Customer Reviews

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X For Dummies

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

(3rd review update 8-9-2011) This book shows the route to simple working graphic Cocoa applications in the first 40 pages. I purchased it on 2-21-2009. My opinion has changed as I have used it. Initially 5-Stars. Later 3-Stars. Now I believe 4-Stars is a fair rating. There are some improvements that I wish the author would make and an errata would be helpful. Sometimes an example will not work. An example is on Page 31 where there is no instruction to "Save" at mid-page after several text entries in the example. The "Save" instruction needs to be there or the example will not work when you get toward the end of the example around page 50.

However, you can download the working example online and proceed to the next chapter to build on that example from the preceding chapter. There are many simple and clear examples throughout the book. Studying several other Objective-C and Cocoa books have had confusing text and examples at times. I come back to this one often to see a clearer approach.

I recommend you obtain this book along with any other on the same subject. It is not expensive and it has a wealth of clear examples.

FedEx Office will spiral bind the book split into two halves between Part II and Part III for a few dollars. Each half is easy to carry, open to read or lay flat for reference while computing.

I am a retired engineer and have written programs for myself occasionally for many years, but do not consider myself a computer programmer. A half dozen are C programs, some extensive, that ran CNC machinery. They are entirely text. My goal is to convert them to graphics for Mac OS X computers. RSM

You don't release a programming book where some of the step-by-step coding instructions don't match the illustrations, some steps are missing, and the code examples don't compile or don't work as advertised. Also, you don't tell your readers that there will be a website with code examples and then give them a bad URL. When your readers finally find the code downloads in the mess that is the [...] site, that code should actually match what's described in the book. And when your book is riddled with errors, you should at least provide an online errata page. In short, YOU DON'T RELEASE A BOOK THAT HASN'T BEEN PROOF-READ!

Besides the annoyance of the book essentially being in alpha, it misses or glosses over many concepts. So, for example, you don't ever learn exactly what the 'sender' keyword does in the language, or why there are random instances of C-style method calls - object.method() instead of [object method] - and other similar oversights. It's not a big deal to figure these things out by yourself with a couple of minutes on the internet, but when you're reading through the book it really feels like important information has been left out. I found myself asking "wait, why'd he do that?" a little too often.

I can't bring myself to give this book a one-star review because it does have great potential. The projects (when they work) really are great as teaching tools, the presentation is clear and easy to understand, etc. I'd give it four stars if it had been proof-read, or if at least an online errata had been provided. Five stars if it had been just a little more thorough.

I got my new Mac Pro with Snow Leopard installed in September with the idea of beginning programming for my new Mac. I am no rookie, having programmed in C3#.Net for the Windows environment. Since I have had a lot of good experiences with the DUMMIES series in the past, I purchased this book thinking it would help. But some of the initial parts of the book made no sense to me and I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Then I discovered that the book was using Xcode 3.1 and Snow Leopard was released with Xcode 3.2. The menus were changed and the the program steps no longer worked or applied. I wrote to the Dummies people on their website to complain, but never heard a word. The book is now useless to me and I have had to purchase other books. I feel ripped off. But I guess I will just eat this paperwweight and move on. Anyone want to buy an outdated book?

Kudos to Erick! This latest edition is a good one, targeted to Xcode 3.1. It's an easy read, as tech books go. I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could, but 5 will do for now. I've tried many of the other Cocoa and Xcode books, and given up on them when the instructions for using the tools' user-interfaces do not behave as described. Changes to Xcode's (originally called Project Builder) and Interface Builder's GUIs, from version to version, may be all for the better but they can play hob with any author's most carefully crafted prose. Moral: if you're new to this, be sure that your hardware and software match what's used in the book.

One editorial glitch, for example, the website for the source-code can be found [...] and searching by ISBN - not the URL repeatedly cited in the book. Other "hiccups" can most often be resolved either by using Apple's own technical documentation (the book leads you to it) or by reading a bit further and more carefully in the book itself.

I've finished chapter 4 (in 2 days) and am keen to continue. I expect to post an update to this review once I get further along in the book.

I tried O'Reilly's online book Cocoa and Objective C Up and Running and just couldn't follow it. Cocoa for Dummies is much easy, the examples are better explained and get you to a working demonstration of each concept quicker. However the code in the book is full of mistakes. I couldn't get any of the code from the book to work except by trying to debug it myself - an interesting exercise for a complete beginner I suppose!

Here's an example.

Code from BankAccount.h file on page 138:

-(void)deposit:(float)anAmount;
-(void)withdraw:(float)withdrawAmount;

Code from BankAccount.m file:

-(void)deposit:(float)depositAmount {
balance += depositAmount;
}

-(void)withdraw:(float)withdrawAmount {
balance -= balance withdrawAmount
}

(Note the error in the code of the withdraw: method as well).


Only by downloading the free code from the [...] website could I correct all the mistakes. However, I also found a few errors in the downloaded code, but these are fewer and easier to spot:

- (NSString *)firstName; // <- remove semi-colon before using this code.
{
return firstName;
}


Wouldn't recommend this book unless you are a confident beginner capable of deciphering the author's mistakes.

Although the book is well written and well developed, time marches on and left this one behind. Any current version of XCode will leave the reader very annoyed as the examples do not work at all. Not even close to being completable. It's a shame, because the actual description of some XCode concepts is very well done, and at other times, they miss entire areas?

Get a more updated book, this one has become a paperweight. (Written in April 2010, for reference sake)

I agree with one of the reviewers who said that the book was 'good' but certain areas needed more explanation.

Unfortunately, worse than that, is that the book is now out of date. Otherwise I would have given it 4 stars instead of the 1 star.

I bought this book when XCode was at version 3.0 but had too many other things to work on. So it sat on my desk for 4 months before I was able to get on to reading it. Unfortunately, since that time, XCode and Interface Builder (the associated application used for designing UI for both Cocoa & iPhone apps) were updated. For the most part, many things are still relevant. But, major differences in how you make connections from UI elements in Interface Builder to your code have changed in version 3.2.1. Not to mention syntactical changes in Cocoa 2.0.

- Readers unfamiliar with Xcode (which I assume this book is aimed at) will be lost when they see pictures and descriptions that refer to panels that no longer exist.

- Workflow will be utterly confusing.

- Current Cocoa 2.0 syntax will be missed.

It's a shame that technical books become out of date so quickly. But I wish publishers and booksellers would do a better job informing people when it's happened.

For information on the changes in xcode, follow these links for release notes:
[...]

If you choose to buy the book, be warned there's nothing to download! Additionally, the author assumes more prior knowledge than most Dummies books.

This was a fantastic insight into programming on my Mac! I've been wanting to get a start in the programming scene for a while now and this book has helped me so much. It is a 'dummies' guide as it hasn't taught me everything, but I would strongly suggest this to anyone wishing to start programming on the mac (new programmers). Now something I would like to say to the authors: Why is it so expensive? It is only a couple dollars less than the physical book! It has cost you nothing to ship or reproduce it but still the high price. For the quality of this book, for the amount of pages, for the actual knowledge granted the reader, why not half the price? The lower the price the higher the sales. This is my personal opinion, I am on a campaign to help eBook lovers everywhere, we have a device to read it on, why are we still paying for paper?

Not happy with this book. Disclaimer: I'm new to Xcode programming, but not new to C-family languages or IDE's in general. I had trouble getting quite a few projects to build and run as advertised.