Cocoa is an object-oriented development environment available in Apple's Mac OS X environment. Mac OS X, a unified operating system and graphical operating environment, is the fastest growing Unix variant on the market today. Hard-core Unix programmers, developers who cut their teeth on classic Mac operating systems, and developers who cherished NeXTSTEP, the decade-old system on which today's Cocoa is based -- all are flocking to Cocoa, and they need a lot more practical information than is currently available from Apple. There is a lot to learn. Building Cocoa Applications is an ideal book for serious developers who want to write programs for the Mac OS X using Cocoa. It's a no-nonsense, hands-on text that's filled with examples -- not only simple and self-contained examples of individual Cocoa features, but extended examples of complete applications with enough sophistication and complexity that readers can put them to immediate use in their own environments. Building Cocoa Applications takes a step-by-step approach to teaching developers how to build real graphics applications using Cocoa. By showing the basics of an application in one chapter and then layering additional functionality onto that application in subsequent chapters, the book keeps readers interested and motivated. Readers will see immediate results, and then go on to build onto what they've already achieved. The book is divided into four major parts: Part I introduces the Mac OS X graphical user interface (Aqua) from a developer's point of view, Cocoa developer tools (such as the Interface Builder, Project Builder, and gdb debugger), object-oriented concepts, the Objective-C language in which Cocoa is written, and the basics of Cocoa programming itself. Part II focuses on building the first complete application, Calculator, a simple four-function calculator. The chapters in this part of the book extend the application, piece by piece, by introducing such features as nibs, icons, delegation, resizing, events, and responders. Part III focuses on building an application called MathPaper, which is similar to a word processor but which instead solves mathematical expressions the user supplies. The chapters in this part of the book extend MathPaper by developing both the front and back ends using a variety of Cocoa classes and methods. They introduce Cocoa'sdocument-based architecture, tasks, pipes, Rich Text format, handling document files, and using Quartz to draw in windows. Part IV focuses on building the GraphPaper application, a more complex multithreading application that graphs mathematical functions in multiple dimensions and that uses mouse-over capabilities to identify graph points. The chapters in this part of the book add more advanced Mac OS X features such as multithreading, color, mouse events, zoom buttons, pasteboards, services, preferences, and the defaults database. By the end of the book, readers who have built the applications as they have read will have a solid understanding of what it really means to develop complete and incrementally more complex Cocoa applications. The book comes with extensive source code available for download from the O'Reilly web site, along with an appendix listing additional resources for further study.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 20 Ratings

Try a different book first. - 2004-04-04
Reviewer Rating:
This book has potential, but in general I am pretty dissatisfied.

Good things:

(1) It is pretty well thought-out.

(2) The progression through 4 projects is good.

(3) There is working code for the examples available online.

Bad things:
(1) The book is riddled with errors. If you include the unofficial errata from OReilly's Website, the book becomes about 200% more usable.

(2) Why has this book not been reprinted? At LEAST OReilly should have released an official errata for this book at this point!!!

(3) This book does NOT cover 10.3 and the XCode software (still uses project builder). In most cases this is ok and you can figure much of it out. However, there are times that the differences are too significant to overcome without a lot of effort.
--
I have been very happy with O'Reilly books in the past, but this one is substandard.
I would recommend trying a different book unless this one is overhauled.

Well written book... - 2003-09-24
Reviewer Rating:
I tried using Aaron Hillegass' book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, but this book was much easier to follow for me. I don't mean to rag on Hillegass' book - it's still well written - just a not quite as easy for me. This book takes the time to *explain* the concepts before diving into a program. However, if you're looking for a reference book, this isn't it. This book will teach you how to use Cocoa by taking you through the construction of three fairly fancy applications - a calculator, and two word processing oriented programs.

Error-ridden and too little actual teaching - 2004-05-09
Reviewer Rating:
Not recommended, although some people like it a lot.++ More errors in the text than others, making you go to the web for errata pages. Relies too much on just presenting source code for the reader to type in, without adequate explanation of what the code does and why it's structured the way it is. Less of a gentle introduction than Hillegass's book "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X", less comprehensive than Anguish's book "Cocoa Programming".

Excellent Cocoa starter - 2009-07-01
Reviewer Rating:
This is an excellent book for those starting with Cocoa development. The authors take the time to explain how and why things need to be done. And, although they reference a pre-Xcode3 development environment, they provide enough explanation so you can easily use Xcode3 to perform the same capability. When you complete this book, you can read through Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, by Aaron Hillegass. As a prerequisite, you can read Programming in Objective-C, by Stephen G. Kochan to learn Objective-C coding.

buy Hillegass instead - 2008-08-09
Reviewer Rating:
This book is upperquartile (as books of this type go). It has many good points. But it has one fatal drawback: there is a much better book available. Hillegass (1) is a professional trainer with oodles of classroom experience and that shines through in his book - he trained many of the Apple coders who now work on Cocoa, (2) has been involved with Cocoa from its inception. As icing on the cake, the 3rd ed of his book is up-to-date (2008), whereas this is not.

I ploughed through Garfinkel and Mahoney first (on the strength of the O'Reilly reputation and good experiences with other O'Reilly books). I still did not understand Cocoa particularly well. Then I ploughed through several hundred pages of the Applie Guides. Finally, I bought Hillegass. I wish I had found it first. The Apple guides, or some of them, are quite good, but you need a good grounding first.

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