Comments on: Book Review: Cocoa® Programming for Mac® OS X, Third Edition

By: Charles

Charles — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:33:23 +0000

I have to agree with Sravan. Although I think this is a great book; well set out and paced, I feel confused about Memory Management. I don’t know when or how to use it properly.

I got my book two days ago and I am on Chapter 7. It is not boring, it really reels you in. A very good book for beginners. I had no experience with Cocoa or Objective-C when I started (although I am very skilled in C++) and now I feel confident about writing code.

The challenges are just the right level of difficulty and when you use the material and examples covered from all chapters, they are very doable. I was actually hoping that the book would have something like these challenges as I feel they are fundamental for learning the concepts.

The writing style is, as I said, captivating and assuring. It feels like an actual person is there guiding you, not like a reference document.

I highly recommend this book.

By: Sravan

Sravan — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:59:36 +0000

I just got this book the this week and i have gone through the first 7 chapters and find it very easy to use. I have good programming knowledge in the windows world especially with java (And c, c++) and the apple introduction to objective c was too slow for me. I love the pace of this book. I aim to do a chapter every two days – one for the chapter and one for the challenges.

I am loving the challenges as they allow me to internalize the concepts shown in the book.

Only one comment – with iPhone SDK not supporting garbage collection, i would prefer a bit more meat into memory management the old style. I am not sure if what i am doing is correct or not from a memory management perspective. I tried doing the dealloc classes for a few more examples, i keep running into the problem of the objects being released prematurely. I think i dont understand that part well.

Other than that, i think this is a great book for a first timer to MAC.

By: Jame

Jame — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:07:00 +0000

This is the error I get when I try to compile and run any thing *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception ‘NSInternalInconsistencyException’, reason : ‘Cannot create BOOL from object of class _NSControllerObjectProxy’ This same error comes up on things that used to run fine.

By: Michael K.

Michael K. — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:53:27 +0000

I’m an absolute beginner in Macs at all and this book is great for a first timer.

By: Divanshu

Divanshu — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:06:35 +0000

I had downloaded some chapters from the internet as this book wasn’t available in India but I found it to be a great book for somebody learning up front that I had to order it from amazon.com
I got mine in March. I’ve been studying it at a steady pace but Aaron explains it well. A good buy if you wanna start development on the MAC.

By: Cocoa for Win32 @ Luther Baker

Cocoa for Win32 @ Luther Baker — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:26:42 +0000

[...] I want to do some iPhone development and I need to start learning Cocoa so I started working my way through Allen Hillegas‘ book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, 3rd Ed. [...]

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 21 May 2008 12:54:26 +0000

I’ll second Victor’s comments – I received my copy last weekend, and I’m working through it now. I have quite a bit of experience programming on Windows, but when I started looking into Mac programming, I just didn’t know where to start. This book has been a great help to get me going on Mac development.

By: Nicolas Ivy

Nicolas Ivy — Wed, 21 May 2008 10:01:45 +0000

Thanks for blogging about this book! I’ve been working out of a well-beaten copy of the first edition, and despite much TLC administered, the poor thing’s falling apart. I’ve been meaning to look for a used copy on Amazon, but now it looks like I don’t have to.

Stumbled upon this blog not too long ago looking for Quicksilver video tutorials. Glad I bookmarked it.

By: Scott Freer

Scott Freer — Wed, 21 May 2008 03:31:35 +0000

This is a great book. The only thing better is the course Aaron teaches at the Big Nerd Ranch – he uses this book as the course material. I took the course this April and it was well worth the money. If you want a jumpstart into Cocoa development, the Cocoa course is perfect.

By: Victor

Victor — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:38:56 +0000

I received mine last Monday. I have no programming experience in Mac, but I am moving along at an amazing speed. I am in chapter 7 and so far I have nothing to complain. Great buy.

By: signal response » Blog Archive » Cocoa Programming.

signal response » Blog Archive » Cocoa Programming. — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:17:35 +0000

[...] Apple Blog reviews the third edition of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, a book I have been waiting for after special [...]

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:14:12 +0000

Given all the currently shipping Macs now have 2+ cores, threading MUST be included these days. Yes, I realize it can be complicated, and no I haven’t read this book as of yet.. But having programmed for the past 15 years in multi threading environments, I can attest to how brutally painful it is to use (let alone work on / fix) programs which obviously haven’t taking threading into account. Even relatively new products (Aperture!) which by all accounts should have done it right given their age, don’t.. So lets, please!, change this thought of “threads are too hard for beginners” and find a way to set this world up to use the 16+ cores we’re soon to have..