| Cocoa and Objective-C: Up and Running: Foundations of Mac, iPhone, and iPod touch programming |  | Author: Scott Stevenson
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Category: Book
List Price: $34.99
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 23,319
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7 x 0.9
ISBN: 0596804792
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.268
EAN: 9780596804794
ASIN: 0596804792
Publication Date: April 23, 2010
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Product Description
Build solid applications for Mac OS X, iPhone, and iPod Touch, regardless of whether you have basic programming skills or years of programming experience. With this book, you'll learn how to use Apple's Cocoa framework and the Objective-C language through step-by-step tutorials, hands-on exercises, clear examples, and sound advice from a Cocoa expert. Cocoa and Objective-C: Up and Running offers just enough theory to ground you, then shows you how to use Apple's rapid development tools -- Xcode and Interface Builder -- to develop Cocoa applications, manage user interaction, create great UIs, and more. You'll quickly gain the experience you need to develop sophisticated Apple software, whether you're somewhat new to programming or just new to this platform. - Get a quick hands-on tour of basic programming skills with the C language
- Learn how to use Interface Builder to quickly design and prototype your application's user interface
- Start using Objective-C by creating objects and learning memory management
- Learn about the Model-View-Controller (MVC) method of sharing data between objects
- Understand the Foundation value classes, Cocoa's robust API for storing common data types
- Become familiar with Apple's graphics frameworks, and learn how to make custom views with AppKit
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| Customer Reviews:
 Good Book for Programmers, Probably Not-So-Much for Beginners May 29, 2010
A. Kepple (Hood River, OR USA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I would agree with the previously-reviewed notion that this book as an absolute beginner's guide is misleading. I happen to be an experienced programmer who works day-to-day in an object-oriented language (but not Objective-C), utilizing design patterns. I found the shorter explanations useful...I learned a few things and some (Objective-) C concepts were made clear, but I didn't have to wade through pages of "this is a loop. This is a function" that gets tiring to one who understands the general programming concepts. But as one who moonlights as a college professor that teaches these very same concepts, I would expect a beginner to get quickly overwhelmed by this book.
I also feel the book's promise to teach iPhone/Pad programming misleading (the subtitle is "Foundations of Mac, iPhone, and iPad Programming"). Stevenson never introduces iPhone-specific programming concepts, or any of the unique aspects of Cocoa Touch and UIKit. There are mentions of such differences (like the discussion on CGImage, NSImage, and UIImage), but the mention is merely that, and no further information is provided. If you're looking to get into iPhone programming specifically, you can do better than this book. However, this book would supplement another iPhone book well, for its basics on C and Objective-C.
My biggest complaint is the Chapter 9 "real" application. Personally, I don't mind that it took that long to get to a practical app. But the chapter was basically one big "type all of this code in" with pages and pages of code on paper. The introductions to MVC and Core Data were pretty cursory, but I was hoping that through the practical example Core Data would be made clearer, and how it fit into MVC. Also, other topics such as drag-and-drop, fetch requests, and sorting were pretty much presented in the code and never discussed. Stevenson would do very well to refactor the chapter and present it in more of a step-by-step fashion. I found myself longing to hit "Build and Run" just to see something working, but knew that it would be pointless, because I just typed in a big, long class, which is supposed to use other classes that I haven't written yet. I just kept typing and typing, just sort of hoping that all would end well, and that I would have a clear understanding of how the app worked once it was done.
It didn't, and I don't.
What was needed were milestones. You know, just stub in a methods and properties, build and run. NSLog a few things, build and run. Flesh out the details of one of the views, build and run. Give the reader some stopping places where they can test the existing functionality against what they're supposed to see, and also just a stopping place in the reading! I couldn't do it all in one go, and it was difficult picking up where I left off the next day.
The funny thing (funny in a relative way) is that in the very next chapter, Stevenson does *exactly this* iterative approach that I'm talking about. We get into drawing into views, and we start with colors and rectangles. We build an app, and draw a colored rectangle. Hey, it works. Great, let's learn about bezier paths, now. Then move on to graidnets, and images, and then text, and then styling text, and finally user interaction. All the while, we build a simple (not very useful, but still cool enough) application that slowly builds up all of the techniques from a simple colored rectangle to an image with a border, shadow, and sheen, that's scaled properly, has a title that's rendered in a bezel below the image (and is optional) that can be dragged around the view and re-centered with a key press. We had so many stops along the way that it was pretty easy to check your work as you went, and I ended up with a working application, not to mention a much better understanding of these particular concepts. Chapter 10 is the model for what Chapter 9 should have been like.
That particular shortcoming is why I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5. If Stevenson addresses this, I'd happily give it 5. However, you need to be comfortable with a certain skill set before being able to harvest information from this book. That itself is not a flaw, although the marketing that implies otherwise is.
 Just alright May 21, 2010
Stanley Siu (Jersey city, NJ USA)
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
I read this book on Safari online both the rough cut version and the final version.
I do find the book very easy to read as I always enjoy Scott Stevenson's Theocacao blog and his articles on [...]
One thing is certain that this book is not targeted for non-beginner, as the title suggested. Its content is introductory and far too short with 11 chapters. Compared to other books like Cocoa Programming (Aaron Hillegass) which has 35 chapters, it is obvious that a lot of topics are left out. Don't expect advanced topics like Core Animation, Grand Central etc.
Now for up-and-coming Cocoa programmer, is it a good book?
I felt that on this regard, the author is too ambitious.
It is tough to cover Cocoa and Foundation Framework, let alone having to cram C, Objective-C, object-oriented principles and design pattern into it, it ends up only touching the surface on most topics.
And if the newcomer want to know what's the iPhone or iPad app all about, sorry there is none mentioned.
