Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

The best-selling introduction to Cocoa, once again updated to cover the latest Mac programming technologies, and still enthusiastically recommended by experienced Mac OS X developers.

“Cocoa® Programming for Mac® OS X is considered by most to be the de-facto intro-to-OS X programming text.”

—Bob Rudis, the Apple Blog

“I would highly recommend this title to anyone interested in Mac development. Even if you own the previous edition, I think you’ll find the new and revised content well worth the price.”

—Bob McCune, bobmccune.com

If you’re developing applications for Mac OS X, Cocoa® Programming for Mac® OS X, Fourth Edition,is the book you’ve been waiting to get your hands on. If you’re new to the Mac environment, it’s probably the book you’ve been told to read first.

Covering the bulk of what you need to know to develop full-featured applications for OS X, written in an engaging tutorial style, and thoroughly class-tested to assure clarity and accuracy, it is an invaluable resource for any Mac programmer. Specifically, Aaron Hillegass and Adam Preble introduce the two most commonly used Mac developer tools: Xcode and Instruments. They also cover the Objective-C language and the major design patterns of Cocoa. Aaron and Adam illustrate their explanations with exemplary code, written in the idioms of the Cocoa community, to show you how Mac programs should be written. After reading this book, you will know enough to understand and utilize Apple’s online documentation for your own unique needs. And you will know enough to write your own stylish code.

Updated for Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7, this fourth edition includes coverage of Xcode 4, blocks, view-based table views, Apple’s new approach to memory management (Automatic Reference Counting), and the Mac App Store. This edition adds a new chapter on concurrency and expands coverage of Core Animation. The book now devotes a full chapter to the basics of iOS development.

Aaron Hillegass, who worked at NeXT and Apple, now teaches popular Cocoa programming classes at Big Nerd Ranch. At NeXT, he wrote the first course on OpenStep, the predecessor to today’s Cocoa tools. This book is based on the big Nerd Ranch course and is influenced by more than a decade of work with OpenStep and Cocoa.

Adam Preble learned Cocoa programming from the first edition of this book. After too many years of professional C/C++ development, today Adam writes Mac and iOS applications at Big Nerd Ranch, where he is also a Cocoa instructor. He is frequently filling in the gaps between work and family time with pinball machine software development and countless other projects.