Rating: 
Summary: overview only but not of great use
Review: somewhat disappointed, specially with a that catchy title: *developer's guide*. Going from the coding material only, it would be extremely difficult for a newbie to start coding an app for the Mac OS X. The 1993 book by Simson Garfinkel and Michael Mahoney, "NeXTSTEP programming: step one, object-oriented applications", is much more diligent in providing detailed guidance on just how to construct an app and use the tools for software development. There were also some confusing remarks when comparing the three programming languages, Java, Objective-C, and C++. And omissions too: for example, no mention that a protocol in Objective-C is like an interface in Java. I didn't see a mention of the fact that there is garbage collection in java and there isn't in Objective-C (but I could be mistaken). In my humble opinion, I would place Java and C++ closer together for their types, while Objective-C is closer to Smalltalk for being typeless. A typed Objective-C, in which the identifiers are not of type id but of a class type such as NSString, or NSData, requires the compiler to do alot more work, just as in the case of C++ and Java (and the author does illustrate the disadvantages of these languages with the example of the Fragile Base Class), so there isn't much advantage in using the runtime features of the Objective-C runtime engine. The author chose, in his examples, the typed form of Objective-C. Most of the book is really a description of the product features of the toolkit to use when doing software development, but not to a detailed degree that one could do without printed manuals. This is no substitute to the manuals. No mention was made of connecting to data sources, internet development, distributed applications. The first 50 pages are about why objects are great in storyline form. But is was pleasant to read. In the old days of nextstep programming, there was a beautifull little book that was called Nextstep programming tutorial by Ann something. In that booklet, examples on how to build an application without the Interface Builder were given. Just code in a text editor, write the make file, and then compile. Only in later chapters did the author in that book detailed how the exact same application could be developed using the fancy tools. With this approach, the developer gets a real feel for the development process itself, which are evenutally hidden by the tools. That is the book that I was looking for when I saw the title of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good starter book
Review: This book provides a good start for OS X programming, it helps explain the why behind what's going on. It's not the total solution, and not for those already used to OpenStep/Cocoa programming, but it's a good resource for people getting started.
Rating: 
Summary: Useless
Review: This book was one of the first on the market for OS X programming. I believe that's the only reason anyone would buy it. The explanations are uninformative - basically saying the obvious and referring the reader to the Apple documentation. (You'd be better off just directly reading the free Apple documentation available online)For an example of what to expect from this book take the following stunning revelation (page 307) - a discussion on Help Viewer - "Users click on buttons; they move scroll bars; they have been trained to interact with the interface." I'm glad we cleared that up. These platitudes continue throughout. Examples are given in both Java and Objective C - this adds nothing since the Java classes are just wrappers around the Objective C classes. All these examples show is how to do the same thing twice in a slightly different syntax. Do yourself a favor and buy "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" by Aaron Hillegass.
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