(OLD VERSION) See BookLearningCocoaObjCSecond for the new version of this book.

Title:** Learning Cocoa **Author: Apple Computer Inc, (Edited by Troy Mott) Publisher:** O’Reilly & Associates **Release Date: June 2001 List Price:** $34.95 **ISBN: 0596001606

OUTDATED VERSION OF THIS BOOK *A new version of this book is out now; see above book for details. James Duncan Davidson has taken the original material and has reworked it to be a true “Learning” book. The long tedious examples are being replaced with short consise ones that focus in on specific topics. Unlike previously reported, this new edition will not be targeted at NeXTSTEP developers, but squarely focused on programmers wanting to learn Cocoa.

Please, if you see this book on the shelves, do not buy it. The discounted price for an old edition will not be worth it.

*Description: For Mac developers of all levels, Learning Cocoa provides an approachable guide to creating applications using Objective-C and the programming tools built into the new Mac OS X operating system. This efficiently packaged text will help virtually anyone master basic Mac application development.

Amazon Link:** http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596001606/qid%3D1004590762/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F0%5F1/002-5082833-4388041 **Barnes & Noble Link: http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0596001606 Dev Depot Link:** http://www.devdepot.com/description.html?pcode=BORLCCOA **O’Reilly Catalog Link: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learncocoa/

—-Comments—-

*ChrisShadyMartin: Overall not a bad book. The sample projects are actually pretty good (i really like the travel planner thingie), but most of the rest of the book is just the PDF documentation you can get right from apple. Oh, and I don’t think it has been updated for the lastest version of the dev tools. I keep looking around for the outlet icon in the classes tab, but cant find it. You can still ues the classes menu -> add outlet though. *awrc: Well, I guess it’s more convenient than reading the PDFs, but that’s about it. If they were just going to package up existing Apple documentation into a book, they could at least have thrown in OOP And the Objective-C Language too. As a complete newbie, things didn’t really start to make sense until I’d read OOPATO-CL, then this, then re-read OOPATO-CL. Starts nicely, but bogs down as the sample apps get bigger. By the time you get to the Travel Planner you’re spending more time typing stuff in than learning. I didn’t even try the To Do app, I just read the text and absorbed what seemed important.

The source for all examples is available: http://examples.oreilly.com/learncocoa2/

• What do I say about this old book, crap! There’s a BIG reason they rewrote the whole book. *Well seeing how this was my first Cocoa book, I’ll put in my $.02. All in all it wasn’t that bad, it did get me programming Cocoa in the first place, but I haven’t seen the new version and would suggest getting that if you can. If you have access to it (and to nothing else) borrow it.
• When this book came out it was just about the only printed up-to-date (post-Rhapsody) reference available. It was tons better than Feiler’s Rhapsody book [http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/macosx-dev/2000-May/001834.html]. So cut it some slack, k? Me and this book, we be mates.
• When I first switched to Mac (December 2002) I was so excited to start developing with this the revolutionary power of Cocoa! I went out, and bought the this book, thinking I was going to be up and running and writing useful programs in a matter of days. Phooey. None of the examples made sense, since the dev-tools had been updated in 10.2. None of the concepts were presented in a way that made sense. I was so frustrated that I actually decided not to program with Cocoa!!!!! I went to REALBasic (yuk) and realizing the limitations of that bulky, ugly language, I slowly gravitated back to Cocoa, almost solely because of this site I may add. My advice, leave this one alone.
• I’ve recently been looking at this book again (1st edition), and it wasn’t as bad as I remember it, keeping in mind that it’s meant to be ‘My First Cocoa Book’. In particular it contains one of the clearest explanations of how the NSDocument architecture works that I’ve read. Of course, all this is said with about 3 years of hindsight and CocoaExperience.