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.

Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  June 21 2003
Submitted by JongAm Park   [Respond | View]

This book contains good examples.

However there are some flaws. As other people mentioned it, this book suffers lots

of typos, which are not just errors in typed characters but also the explanation.

Unlike other programming environment, Cocoa programming with Interface Builder uses mouse-work like drag-and-drop for "programming" not just editing. What I mean

is to connect outlet to some classes represented as graphical element in the Interface Builder. So, if there is some "missing" sentence, then the code is not going to work, and it's hard to find what error you have. Because of this, you can't use "diff" for finding errors with the code examples downloadable from the Oreilly's web site some times.

So, how much writing errors in this book is very important to gauge how well written this book is. So, this books should be revised seriously.

Second, multiprocessing sample doesn't seem like serious multiprocessing example,

although it's good example. There is no example which uses "fork" and "join" seriously. Whether they are wrapped or not.




Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  February 20 2003
Submitted by Richard Hough   [Respond | View]

A flawed masterpiece.

I have bought a couple of Cocoa programming books and, superficially, this one is the best of the lot. The examples are real, working applications and not code snippets. Moreover, they often involve "cool" features like graphics, integration with the BSD layer, and Mac-specific things like the pasteboard or Services.

The exercises are also emotionally satisfying because you quickly get something that looks pretty; often after doing one I run to my S.O. saying "look at this!"

Unfortunately this is also related to the first of two flaws with the book. The coverage is very superficial; the exercises are all recipies where you type in the magic code, click "run" and ooooh! Look at the pretty pictures! They don't explain how the "magic code" works in any detail, or tell you what to do if you get runtime errors instead of pretty pictures.

And runtime errors are what you'll often get. The second, and most crippling, flaw with this book is that it is riddled with errors; typos, inaccurate information, missing steps, hand-waving non-explanations of important concepts. I have consulted the 18 pages of errata for the book, and still about half the time the application doesn't work right when I run it. The errors are usually things like missing environment variables, conflicting line endings or character encodings, differing system preferences, or other such machine-specific stuff.

The book should cover debugging in more detail. It should have a section on using GDB. The examples should have steps where you validate your configuration against what the authors are expecting. The "magic code" should include error checking. If the second version includes this, it will be the masterpiece this one should have been.


Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  January 11 2003
Submitted by jda   [Respond | View]

In general, a good step-by-step overview of Cocoa programming and Objective-C. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this book as there are major flaws in Chapter 10 and as of Jan 11th 2003, the downloaded tar file (once decompressed) cannot be read or expanded. Chapter 10 deals with renaming several default files. Several critical steps are missing as the applicaiton can no longer produce document windows.


Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  October 13 2002
Submitted by Frederick C. Lee   [Respond | View]

The book is well-planned and logical in its approach. It covers some key items to Cocoa programming in quite detail vs other books.

However, I found errors and my edition (May 2002) doesn't have some of the Jaguar stuff. For example, on Page 323 the author refers to 'Tool' as the New Target for the Project Builder. But my newer version of PB has 5 different tools versus just one. I'm clueless as to which tool to use/develop.

Also, the 'evaluator' example within the Unix environment isn't laid out very explicit. I can't get my makefile to compile correctly. Perhaps it's a missing TAB or SPACE in the code, I don't know. It's hard to follow.

And I can't de-arc the example codes from the web site.

Other than that, It's a good 1st edition that will probably get better in the 2nd edition and beyond. Hence I recommend this book.


Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  September 24 2002
Submitted by William   [Respond | View]

Overall, Building Cocoa Applications is a good introductory book and since I received it for free at WWDC 2002 I shouldn't complain too much. However, the code in this book is full of errors and inconsistancies. Many times after typing in the code from the book, I was disappointed that it would not compile. I had to read over the example code to find the errors. Several times the dealloc method was left out completely. And a simple thing like a missing semicolon (code, p. 479) demonstrates to me that this book was not proofread at all. As a beginner, learning programming, OO concepts and Cocoa, I'm very frustrated with the many errors which have wasted many hours. I guess I've learned a lot from fixing the errors but I hope this was not intended by the authors. I can only guess that since the example code is dated Feb. 2002 that the book was rushed to press so it would be ready for WWDC in May. And that's a shame because without quality prooffreading this book is not up to the standard of O'Reilly books which I have come to expect and depend on. And four months later still no official errata.

