Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding introductory text
Review: I have been through, in detail, the three Cocoa programming books that I know to be available currently. This text, by far, offers the most elegant and usable approach to Cocoa development of the three.I particularly like that the focus remains on Cocoa. The other texts focus too much on ancillary topics, better addressed in other sources, e.g., object-oriented programming, and the Apple Developer tools. Mr. Hillegass also provides clear and concise explanations, that proceed logically, but without hindering the reader wishing to jump to specific topics. The written explanations and source code are supported with object diagrams, providing a clear representation of the object models under discussion. Unlike many examples in the other two texts, the writing style allows one to feel almost a part of the design process. The end-of-chapter exercises push you to experiment with the ideas presented, while still providing enough guidance to keep the level of frustration low. I sincerely hope that the author publishes a follow-up to this book addressing intermediate and advanced topics in Cocoa programming.
Rating: 
Summary: A Touch of Frustration
Review: In trying to use Interface Builder (as it came with MacOS 10.0) to follow-through some of the book's early examples, the Interface Builder did not behave the way the book describes. I abandoned the project created by my first attempt and started a second one - being very careful to do exactly as the book says. IB's responses still were not as the book describes. Made me wonder whether the book was describing a beta version of IB. I found the O'Reilly book "Learning Cocoa" more accurate in this respect. Must give it another try, one of these days. I'll update this review if I figure out what I must have missed the first two times around the block.
Rating:
Summary: A really good investment...
Review: This is a great book. The Author mixes good tutorial manners with humor and intuitive, bug-free examples. A great guide to Cocoa and Objective-C programming. I've taken several programming courses and I've read a few programming books. This is by far the best book for learning a programming language that I've ever read...
Rating:
Summary: Eclipses the O'Reilly Books
Review: This book is the essential book for learning Cocoa. While it doesn't cover Objective-C in detail, the small chapter that does cover it shines light on key aspects of the language that is just too hard to pick up from Apple's online documentation or the O'Reilly Cocoa books. Also, this book demystifies Project Builer and Interface builder. This allows the reader to absorb the Cocoa APIs and patterns without wondering how the tools work or what the icons mean. This book doesn't cover advanced topics such as threading or advanced graphics, but it is essential to get started in Cocoa programming. I can only hope that the author publishes a second volume on more advances techniques and perhaps even a WebObjects book.
Rating:
Summary: Best of the Cocoa books
Review: I have purchased and read all of the books on Cocoa that are currently on the market and consider this the best. Aaron's background with Next and Apple is evident as he guides the reader through a well thought series of explanations and examples that build throughout the book. After reading the book I signed up and took Aaron's course on Cocoa at the Big Nerd ranch which is also highly recommended. The coding and teaching style of the book is more object oriented and cleaner than some of the examples in other Cocoa books that I have read. This book will allow someone with basic programming skills to come up to speed on one of the most significant programming environments that is available. Buy the book and then take the class!
Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic, Must-Get book
Review: If you're wanting to ramp up quickly on Apple's OS X Cocoa technology, Hillegass' book should be the first one you get. It starts off assuming you know nothing about Cocoa and Objective-C, and ends up introducing and exploring all of the concepts you'll need to know when writing Real Applications. How to manage documents. Saving and loading your user's data. Managing preferences. Drawing on the Screen. Printing. Lots and lots of good stuff. The pacing of the book is fantastic. The chapters aren't too short, and aren't too long. Many end with "Challenges", like little homework problems which encourage the reader to explore in more depth the topics desribed in the chapter. In short, get this book.
Rating:
Summary: OK, but not great.
Review: I was expecting to get a lot more out of this book then I did due to the author's background at NeXT. I found it to read very easily and explain things clearly but not things that I really wanted to know. This book should of been the first 3 chapters of a cocoa book in my opinon, and about 150 pages shorter. The author went overly into basic details, and did not provide enough tech details. Well I guess that's what I get for not buying oreilly though.
Rating: 
Summary: Fine training for intermediate or advanced programmers
Review: This book really is one of the best technical training books I've seen. The development is logical and clear. The detail level is good for anyone with a bit of basic C/Objective-C/C++/Java experience. At the same time, while by no means a complete reference manual (those are on-line anyway, bundled with the developer tools), the book is very usable for the more-experienced developer. I've been programming professionally in C/C++/Java for 15 years or so, and found myself leaping ahead to advanced chapters (for example, to add a "sheet" to my growing app). This worked very well, and it's unusual for one book to work both for novice and expert, both sequentially and by random access. The style is personal and personable. Possibly just a shade too much so: the principal flaw of the book is that Mr. Hillegass is still a bit caught up in some "object oriented" turf wars of a decade or so ago. If you want to learn to do object-oriented programming, or even what it is, this is quite the wrong place to go. And the worst of that problem is that the presentation seems to claim to be "OO" without either mentioning or demonstrating the modularity and suitability of design that are the actual roots of "OO".
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding teacher, writer
Review: Aaron Hillegass is clearly an experienced, skillful teacher, and has used his many years of teaching real students to shape the outline and content of his book. Good writing from a great teacher. As others have pointed out, this is not a comprehensive, soup-to-nuts reference for Cocoa programming, but a book that will take you from complete beginner to solid intermediate Cocoa / Objective-C programmer. It will *teach* you Cocoa. You do need to have C programming experience, and some modest exposure to object-oriented programming, but you don't need to be a Mac or Next (or Java or C++) expert to get a whole lot out of this book. Like others, I am eagerly awaiting further books by this author, and will buy them in a heartbeat.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent first book
Review: Comparing this (Hillegass's book) to ADC's "Learning Cocoa" which was the first book out: This book is far easier to follow, in that it's written at the level a programmer needs; giving enough of an overview of what it's doing that you can better understand every detail/aspect of the code it shows you. Clearly, Hillegass has taught many programmers, rather than being a system engineer who's never taught anyone. (Unlike ADC's book, which makes you run through examples but scarcely explains what it's doing, leaving you to infer the logic behind everything -- and sometimes is quite ambiguous.)
--- ... You should be aware, that Hillegass's book is not a comprehensive book about *all* of Cocoa. It focuses on the big, obvious aspects of Cocoa, the really neat stuff Cocoa has to offer, but if you're looking up, say, specifics of how drawing takes place, you won't really get a full overview. No book yet does that, to my satisfaction. (Cocoa is quite big, and no single volume can cover it all.)
Between ADC's Learning Cocoa, and Hillegass's book, I use Hillegass's book as my primary source, the first place I look things up, and 80% of the time it's superior to ADC's book.
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