Rating: 
Summary: A must-have book
Review: If you're serious about programming on Mac OS X and have at least some experience under your belt already, then you really owe it to yourself to get two books:
(*)"Building Cocoa Applications: A Step by Step Guide."
(*)"Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X"I started tinkering with Mac OS X a few years ago by reading a hodge-podge of incomplete Apple docs, sites like Stepwise, and archives of Omni-Group lists. These sources are great for reference, but it can be difficult to get answers you need unless you already have enough experience to know what questions to ask. Tough luck, newbie. O'Reilly's "Learning Cocoa" felt like an extension of Apple's docs - minimal on concepts and not entirely clear on some of the objectives of the examples. It's difficult to get an bigger-picture view of some of the capabilities offered by Cocoa and how you _could_ be doing development without a good explanation of concepts, clearly written example exercises that follow a sequence of topics, and additional information on how to make the best use of the Apple-provided developer tools. The authors of both books take great pains to explain concepts to you in basic terms and then reinforce them with very well designed examples that really make you think. They then approach component problems from varying angles in order to help you understand the different options you have for tackling them. The chapter summaries and additional follow-up exercises were a very nice touch. Best of all is the idea that these books are not teaching you how to use particular classes in a restricted situation - they're teaching you how to understand _solutions_ in terms of Cocoa and then equip you with the skills required to plan your entire development approach and execute your project. The pointers on where to find additional documentation and some very, very cool tricks on how to use the development environment really made these books worthwhile. I now feel more comfortable with Cocoa and more confident in my abilities to program on Mac OS X. Thanks, guys. :)
Rating:
Summary: A must-have book
Review: If you're serious about programming on Mac OS X and have at least some experience under your belt already, then you really owe it to yourself to get two books:
(*)"Building Cocoa Applications: A Step by Step Guide."
(*)"Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" I started tinkering with Mac OS X a few years ago by reading a hodge-podge of incomplete Apple docs, sites like Stepwise, and archives of Omni-Group lists. These sources are great for reference, but it can be difficult to get answers you need unless you already have enough experience to know what questions to ask. Tough luck, newbie. O'Reilly's "Learning Cocoa" felt like an extension of Apple's docs - minimal on concepts and not entirely clear on some of the objectives of the examples. It's difficult to get an bigger-picture view of some of the capabilities offered by Cocoa and how you _could_ be doing development without a good explanation of concepts, clearly written example exercises that follow a sequence of topics, and additional information on how to make the best use of the Apple-provided developer tools. The authors of both books take great pains to explain concepts to you in basic terms and then reinforce them with very well designed examples that really make you think. They then approach component problems from varying angles in order to help you understand the different options you have for tackling them. The chapter summaries and additional follow-up exercises were a very nice touch. Best of all is the idea that these books are not teaching you how to use particular classes in a restricted situation - they're teaching you how to understand _solutions_ in terms of Cocoa and then equip you with the skills required to plan your entire development approach and execute your project. The pointers on where to find additional documentation and some very, very cool tricks on how to use the development environment really made these books worthwhile. I now feel more comfortable with Cocoa and more confident in my abilities to program on Mac OS X. Thanks, guys. :)
Rating: 
Summary: Too much of some, not enough of other intformation
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Too much of some, not enough of other intformation
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Error-ridden and too little actual teaching
Review: 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".
Rating:
Summary: Error-ridden and too little actual teaching
Review: 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".
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Introduction
Review: The Book "Building Cocoa Applications" provides an excellent introduction to the fundamentals of Mac OS X programming and the Cocoa application framework. As is appropriate for a tutorial text, this book covers the essential classes in the Cocoa framework that every Cocoa programmer needs to know about. It can adeptly take an intermediate programmer, familiar with C, from no knowledge of Cocoa to a working knowledge of the framework. I particularly like the tutorial applications in the text and the way that the text carries an example from one tutorial to the next so that the reader has the opportunity to craft an Objective-C based Cocoa application from the beginning. I would recommend this text to developers who are familiar with C and want to know more about Cocoa programming on Mac OS X.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction
Review: The Book "Building Cocoa Applications" provides an excellent introduction to the fundamentals of Mac OS X programming and the Cocoa application framework. As is appropriate for a tutorial text, this book covers the essential classes in the Cocoa framework that every Cocoa programmer needs to know about. It can adeptly take an intermediate programmer, familiar with C, from no knowledge of Cocoa to a working knowledge of the framework. I particularly like the tutorial applications in the text and the way that the text carries an example from one tutorial to the next so that the reader has the opportunity to craft an Objective-C based Cocoa application from the beginning. I would recommend this text to developers who are familiar with C and want to know more about Cocoa programming on Mac OS X.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction
Review: The Book "Building Cocoa Applications" provides an excellent introduction to the fundamentals of Mac OS X programming and the Cocoa application framework. As is appropriate for a tutorial text, this book covers the essential classes in the Cocoa framework that every Cocoa programmer needs to know about. It can adeptly take an intermediate programmer, familiar with C, from no knowledge of Cocoa to a working knowledge of the framework. I particularly like the tutorial applications in the text and the way that the text carries an example from one tutorial to the next so that the reader has the opportunity to craft an Objective-C based Cocoa application from the beginning. I would recommend this text to developers who are familiar with C and want to know more about Cocoa programming on Mac OS X.
Rating:
Summary: Cocoa Apps Makes Learning easy
Review: This book had me building real applications in minutes. It's easy to follow instructions make programming fun, and its full of illustrations in case you get lost. I've talked to my uncle, who is a computer programmer, and he said that if I wanted to learn to program, Building Cocoa Applications was the book I needed. I will definatly look to Simson/Mahoney series for all my learning needs.
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