Rating: 
Summary: This is the Cocoa Bible!
Review: Although I'm a Cocoa beginner and have worked through other Cocoa books, I feel certain that this book will become a must-have reference for almost every Cocoa programmer. Even though it is written for experienced programmers, all the concepts and buzzwords are clearly explained so even at my level I learn and understand the Cocoa framework. If you also are a Cocoa beginner, I would recommend buying both Aaron Hilligass' Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X as a tutorial, getting started point along with this book to use as complete reference for Objective C/Cocoa.
Rating:
Summary: Really impressive!
Review: Being a newbie to Cocoa has not been an obstacle to diving into this book. It seems to be not only an exhaustive reference but a wonderful guide to understanding the nuances of Cocoa as well. In addition, there are direct and easy to understand diagrams and figures which are very informative and artfully presented.
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Summary: The essence of Cocoa
Review: Cocoa is an OO framework for programming for Mac OS X. It has a vast amount of classes, protocols, and even functions. Thought Apple has done a great job of advancing and improving their own documentation on Cocoa over the last 2 or 3 years, you have to have a certain amount of familiarity with the framework to get your way around it. This book would be your best bet for such a guide on Cocoa. I've been using this book for a year now, and it has never let me down. It helped me to develop over the time that unique way of thinking, which you need to have to be productive and effective user of any framework. Thank you guys for writing this great book!
On a side note, I should say that the publisher has not done its job with book layout and such, so don't be intimidated by its size, it could have been much slimmer.
About the relevance. Yes, the book was written before even 10.2 came up, but it still has its purpose fulfilled. Yes, there is nothing in it on Cocoa bindings, but as I said in the beginning, it will give you a good start to get your way around the Cocoa reference documentation to find all the details. I urge the authors to update the book in the light of the recent developments.
To conclude, if you are serious about staring the software development in Cocoa on Mac OS X, this is the BOOK to read and have around.
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive And Extremely useful
Review: Cocoa programming is an excellent reference book for programmers rank beginners and intermediate Cocoa programmers alike. This book covers a broad range of Cocoa topics in a no-nonsense, get right to the point style that I found very helpful. While most Cocoa tutorials cover a few topics at a high level in the interest of presenting the reader with a gentle introduction, this book covers those topics with a depth and completeness that allow you to take your Cocoa code to the next level of complexity. If you are a Cocoa newbie, I would recommend this book as a companion to your favorite Cocoa tutorial for those times you want to explore a topic in more depth. If you are an intermediate Cocoa programmer, this will be a valuable reference book and well worth the space on your shelf, however small that shelf may be!
Rating:
Summary: From an author
Review: Disclaimer: I am one of the authors.
Cocoa Programming provides intermediate and advanced programmers with the knowledge and techniques to produce powerful full-featured Cocoa applications. Cocoa Programming communicates the wisdom and design experience of three top-notch veteran Cocoa developers and includes technical information and insights that are not available from any other source.
Cocoa is Apple's powerful and mature object oriented development technology for creating Mac OS X applications quickly and efficiently. Apple recommends that all new applications written for Mac OS X use Cocoa. Cocoa is distinguished from other object-oriented development environments in several ways: Cocoa is mature, consistent, and broad. Cocoa is based on a cross-platform specification and has evolved from a cross-platform implementation. Cocoa is extraordinarily extensible, flexible, and dynamic in part because of Objective-C, the language used to implement it.
This comprehensive book covers virtually every aspect of Cocoa application development from the tools used to build programs to sophisticated multi-media and low level implementation details. Topics ranging from client-server networking to game development are covered. Examples that can be used directly in application code and a companion Web site, http://www.cocoaprogramming.net/, provide a treasure chest of reusable objects that illustrate the best practices developed through years of use.
Rating: 
Summary: Not particularly informative or well organized
Review: I now have several books on Cocoa Programming, and I must say this one is the thickest. It however seems to have the least amount of useful information or maybe it's just how it's organized. But, I keep trying to go to this book to get answers and it just never seems to have the information that I am looking for. I would recommend Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass (Author) or Learning Cocoa with Objective-C by James Duncan Davidson as being far and away better references. My feeling is that all of the books that I have found to date suffer from requiring a rather substantial working knowledge of both C and object oriented programming. This book seems to be even worse about this than the two I recommended. To give you an idea of who I am (and whether my opinion is valid for your situation). I am a self taught programmer with fairly experience in high level structured programming but very little previous experience in C or OOP. I have managed to figure out how to begin Mac OS X programming, but it has been a slog. I have been using this and other Cocoa book for eight months now.
Rating:
Summary: The best Cocoa book so far
Review: I own just about every book written for Cocoa programming, but so far Cocoa Programming is the best, it is not a mere tutorial but goes in depth of Cocoa and OS X. I found answers on many questions that I could not find in any other book. In short, it is a must have book.
Rating:
Summary: Almost Perfect!
Review: In my opinion programming books are difficult to market. People have different levels of knowledge, and with APIs becoming so large you could devote one entire book to a subset of an API. Now this book does really well at giving you a big picture of Cocoa while concentrating on portions of the AppKit and Foundation APIs. If you are interested in a specific portion of AppKit, lets say Networking, this book will give you a pretty in-depth description of how to access networks in Cocoa applications. I remember using the book to help me with a NSFileHandle issue I had. Most books would just tell you what a NSFileHandle is and how to open a file, but this book takes it one step furthur by showing you how to read from a NSFileHandle asynchronously. There are so many cases where this book goes beyond intro books.
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Summary: The most complete source available!
Review: This book is absolutely amazing. After teaching myself Cocoa with Aaron Hillegass's book "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X", I picked up this book to serve as a reference because of Apple's poor job at keeping up with their own documentation. One word for this book: awesome. The writers did a great job of compiling almost every piece of the Cocoa "umbrella" framework there is. There are even full chapters on topics that no other book or online source I have seen so far had covered. Things such as advanced networking with TCP and UDP and the real details on NSMatrices. All in all, I would recommend this book for anyone who is looking for a detailed, organized, and complete Cocoa reference. It might not be as good for someone who was never programmed before since I don't think it has the *best* tutorials when compared to the other Cocoa books on the market, but my goodness is this an indispensable reference that will stay on my bookshelf for the remainder of my Cocoa programming career.
Rating:
Summary: The most complete source available!
Review: This book is absolutely amazing. After teaching myself Cocoa with Aaron Hillegass's book "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X", I picked up this book to serve as a reference because of Apple's poor job at keeping up with their own documentation. One word for this book: awesome. The writers did a great job of compiling almost every piece of the Cocoa "umbrella" framework there is. There are even full chapters on topics that no other book or online source I have seen so far had covered. Things such as advanced networking with TCP and UDP and the real details on NSMatrices. All in all, I would recommend this book for anyone who is looking for a detailed, organized, and complete Cocoa reference. It might not be as good for someone who was never programmed before since I don't think it has the *best* tutorials when compared to the other Cocoa books on the market, but my goodness is this an indispensable reference that will stay on my bookshelf for the remainder of my Cocoa programming career.
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