It's not my intention to insult or hurt anyone's feelings (authors, technical reviewers, O'Reilly staff) but this book needs work and I would recommend readers wait until a second edition is published. I can recommend Aaron Hilligass' book "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" which is close to being error free and also easier for a beginner to read.




Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  July 16 2002
Submitted by Paul Jager   [Respond | View]

I was lucky enough to receive my copy for free at the recent WWDC 2002, which I attended as a student. I can understand some people are frustrated by some errors here and there, but having no background in objective C and having only been taught Java at uni, I could easily work out and fix the errors in code, and have gotten the applications to work with little effort: mostly they are obvious. I would suggest that people not let these slights put them off getting a copy...I am extremely impressed with the incredible power of OSX, and found that I learnt more about OOP through this book over the uni break than my 3 years at uni studying computer systems engineering. Its amazing, that in a few hours I understood the practical meaning of all that deisgn pattern stuff we brushed over at uni this year (like proxy pattern etc, delgates...)

Keep up the good work o'reilly!


Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  July 13 2002
Submitted by Michael Chang   [Respond | View]

On the whole, this is a pretty decent book, and its content reflects the title well. Before reading this book, I had already read Apple's Objective-C manual, and I have to say that this book fills in a lot of subtle but important pieces of the language, especially as it relates to Cocoa programming, that I would have otherwise not known.

Compared to the other Cocoa-related O'Reilly books out there, this book is a lot more thorough and, as such, is a lot more comfortable to read, especially if Objective-C and the Cocoa framework are new to the reader.




Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  July 03 2002
Submitted by Gerry   [Respond | View]

Considering that is was a free book at WWDC 2002, I am pleased with it. Yes there are some blunders when doing what they want, which is why I am here now.... Chapter 7: Adding the Delegation Outlet. The code they said to enter gets an error, so I am here to see what it should look like. I like the book; it HAS helped me learn, and it is the only book that I have been given, found, or have heard of that (I know) explains OS X, Cocoa, and Obj C; hoever, I am sure there are other books, but where?

- gerry


Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  June 13 2002
Submitted by rixstep   [Respond | View]

'The fact that' is an especially debilitating expression. It should be revised out of every sentence in which it occurs.

-- William Strunk Jr & EB White, 'The Elements of Style'

OS X still does not have a professional programmer's guide.


Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  June 11 2002
Submitted by Mike Beam   [Respond | View]

I too was one of the tech reviewers on the book. The strength of Building Cocoa Applications is its comprehensive approach to teaching Cocoa development. Calling it a step-by-step guide is only half the story. The applications presented in this book are not trivial proof-of-concept applications--they are meaningful applications that show how to _think_ in terms of Cocoa, which is a big part of the learning curve for many.

No book is perfect with regards to the aspects that have been criticized in this forum, but O'Reilly readers are fortunate enough to have a place to go for updated information, errata, and sample code. Don't think that this stuff goes unnoticed by the editors and the authors. Don't let these trivialities prevent you from being exposed to what I feel is some of the best Cocoa instruction available; what you gain here easily overshadows what may be lost.

Even as a tech reviewer I learned a lot from this book, as it is filled with the perspective of two programmers who have been dealing with this material since its inception more than a decade ago.


Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  June 11 2002
Submitted by Ryan   [Respond | View]

This book has been a great teaching tool so far. I am about half-way through it and feel like I have a pretty good understanding of how Cocoa and Objective C work now. I have a good amount of procedural programming experience and have felt somewhat overwhelmed and lacking in the object oriented realm. Building Cocoa Applications has been a great starting point for me gaining more object oriented skills. Great book! I can't wait for Cocoa in a Nutshell!




Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  June 11 2002
Submitted by Andrew Stone   [Respond | View]

For beginners and old-timers alike (YES VIRGINIA - Mac OS X has GROWN immensely since ye olde NeXTStep days), Garfinkle and Maloney have done an amazing job presenting a wealth of material in an easy to digest format.

Their attention to detail and good coding style will be beneficial to the OpenStep community in years to come!




Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  June 10 2002
Submitted by John Charles Randolph   [Respond | View]

I was one of the technical reviewers of the Mac OS X edition of this book, and it's the only one I've seen that takes you all the way through the development of a non-trivial app. Beginning Cocoa developers should read this book cover to cover; skipping around won't get you the full benefit of the book.

-jcr




Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  June 10 2002
Submitted by Don Rainwater   [Respond | View]

This is a great book, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to develop applications for Mac OS X. It covers a wide range of Cocoa programming topics, from the basics of the various Cocoa developer tools through more-complex topics like multiprocessing, multithreading, and system-wide services.

I really like the authors' approach to presenting the example programs. Although small example programs are used for some topics, they present most of the programming topics through 3 larger applications. Each application (Calculator, MathPaper, GraphPaper) is built up over several chapters, which helps the reader tie the topics together and see how the various concepts interoperate. At the end of each major section of the book, you have an application that is actually useful, rather than a bunch of small programs that just demonstrate individual programming concepts.

The book assumes no prior knowledge of Macintosh-based programming, although it does assume some general programming knowledge as well as knowledge of the ANSI C programming language.

If you're serious about developing applications for Mac OS X, buy this book. You won't be sorry.




Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  June 10 2002
Submitted by Peter Sloss   [Respond | View]

What confuses me is that the downloadable examples compile fine, but assiduous following of the text sometimes doesn't give the same result: see, for example, the subclass-custom class exercise in Chapter 11 (pg. 330), which generates a "Not Applicable" message instead of the expected behavior. What did the authors do different in creating their files?

I am still looking for a manual that has items like "do this to open and access the contents of a file". We need a happy medium between arcane U**X man pages and slick cookbooks that leave the reader wondering how to do anything that differs from the examples!


Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  June 06 2002
Submitted by Yong Lee   [Respond | View]

It seems nobody bothered to proofread this book. It's full of inconsistencies and errors. As you go into the latter chapters you'll find yourself wondering what you're doing wrong, when in fact, it's the book!

I was having problems with chapter 11, so I downloaded the source code and compared them. Well, guess what. The downloaded source code is very different from what's in the book. For example, the method textDidChange on page 338 is more or less completely re-written. Not just one or two lines of difference.

In most cases errors are minor and you can figure out solutions yourself if you are somewhat familiar with Cocoa/Objective C. Other times not.

Worse yet, when you check out the error report on the oreilly.com, it says there are no confirmed errors. Just the readers' unconfirmed error reports.

I'd wait 'til they come out with new edition before buying this book.


Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  May 25 2002
Submitted by Joel Goodman   [Respond | View]

I am enjoying this book a great deal. I have rudimentary knowledge of C, and this book is at the perfect level for me, much more so than any other Cocoa programming book thus far. (I think I have them all; I scan Amazon weekly!)

It has by far the most lucid description of the the Objective-C language. The chapter in which the student writes, compiles and runs a simple application with only TextEdit and Terminal is brilliant. I particularly like the structure of the book, where the reader can build simple applications quickly, and then add layers of complexity over several chapters. I find it a very effective way of teaching.

The style of writing is a pleasure to read, and the density of information is perfect for me. The exercises are very useful as well.

Thanks so much for an outstanding beginner's book to Cocoa programming!


Building Cocoa Applications: A Step-by-Step Guide Review,  May 01 2002
Submitted by Scott Steinman   [Respond | View]

This book is an update of Garfinkel and Mahoney's NeXTSTEP programming book for Mac OS X. Although I haven't seen their updated book, I was very impressed with the original NeXTSTEP book, which I read back when OS X was still Rhapsody.