterns clearly defines the problems each pattern solves with a foundation in Objective-C and the Cocoa frameworks and can be used by any Mac or iPhone developer.

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Customer Review

Very good, with only a few issues - W. Truppel - Copenhagen, Denmark
Overall, I thought the book was expertly written. It covers a lot of important and interesting aspects of Cocoa, and all its major patterns. The only reasons I'm not giving it 5 stars are:

- there are several errors in the code samples. Occasional bugs are inevitable, but non-compiling code is inexcusable and a major disappointment, for a book of this nature;
- its coverage of the Singleton pattern is incomplete, considering that it doesn't discuss Apple's own recommendations on how to implement a singleton;
- no discussion of patterns related to thread safety;
- the discussion of HOMs (higher order messages) is interesting, but it strikes me as something rarely used; I'd have preferred if the author had used the space spent on HOMs to discuss something more practical. For instance, a common application of the Proxy pattern is the asynchronous loading of images off the web. I think that would have been more useful;
- later chapters are very repetitive, and much less concrete in actual usage, than earlier ones. For instance, chapters 28 (Managers), 29 (Controllers), and 32 (Bindings and Controllers) have a lot in common, and that commonality is repeated in all 3 chapters. Chapter 31 (Application Kit Views) is a repetition of material covered in several previous chapters and adds nothing new.

I'm a great fan of Design Patterns and think that the Gang of Four book (Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software) is still the best book on the subject. However, it's focused on C++ and not on Objective-C and Cocoa. This book, despite its faults, is a worthy partner to the Gang of Four book and is a great addition to any Cocoa programmer's library.

Absolute Must-Read - Innocente -
There are a few core books that I consider must-read books for starting Mac / iPhone developers. This is one of them.

It is especially important for current or former Language / Framework programmers to study this book, and study it hard.

Nothing is more obvious than code that has been architected by old C++ / .NET / MFC coders that do not 'get' the Cocoa Design Patterns.

Don't be one of those folks.

This applies to Java, C#, Smalltalk, C, C++, Delphi, etc coders. These Design Patterns MUST be learned, and used.

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Learning Cocoa Review

This book is filled with little hints and tips and condensed with great material. It reminds me of the Kernighan and Richie's book for C. There's something to learn in each single paragraph.



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Overviews

Learn Cocoa™ application development not merely by reading, but by doing.Learning Cocoa begins with essential object-oriented programming concepts for those with no previous experience. It then introduces the Cocoa environment, development, tools, and some simple tutorials to help you understand the elements of Cocoa programming. For the rest of the book you create a series of increasingly complex example applications, with the code right in the text, so you simply type it in. Each tutorial lays the foundation for the more advanced techniques and concepts in the next one. You don't need an extensive programming background to work with this book, though some experience with C is helpful. If you already know an object-oriented programming language like Java or Smalltalk, you'll quickly feel at home with Objective-C, the language of this book. Written by Apple Computer insiders with access to engineers deeply involved in creating Mac OS® X, the book brings you information you can't get anywhere else--and a potential leg up in the Mac OS X application development market.

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Specifications

For Mac developers of all levels, Learning Cocoa provides an approachable guide to creating applications using Objective-C and the programming tools built into the new Mac OS X operating system. This efficiently packaged text will help virtually anyone master basic Mac application development.

Written by the experts at Apple Computer, Inc., this book sets an admirable standard of clarity for a basic programming tutorial. It begins with the fundamentals of object-oriented programming and Objective-C, the default language used for the Mac platform. Much of the book consists of hands-on exercises for creating a variety of simple Mac applications built on the Cocoa application framework (a rich set of classes that make it simple to create software). Learning Cocoa is not just a source of raw source code; rather, its salient feature is a series of step-by-step guides to working with Mac OS X tools like the Interface Builder and the built-in Apple IDE. From a simple "Hello, World" program and a currency converter to a "Travel Advisor" application (with information on three countries) and a "To Do" application, the book provides exercises that show you all the steps for creating software using a variety of tools.

The discussion of the user interface widgets that are available in the Mac OS X is excellent. You will learn how to design interfaces (which are saved to .nib files), and about the Model-View-Controller architecture recommended by Apple for designing reusable and flexible classes. Later in the book, the same classes are reused in a multiple-document version of the Travel Advisor program. Sample code for a custom widget that displays a calendar will show you how to build custom components.

Throughout this book, there's plenty of information on the nuts and bolts of building successful applications for the Mac OS X, especially memory and resource management. There're also plenty of diagrams and background on the architecture of using Cocoa application framework classes together to create software.

