Customer Reviews

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I did a lot of research before buying this book, and the overwhelming accolades seemed to assure me that my [...] bucks would be money well-spent. Personally, I feel very let down by it. The way the author jumps into code without explanation, routinely giving you half a page of calls with absolutely zero previous discussion of what they do or where they come from, is both baffling and frustrating.

Most of the exercises are conducted with a tone along the lines of "Just do what I tell you and it'll make sense later," which doesn't suit my learning style.

Much of the book is focused on multi-chapter projects, which can be problematic for someone who has a project in mind and simply wants to learn how different aspects of Cocoa work.

Also, the text really fails at answering any questions you might have about anything. Seriously, if you have a question in your head, you will never find the answer unless you muddle through the assignment. The book has a tendency to never talk about anything in particular with any depth, and only explains things in as much as they apply to the current example.

For future editions, here are some recommendations:

1) When you introduce a new object, give us a list of methods near the beginning of the chapter, so we aren't constantly guessing what you're talking about. There are times when every new line of code feels like a surprise.

2) Cover some basic things that actual people want to know. Here's a big one: "How do I open and parse a file?"

3) Take it easy on the line drawings. They sometimes make things seem a lot more complex than they actually are.

4) The cavalier handling of Bindings is often infuriating. I've re-read sections literally a dozen times without figuring out why things are bound to this thing instead of that.

Anyway, that's just my two cents. This book is decent, and it will tell you how to do a LOT of things, but you really have to earn it. It's a textbook, and it expects you to follow a course from beginning to end. If you're not willing to do that, you really shouldn't pick up this book, as it will drive you nuts.

Also, once it starts getting into writing code, you have to be patient enough to roll with it when you're confused. For me, the book left so many unanswered questions while I was working through it that I was almost perpetually filled with angst over things. I'd rather learn one thing at a time, learn it well, and move on to another thing.

If you plan to write for Mac OS X, and have some programming experience, this book is a MUST HAVE. This is by far the best introductory book I have ever read on any language.

If you DO NOT have programming experience, I would still recommend this book. There are some spots where the logic might be hard to grasp, but Aaron Hillegass walks you through it.

In either case, but more so for beginners, I would also recommend Programming in Objective-C (Developer's Library). The less experience you have, the more strongly I would suggest reading this book first. It will walk you through the basics of straight Objective-C and then start you off using frameworks in OS X. If you are a Windows user and do not have a Mac, Programming in Objective-C (Developer's Library) will show you how to write and compile Objective-C in Windows.
(Look for the new version of this book which uses Objective-C 2.0)

I come from Windows development, having programmed in VB 6, VB.NET, C (and variants), and java. Aaron Hillegass takes you right into the heart of the Mac OS X development environment and gives you a guided tour. Showing you the basics of both Cocoa and the X Code development environment. Pick the book up and you won't regret it. This is a walkthrough tutorial style book. It is not a reference book. Apples online documentation is the best reference for Cocoa.

There are a lot of resources out there for Cocoa programmers. If you are looking for more help with Cocoa, check out the free podcasts that are available on iTunes. "CocoaCast" is a 'screen cast' that actually follows this book and may help you if you have trouble. Other podcasts that i find easy to listen to come from the Mac Developer Network such as "Late Night Cocoa" and "The Mac Developer Roundtable". They also have a great community that you can join by visiting www.mac-developer-network.com. They have video classes on some great topics which are very helpful.

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.

Despite the accolades by some, this is not a book for beginners. To learn programming you need lots of examples, lots of exercises in a defined problem space (so you can solve them! and learn...) and good explanations not only of what a particular feature does, but what it is for and how to use it, practically, and in your own programs. This book fails on all these criteria. Further, some of the examples don't work, and they are so complex that a beginner is baffled as to where even to start looking to fix them.

If you don't know Objective C (which was my situation - my background was self taught programming in C and the GEM GUI on the Atari Falcon) or even don't know C, Steve Kochan has written an excellent book, "Programming in Objective C 2.0", on these issues and also on the Foundation Kit. His book satisfies all the criteria mentioned above. We need him to write a similar book on Cocoa. Don't waste your time, or your money, on Hillegass.

After spending several fruitless months on Hillegass's book, I found free help elsewhere: my friends, the sad news is that there is no avoiding reading Apple's guides to XCode and Interface Builder, and above all, the Cocoa Fundamentals Guide, and dipping into other guides, as necessary. I recommend working through Apple's Cocoa Application Tutorial (much to learn there) and Apple's sample programs in the Image Kit Programming Guide (even more to learn, not just image-kit specific stuff) - and note that these programs DO work. The Wikibooks "Programming Mac OS X with Cocoa for Beginners" is another excellent tutorial, with excellent explanations. I also found the Cocoa tutorials by Julius Guzy (start at: [...]) to be invaluable. These have the great merit of focusing on just one topic at a time - so if you stuff up, as invariably happens sometimes, you have a defined problem space which, yes, you can indeed solve with some ingenuity and perseverance, and learn from having solved.

