Rating: 
Summary: For beginner who has some C programming experience
Review: I know right off the bat that this book is a beginner book as are all "learning" series from Oreiley. I'm an experienced programmer with prior experience in NeXTSTEP. So, judging from a beginner's point of view, the "object-oriented programming" chapter is very clear and concise, right to the point. The "Objective-C primer" chapter might need a little bit more work. For a C/C++/Java programmer, it should be easy to read, but it lacks some essential information on some of the syntax.From an experienced programmer's point of view, this book is too basic although it does give you a good introduction on how to use the tools. The whole book is pretty much a tutorial. Personally, I think the step-by-step instruction is just way too much. The instructions are usually duplicated in a lot of chapters. You figure that the author should have omitted the basic instructions in the later chapters, but he doesn't. Anyhow, this is still a good book for beginner. I'd like to see "Programming in Cocoa" come out soon though... Chris
Rating: 
Summary: WOW - What a letdown!
Review: I ordered this book a couple of months in advance before the book shipped. I could hardly wait until the day it arrived. But not long afterwards did I realize that this book is one of the biggest disappoints in programming guides I have ever experienced. You can obviously tell that a single person did not work exclusively on this book. Several chapters are in different writing styles... --And the book contained a couple of chapters I had previously downloaded from Apple's site! This book did little for me in advancing my knowledge of Cocoa and Objective C. It is probably and excellent book for someone coming from the NextStep/OpenStep world, but not for someong new to Mac OS X and Objective C. I found the book unorganized with the subject matter presented in an awkward flow. I am a just becoming exposed to Mac OS X Cocoa programming, but am not by any means an inexperienced professional programmer. Perhaps a more appropriate title should have been, "Cocoa - A Primer For Experienced NextStep/OpenStep Programmers". And what's with the lame Hello World program you first develop? You write a program to print a message to the debug log in the Project Builder environment. That's a program? And what about packaging your applications, creating icons, and whole other slew of potpurri and developmental aspects? These are just about completely ignored. This book is better than nothing... --but not by much. I hope an individual author (OUTSIDE OF APPLE!) writes a book on Cocoa soon. I'm still waiting (and growing impatient) for a great book on Mac OS X Cocoa programming. What was Apple thinking when they released this book to O'Reilley? Cheers all! ---> Kelsey McClanahan
Rating:
Summary: Poorly written rehash of publicly available materials
Review: Learning Cocoa is a a poorly ogranized rehash of materials that are freely offered by Apple Computer's website. The books is deplorably structured. The chapter explaining Objective-C is confusing and incomplete. They don't show any meaningful code until the Currency Converter example. This is the exact emample that can be found in Apple's online developer documentation. This book is only helpful as a printed reference to Apple's online materials.
Rating: 
Summary: Almost useless
Review: The first few chapters are useful for learning the basics of Cocoa, but the last half of the book was written with the mistaken philosophy that people learn to code best by typing in lots of huge examples with almost no explanation. If you want to learn Objective-C and Cocoa (and you already know C), go to Vervante and get "The Objective-C Programming Language" (a print-on-demand book by Apple). Once you've finished with that, you might want to go through the first half of this book - but get a used copy if you can. Or borrow one! The best book out so far is Aaron Hillegass' "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X". While it doesn't cover every topic in great depth, it is sufficient to get you started. From there, stick to Apple's free documentation (included with the developer tools) and searches of the cocoa-dev mailing list (hosted by Apple). Don't bother with O'Reilly's "Building Cocoa Applications," unless you have time and money to burn. Maybe some good Cocoa books will come out later this year, but for now Aaron's and the Vervante/print-on-demand one are about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Useful, I suppose
Review: The Interface Builder (which helps assemble the GUI for a Cocoa application) has changed a bit since this book was written. The palettes have been rearranged, and some of the interface elements are different. For example, the book directs one to click on the "electrical outlet" icon next to the class name. There is no longer such an icon in current versions of IB. Fortunately in all cases where the book no longer matches the tools it has been fairly easy to figure out what to do.
