Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4931 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Suitable for anyone with a little 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-understand code examples help make this text an excellent resource. It also helps that Hillegass is a truly engaging writer. He first explains how legacy NeXTSTEP platform has evolved into Cocoa on the Mac OS X. Starting 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 learn 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 helps that beginners will not get lost in the details of Cocoa development, but will give the more advanced reader something more to do.

While there a 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 still, knows how to teach it to others. --Richard Dragan

From the Back Cover

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.

About the Author
Aaron Hillegas runs Big Nerd Ranch, well-known for its popular Cocoa programming classes. Previously, he was a developer at NeXT and Apple. At Next, he wrote the first course on OpenStep, the predecessor to today's Cocoa tools. At Apple, he created and taught courses in Cocoa directly for and to Apple engineers. This book is based on Aaron's Big Nerd Ranch course and is influenced by 15 years of work with OpenStep and Cocoa.

Customer Reviews

Exemplary!
We know three things about Aaron Hillegass: he has had many years' experience with OpenStep/Cocoa; he is a professional trainer; he wears a big hat. All these things show through in this book: it is technically sound; clearly presented; humorous. All programming books should be like this.

The book is written for programmers who already know C++ or Java... I don't. (Although I have about 20 years experience in programing with BASIC, FORTRAN, S/360 Assembler, COBOL, REXX, ... I'm new to OOP.) Nevertheless, I found the book and example projects easy to follow and understand. The challenges (Aaron's term for what others might call exercises) are often challenging... but Aaron makes no bones about it: learning a new programming language can be hard. (Even for those with degrees in astrophysics from CalTech... read Chapter 1.)

The book is well supported by a web page at Big Nerd Ranch, with errata, solutions to those challenges, etc. (Even better, the BNR web site has some downloadable example projects and full-blown open-source Cocoa applications, such as BigShow, an XML-based MS PowerPoint alternative.)

All in all, it is inspirational. It makes me wish I was a professional programmer again. Well, just maybe...

Excellent Learning Resource for keen MacOS developers!
As a student currently finishing a MSc in Computer Science and dreaming on someday working for Apple, I dived into Cocoa as soon as MacOS X came out officialy. From all the books out there in Cocoa Programming, this has been by far the best. It is written in an extremely familiar tone, and as long as you already have experience in C, or better yet C++, you'll be happy to be developing Cocoa applications easily.

I am really excited about such a powerful set of frameworks, but with the lack of documentation from Apple it is really necessary to have a good book such as this one by hand.

Great stuff really! Overall, best book in Cocoa programming! BUY IT NOW! :)

Long awaited teaching reference on Cocoa programming.
Cocoa and MacOS X deserves to be out there as a development environment of choice to the discerning programmer and user. The biggest obstacle is Apple's own technical documentation, bless them! It is dry and uninviting, just the thing to turn new developers away from such an elegant and advanced operating system.

Now, at last, we have a text book that can reverse the tide. Aaron Hillegass brings the skill of the teacher to this subject. He teaches Cocoa programmers at the "Big Nerd Ranch" in the States, but don't let that discourage you!

The author knows how to put ideas across and at what point to bring in new topics. Tricky topics such as the retain and release mechanism, normally baffling to those new to Objective-C, are revealed as the easy topic they are.

This book for the first time brings out the true purpose of Cocoa, that is to make putting programs together easy, so that you can concentrate on your program, and not have to worry about ordinary housekeeping.

I think this will become the definitive work, that evey aspiring Cocoa programmer will need to read.