This book gives good directions to learn the Cocoa programming. However, it seems that this is another round of edition based on the previous one. The book constantly refers to the NIB file of the project being worked on, which was the old form of the current XIB file. It is a subtle thing but confusing enough to those who have never done Cocoa programming before. This sounds negative, but overall, the book gives good guidance to experienced programmers, (not necessarily in Objective-C.) I am now on Chapter 7, and getting accustomed to the quality level of the book. The book has Challenge questions in many of the chapters, and I advise everyone to work on them. The book is no way in text-book quality, but there are not many competing books in the market. I have given 4 starts indicating that the book is not bad but it leaves plenty rooms for improvements.

The book is very well written, with pragmatic approach that will get you going with Mac Apps quickly. Nonetheless, it's impossible to follow it coherently since most of Xcode and Interface Builder has changed drastically since this book was written. For me it was too much.

It needs an update.

I've gone over the previous revision to this book, and while I did find it the best book on Cocoa/ObjC, I still felt like the Mac world kept moving forward while the book was left behind - things changed too much, and some things were not relevant anymore. These are obviously, things that were introduced in Leopard, but even Tiger features didn't always look the same (interface builder screenshots for example).

This third edition is a massive update to virtually any aspect of the topics being covered. From the garbage collector, to CoreData, to CoreAnimation, properties, Objective C 2.0 in general - It's all there.

Hillegass goes a great length to try to explain the "Why?" and not just the "How?". This is very important if you want to turn a developer into a creative spirit and not just a dumb robot.

All in all, this is a must-have for any new/slightly experienced Cocoa developer. Amazon has a terrific price on it too, so the deal is actually sweeter.

This is the book I started with to get into iPhone development. Even though this book is specific to Mac OS X desktop software development, it's by far the best book to get a solid foundation in Cocoa and Objective-C before learning the specifics in the iPhone SDK.

It took me about 80 hours to get through this book, doing all of the example programs. After that, it felt like I had taken a 5 credit course in college. This will teach you Xcode, Interface Builder, Cocoa, and Objective-C. Almost all the people at my last company that got into iPhone development said that this is *the* book to start with to get started, and I agree. Hillegass actually teaches a Cocoa class, and you can tell he is a great teacher from reading the book. You'll feel like you accomplished something cool after each chapter.

Before starting with the book, I already knew several other languages in-depth, notably Java, Perl, and some C. It may be a little too advanced for those without solid programming experience, and Objective-C looks very foreign to those who haven't used it before, but it's really not once you get used to it.

I must say that this one is one of the best written technical books I've read in a while. The author does a great job at introducing the user to cocoa programming. The examples are easy to follow and are very well explained. I use xcode version 3.2.1 and there are a few differences between the version used by the author but overall it was not hard to recreate and follow the examples. One of the first chapters gives you an introduction to Objective C for those not familiar with it. It is not an in-depth explanation as you should already be familiar with a programming language such as C++ or Java.
I bought the kindle edition and I must say that all the diagrams are displayed clearly (as opposed to other kindle books I've bought where you cannot make any sense of the diagrams due to poor image quality). Overall, I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for an introduction to Cocoa. Note that it is not an introduction to programming, however, so you should already know that.

With the recent introduction of the Mac App Store, I needed to pick up a book that would get me the foundation I needed to start converting my iOS app into a mac app. I was under the (mostly) incorrect assumption that it would be a simple switch to flip and that all of the sudden I'd have the OS X equivalent application. Unfortunately that is not the case, and a lot of work must go into converting everything. (Macs offer windows, have to integrate visually with other apps, is based on an older AppKit instead of UIKit SDK, etc).

I had read the Big Nerd Ranch book for the iPhone and absolutely loved it, so I figured I'd give this book a chance, since it is so highly rated. I was not disappointed at all! I have been working through the book for the last week and moving around as needed and I'm definitely starting to get a feel for how to move around applications on the Mac.

It hits a ton of material and covers almost everything you'll need to get started on the Mac. It doesn't go very deep into any one subject in particular, but that's where the internet, forums and documentation comes in. So it's perfect for getting your feet wet and beginning to get a sense of everything.

The one thing that I'm not as used to is the fact that Mac development seems to heavily rely on using Interface Builder (Or at least this book does). On the iPhone and iPad, I've mostly kept to doing everything in Xcode. So that has been a bit of an adjustment, but once you find your way around IB and start to understand all the connections being made, it's really pretty natural. This book has been tremendous in helping me understand all the different view/window/document models and has offered a pretty good step into the Mac development world.

So if you're in the same boat as me (an iOS developer looking to making a mac app counterpart), I'd highly recommend this book. I didn't necessarily read it through start to finish, but I go back to it time and time again for reference and understanding of how something works. The examples are easy to do and serve as a great basis for converting the code to what you want to do.