Even Mac beginners should benefit from this concise and well-presented text. It will have you writing simple applications fast, while giving you the latest on the classes and tools available on the newest Mac OS X. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• Overview of the Cocoa framework for Mac OS X
• Object-oriented programming tutorial
• Objective-C language quick start
• Mac application development tools (including Project Builder, Interface Builder, and command-line tools)
• A "Hello, World" application in Cocoa
• Fundamental Cocoa classes (including collections and controls)
• Memory and resource management in Cocoa
• A "Currency Converter" application (including basic GUI programming with Cocoa components)
• Event-handling basics
• Using table views and data sources
• Persistence and "flattening" Cocoa objects
• A "Travel Advisor" sample application (including the Model-View-Controller architecture)
• The Cocoa Multiple-Document Architecture
• A "To Do" scheduling application (including a custom calendar component and timers)
• Deployment in Cocoa (application settings, icons, and document types)
• Compiler optimization in Cocoa
• Reference for basic graphics in Cocoa

Customer Review

Bad Dog! - A. W. Crawford - WI, US
Dull, dull, dull. Quite literally this is a bunch of documentation you can download from Apple's site bound in a book. Yes, you do learn something, but the ratio of useful information to "type in the program" is awful and it's very dry reading.

Try the Aaron Hillegass book, or the new O'Reilly "Building Cocoa Applications" if you want a useful title on programming Cocoa. I see there's a second edition of this book due in September 2002 - hopefully this'll either pep up the existing content, or add something more (published paper documentation for the Cocoa frameworks is non-existent, probably because some of the on-line documentation I've looked at still has big gaping holes in it - and people wonder why Carbonized apps outnumber those that use Cocoa...)

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Learning Cocoa with Objective-C, 2nd Edition Review

As with most O'reilly books this one is not a let down. I was most impressed to find out that is actually written by Apple Computer and then was handed to James Duncan Davidson to make it flow.

It has a great explanation of Object Oriented programming as it pertains to Objective-C. Although if you are looking to get into OOP for the first time I would suggest a higher-level language such as Java (the syntax can get in the way of learning the concepts and ideas with Obj-C / C++).

The book is titled to cover upto MacOS 10.2. I am using Leopard (10.5) and the only differences (so far) are: the GUI screenshots in the book are, well, out of date; and the default naming conventions for Xcode files are different. Neither of these is a big issue though.

Its a Good book.



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Overviews

Based on the Jaguar release of Mac OS X 10.2, this new edition of Learning Cocoa covers the latest updates to the Cocoa frameworks, including examples that use the Address Book and Universal Access APIs. Also included with this edition is a handy quick reference card, charting Cocoa's Foundation and AppKit frameworks, along with an Appendix that includes a listing of resources essential to any Cocoa developer--beginning or advanced. After introducing you to Project Builder and Interface Builder, Learning Cocoa with Objective-C brings you quickly up to speed on the concepts of object-oriented programming with Objective-C, the language of choice for building Cocoa applications. From there, each chapter presents a different sample program for you to build, with easy to follow, step-by-step instructions to teach you the fundamentals of Cocoa programming. The techniques you will learn in each chapter lay the foundation for more advanced techniques and concepts presented in later chapters.

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Customer Review

A book for Cocoa programmers - Alberto Paderno - Brescia, BS Italy
The book is an useful guide for who needs to learn Cocoa programming, and needs to learn also Objective-C.

Low on details - S. Kennedy - Frostburg, MD
If only Apple put as much effort in its books as it does in its iPods...

This text skips over all sorts of details regarding the Cocoa framework it purports to teach, while repeating many mundane details (like how to create a project) over and over. The authors focus mostly on Interface Builder. If that is what you need, though, I'd still recommend the Internet instead.

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Learning the iPad SDK

Learning the iPad SDK Review

Price : $29.99

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Overviews

If you want to develop apps for Apple's new iPad, all you need is basic programming knowledge, desire, and this book. With Learning the iPad SDK, you'll learn how to design and develop simple multi-touch iPad apps before moving onto more complex projects. And you don't need experience building iPhone apps or knowledge of the Objective-C language to do it.

This hands-on book takes you step by step through the basics. You'll learn how to develop great applications using the iPad SDK, UIKit, Core Data, networking, file I/O, multi-media, and simple graphics and animations. It's an excellent introduction to iPad development for people unfamiliar with this game-changing device.

• Shorten the learning curve involved with multi-touch development
• Learn how to develop consumer apps, games, and vertical apps for specific industries
• Build apps with Apple's Xcode tools, including Interface Builder
• Explore basic layout and navigation, including typical user controls
• Write a simple app to access a web service, and an app that stores data
• Create apps to work with audio and video, and an app that processes text
• Learn the ins and outs of getting your applications into the App Store

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