It seems that the author fails on meeting both ends that, either lets the reader to build a solid foundation or having them a tastes of Mac, iPhone programming on Cocoa.
Honestly I wonder why publishing companies in general don't release computer programming books in a series.
If I think of this book as Volume I out of Volume 5, it is a pretty good book. And progressing with the series gives the readers a sense of achievement too.
 The absolute best introduction to Cocoa programming May 21, 2010
Joe
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Scott Stevenson's tutorials on Cocoa Dev Central have been an invaluable resource for new Cocoa developers for many years, with down to earth descriptions of the essential topics of Cocoa programming and the Objective-C language.
This book brings all that and so much more. It is certainly `the' Cocoa programmer's guide to getting up and running. Starting off with an essential setup guide, chapter two quickly jumps into code, with a great introduction to the C programming language and basic programming concepts that form the foundations of thinking in code. Covering the perfect amount of C, from the ground up the author discusses the basics of variables, functions, conditions and straight forward examples of a procedural application.
Chapter Three dives deeper into C discussing arrays, loops, pointers, primitive types, dynamic memory and more. Scott does a great job of introducing new concepts at a human level, making each new idea tangible. This is where his tutorials have always thrived, and these chapters are definitely where I wish that I could have started my journey into programming.
Chapter Four is where the fun really begins. Thinking in Objects. The author begins to introduce the conceptual foundations of object oriented programming, with clear-cut examples of designing objects. The following two chapters compose the best introduction to Objective-C that I have seen, covering everything from classes, syntax and memory management to dynamic language features like introspection and forwarding messages, interspersed with quintessential thoughts on object-oriented design.
The next chapter discusses the Foundation framework and its value classes, the lower level component of Cocoa. A subject that is often abstract comes through in tangible examples of working with objects and the real life data they represent. This chapter goes into detail discussing many of the value classes that you will use regularly developing Cocoa applications. Styled like a reference, but broken apart by relevant topics, you go through data objects, collection classes, mutability and more, and every class and topic comes with a healthy portion of code. The examples in this section are great.
Chapter Eight is like starting a new book. Titled Basic Controls, it jumps into the user interface level of application development and covers the basics of creating an interface and wiring it up to your code. There are a lot of new topics that go into connecting UI to code, and I think Scott does a great job here of peeling away the layers of the subject, using good examples that help you make sense of things quickly.
The next section was the most helpful to me, as a Cocoa developer with some experience but certainly not expertise, the discussion of Model-View-Controller design and the great sample application were just what I needed to be able to picture the beginning points of real applications in my mind.
I love the chapter on custom drawing, and the amount of coverage it has on the details of creating custom UI programmatically. The sample photo viewer app, with a nice shine drawn on the photo programmatically, cracks open a world of possibilities. And the section on refactoring view code is a true gem; this one part was my favorite.
The final word is a take away guide absolutely worth revisiting.
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Scott Stevenson has been an active member in the Mac developer community for many years, and has always been respected for his contributions through awesome tutorials on his website, focused on getting new beginners started, and great technical articles on his blog, ranging many topics relevant to writing software with Cocoa. I started with Scott's tutorials years ago, and have followed all of his material since, so I was really excited when this book was announced, and I can honestly say that it did not disappoint. It is the absolute best introduction to Cocoa programming with Objective-C, written by a true expert on the subject and one of the best teachers around.
Remarkable publication May 19, 2010
Stefanek
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
My opinion is very different from the previous reviewer. This book is a remarkable publication for all those who want dive into Cocoa development. You should keep in mind that learning Cocoa is not that easy. Cocoa is driven by Objective-C which is a superset of the C programming language. In other words: it is required to know the basics of the C programming language before you start with Cocoa. With that fact in mind, Scott's book is one step beyond it's competitors, because it also gives an introduction to the basics of the C programming language, a unique feature in my eyes. It is written in a very likeable style. The examples are similar to the ones published on Theocacao and Cocoadevcentral, very informal and of course understandable. I recommend it to everyone who is willing to seriously develop for Mac / iPhone / iPad. If I could give 6 Stars, I would.
EDIT: Due to a recent comment on my review I decided to revise it (I did not buy the book here so I can't post a reply to said comment). I understand your concerns but there is no need to worry. It is indeed my first review at Amazon.com but it is not my first Amazon review at all. I come from Germany. Please open my profile and change the URL from .com to .de and you will see some more reviews I posted on Amazon Germany. I'm in no way affiliated with the author. At the time my review was published, it was the first positive, now there are more because it is simply one of the best Cocoa books around. It is also true that I did not buy the book from Amazon, I bought it digital. I think it makes absolutely no difference whether Amazon is the source or not. I bought here countless times and I just felt a need of sharing my experience with other Amazon customers. I think Amazon benefits from reviews that come from non-customers.
 Not for Beginners May 17, 2010
A. Guthrie (Chicago, IL)
8 out of 21 found this review helpful
This book claims you can "build solid applications for Mac OS X, iPhone and iPad, regardless of whether you have basic programming skills or years of programming experience." Sadly, though, the concepts in this book ramp up so quickly and with so few examples that a beginner will get lost.
This reviewer has experience with web development using PHP and PERL, so I bought this book in the hopes that it would be basic without not sugar coating it for me. However, the author does not take enough baby steps to help readers through complex concepts. He instead hopes you'll retain pages upon pages of Accessors, Protocols and Instance Variables before you actually put them to any use. In fact, you don't actually start building a usable app until CHAPTER 8. I know Cocoa allows you to build useful things right out of the box, but this book focuses so much on the more esoteric concepts -- with very little context -- for nearly 200 pages.
I'm not sure WHO this book is written for. You need a computer science degree to keep up with the pace, but then if you have a computer science degree, you'll probably think this book is too basic. Very disappointed.
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