Building Cocoa Applications : A Step by Step Guide | 
 enlarge | Authors: Simson Garfinkel, Michael K. Mahoney
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $64.99
Buy Used: $9.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 214812
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 648
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7 x 1.4
ISBN: 0596002351
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.4469
EAN: 9780596002350
ASIN: 0596002351
Publication Date: May 1, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Good, solid and clean copy. Light cover and usage wear. Text unmarked. SHIPS FAST! 600B
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Product Description
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. 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 buy Hillegass instead August 9, 2008
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.
 Error-ridden and too little actual teaching May 9, 2004
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
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".
Try a different book first. April 4, 2004
28 out of 29 found this review helpful
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.
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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... September 24, 2003
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
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.
 Too much of some, not enough of other intformation September 11, 2003
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
Let me start off by saying that chapter 1 is completely useless. I bought this book to learn about programming - not to learn tips and tricks for the OS! Chapter 1 has lessons on things like emptying the trash, getting file information, etc.! If I'm buying a book on programming, shouldn't it be assumed that I already know how TO MOVE AND COPY A FILE WITHIN THE OS??!!! Sorry, but it is useless in this book and SHOULD NOT be in there! A serious waste of space by the publishers.That said, the rest of the book is pretty good, but I wish it were more comprehensive (Hmmm, maybe skipping the chapter on how to rename folders and adding some extra programming information would have been good...) and like another reviewer, I wish the code examples were explained better. I would recommend this book as ancillary to more comprehensive programming manuals.
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