Learning Cocoa is still usable, but is becoming dated.
Rating:
Summary: Useful. If you can get through it.
Review: There are quite a few high points to this book which make it a worthwhile introduction to using Cocao to program for Mac OS X. The overview of Objective C is complete enough for anyone coming from another language to grasp it quickly. The introduction to object oriented programming and the Apple developer tools is also rather well done for those who need refreshers or a place to start.
The programming examples are all simple and clear, thoug building on one another towards the end of the book until you're typing quite a bit just to get through them. Skipping the examples isn't necessarily a good idea either, though early on I was able to do this farily effectively as they deal more with the concepts of how Cocoa is intended to be used than with any real deep material.
The main down side of the book is that it is the best cure for insomnia I have ever encountered. Most O'Reilly titles are more engaging than this one is. The difference in authoring and editing by the people at Apple Computer is evident in the books ability to put anyone I've given it to right to sleep about halfway through any given chapter.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent intro for a half-newbie
Review: This book will give you a great introduction to Cocoa but don't expect to walk away with a mastery of the topic. The folks at Apple have taken their many on-line examples and documentaiton and essentially wrapped it in a pretty and more edited format (less errors than on-line version). There's almost nothing in this book that you can not find on-line, but this book does a great job at organizing. I was a bit bummed that the high quality found in other O'Reilley books was not present here, but in general I like the idea of collaboration between Apple and O'Reilley. In another time, in another place this book would have been the standard documentation that came along with the Developer Tools but in this age when we download everything maybe that can't be expected. In bottom line, this is a well edited, well put together book. It will teach you Project Builder and many aspects of developing with Cocoa. However, it's only an introduction.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book, highly recommended
Review: This book is a fantastic introduction to the world of programming in Apple's OSX native language, objective-C, and the Cocoa frameworks. It is not a beginners programing guide in that you need to have command of C programing, an understanding of object oriented programing and frameworks, and to a lesser extent some knowledge of the Unix tool concepts (although you can get by with out this for a while). It is very helpful if you have experience with makefiles and the GNU cc, linker and GDB. That said, I think that a beginners can write quite astounding programs in a short time with just the book and the knowledge of C programming and data structures. My experience was that this book was an easy read BUT I have about 20 years of C programing (more in other languages) and extensive experience with Think C and code warrior and their frameworks. I am very competent in Unix programming. One reviewer complained that most of the book can be found on-line. This is partly true but you have to look in a lot of places to find it AND the flow and introduction of subjects makes reading the book that much easier. You will need this material in any case since it presents the meat to support this books intro. You'll find the material on the Developement cd or on apples website http://developer.apple.com/macosx/ I give this book two thumps up and a must have for anyone new to Cocoa programming. Richard Rosenlev
Rating:
Summary: Great start to Cocoa
Review: This book is a great start to the Cocoa API's and the Objective-C language. While it assumes some degree of programming knowledge. I went in as a python/perl person, and was able to pick up Objective-C and Cocoa fairly quickly. This book is a great start, I love it! The only thing I knock it for, is that it could have gone a tad farther in depth. I guess they are saving that for "Programming Cocoa." If it follows the traditional Oriely naming scheme. If you want to get into Cocoa programming and take full advantage of OS X , this is the book to get.
Rating:
Summary: A good collection of information all in one place
Review: This book will give you a great introduction to Cocoa but don't expect to walk away with a mastery of the topic. The folks at Apple have taken their many on-line examples and documentaiton and essentially wrapped it in a pretty and more edited format (less errors than on-line version). There's almost nothing in this book that you can not find on-line, but this book does a great job at organizing. I was a bit bummed that the high quality found in other O'Reilley books was not present here, but in general I like the idea of collaboration between Apple and O'Reilley. In another time, in another place this book would have been the standard documentation that came along with the Developer Tools but in this age when we download everything maybe that can't be expected. In bottom line, this is a well edited, well put together book. It will teach you Project Builder and many aspects of developing with Cocoa. However, it's only an introduction.
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