Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful Reference Book as well as Tutorial
Review: This book is absolutely fabulous as both a tutorial when you first start working with Cocoa and Objective-C and a reference guide for later on. Aaron covers the basics as well as more advanced topics equally well. His writing is as easy to understand as it is to read. Anyone even thinking about working with Cocoa HAS to have this book!
Rating:
Summary: Learn from the master...
Review: I actually carry this book with me to and from work. I have found it essential in getting up to speed in Cocoa programming quickly (I had a Java background). Apple's documentation and examples leave much to be desired, and this book fills the gaps.All of the code snippets are easily reused (like the printing example), which allows me to concentrate on the more important aspects of my application's logic. Each chapter introduces a new topic, most of which build on previous examples. I don't think I can praise the book enough for it's value. I was fortunate to learn from Aaron personally at the Big Nerd Ranch. If you can't make the pilgrimage to the BNR, this book is the next best thing.
Rating:
Summary: Cocoa Programmming by Aaron Hillegas
Review: This is the first Cocoa book I have found that comfortably leads the reader from Objective-C and Cocoa concepts to lots of understandable working code. The examples illustrate the power of Interface Builder but the interfaces are, refreshingly, only complex enough to illustrate concepts. Much of the book covers the essential Cocoa concepts that make the interfaces run and the tight integration of the code with IB. The documentation required to create the examples is all within the book. References to Apple documentation are there to lead the reader beyond the content of the book. The writing is not only understandable but very efficient. As a result even more material is covered than might be expected from the healthy 432 pages. Don't start underlining! Every word is important.
Rating:
Summary: The most comprehensive text available for OS10
Review: After floundering through the available on-line resources and the other texts available from... (well lets just say the other publisher), it was refreshing to thumb through the pages of a book that actually explained what was being done. If you're simply looking for step-by-step examples, I say go with the other book. But if you want to understand Cocoa programming get yourself a copy of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
by Aaron Hillegass
Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Review: This was the book I needed, but never knew about. It took a trip all the way to WWDC to find out how great this author is. If you're starting to get serious about Cocoa programming and have a background in computer science or programming, get this book. Aaron knows his stuff and you will get there with his help. I tried a few O'Reilly guides on Cocoa and Objective C, they were useful, but this book helped me get through some issues and figure out this beautiful language. Things made sense, there were a few sections in the book I re-read over and over at 3am until it stuck in my head, but it worked.
I am not disappointed and the book had a lot of hype to live up to. Sorry for not being more specific, but I think you can download a chapter for free online and read more for yourself to make sure this style will work for you.
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Summary: Need more like this
Review: Well done. We need more like this. There are so many resources for windows products but so few quality ones for MAC. This is a very useful resource for anyone wishing to program for a man or to simply understand mac more.
http://poetryring.com/
Rating: 
Summary: First Edition Most Excellent
Review: The first edition of _Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X_ was pretty damn good. Hillegass knows what he's talking about, and the coding samples are pertinent for developing all aspects of Macintosh Cocoa applications. Highly recommended - if you buy one book for Mac OS X programming, this should be it.
Rating:
Summary: Well done step by step tutorial
Review: This book falls somewhere inbetween Beginner and Intermediate. It's a beginners book in that it assumes no background in Cocoa or Objective-C. It's kind of intermediate in that having at least programming experience in some language will be of great help.
The book does not start with a lot of philosophy, instead it goes through a step-by-step process to wrtie the first application. This is done with some good explanations and a lot of screen shots.
The author is a teacher of Cocoa, and he wrote this book to use in his classes. After writing the firt edition he used it for a couple of years, enough to understand where the problems might lie. Now he's done a second edition based on what he learned in teaching the first book, and the changes that Apple has made in the software.
This book is tutorial, not a reference book. It leads you through the process step by step. Then there is a fairly extensive index so that you can look up points later. Highly Recommended.
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Summary: Tough start without prior programming knowledge-
Review: After a quick scan of the work i was about to undertake, i sat with this book in a local bookstore and here's why i bought it. I was looking for a challenge and a new language, plus i had a PowerBook on the way, thus; i bought the book. An absolute beginners introduction to Objective-C this is not, and you would be surprised the amount of knowledge thrown at you in a hasty fashion during chapters 2-4. Though don't confuse this comment: The author verses and reverses in quite a moderate fashion. The material is well planned, and the second edition is well thought out.
Personally, i was grateful that i knew a good bit about programming prior to reading this, bcuz he jumps right in to the good stuff! The code is well layed out, but will do a re-read once i'm through. I feel what i know about Java is quite sufficient and polished,similar for C++, yet the latter was sluggish as i tried to make the connections between the languages. Dominantly, Objective-C is C driven, with the OOP of C++; yet all in it's own syntax and semantics. I learned fast that Cocoa is mostly written using Objective-C.
Bottom Line:
Buy this book if you feel really cozy with OOP in C++ or Java it will be very beneficial, and another IDE (Author lightly covers the readers IDE Usage requests), but the images/figures do well to fill in the gaps. Buy this if u match the above, or want quite an intelligence challenge! Also, the Syntax isn't sluggish, the author keeps the flow as a truly good teacher should. I have no other complaints other than the steep introductory learning curve. I already know 6 languages, two of which really well; i was a bit humbled at the start but pulled thru by chapter 5 thanks to a decent flow of examples. Thanks to this book, i will also be able to easily port alot of these programs into Linux (my favourite O.S.) using GnuSTEP. Preview this in a local bookstore (especially Chapter 2 and beginning of 3) if you can before u buy it.
- hope all this helps
Rating:
Summary: Step by step introduction to OS X development in Cocoa
Review: This is a well written overview of start-to-finish application development in Cocoa. It's primarily focused on use of the interface builder and how that maps to the back-end Objective-C objects. The text is light and easy to read, and screenshots are used effectively. There are also some diagrams to demonstrate the relationships between objects at runtime.
I appreciated the walkthrough, but I would have preferred a reference section that provided an overview of the Cocoa APIs. That would make it valuable after you have gone through the walkthrough.
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