1.2. Understanding Cocoa’s Role in Mac OS X

Cocoa is a large and important part of development on Mac OS X, but it is not the only part. It is important to understand how it fits in to the larger picture. Figure 1.1 gives a simple overview of how the major components of OS X fit together. As a developer, you can choose to ignore most of the details of the layers underneath Cocoa, but understanding them will help you to write better programs.

Figure 1.1. An overview of the major components of OS X.