Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition)

I am just starting on Cocoa programming and Objective-C and Aaron's book is one very useful guide. I recommend it 100% to everyone who wants to learn fast.

I was first introduced to the world of COCOA and Objective C programming in Aaron Hillegass' second edition and have been looking forward to the third edition for new material on Xcode 3, Objective-C 2 and Core Animation, etc. I was not disappointed.

The third edition has retained the best of the 2nd edition and adds valuable new material on all the essential topics. Well done Aaron! I'd love to attend one of your courses at BNR ( [...] ) but your new book is the next best thing :)

This book is a great book for teaching beginners Cocoa. It gives a broad overview of the development environment and strategies. The updated material for the third edition probably isn't enough to warrant the purchase if you've read the previous versions though. If you are already an advanced developer, you probably won't learn too much new here either.

If you're new to OS/X development, a bit of search will quickly point to this book as the definitive resource for learning Cocoa programming. Having purchased it, I understand why. The book definitely meets all my expectations. It's not meant to be a reference (for that go the Apple's developer site), it takes you through most of the basic Cocoa features and techniques in a very well laid out manner. The 2nd edition was already renowned, so will be the 3rd.

I've gone over the previous revision to this book, and while I did find it the best book on Cocoa/ObjC, I still felt like the Mac world kept moving forward while the book was left behind - things changed too much, and some things were not relevant anymore. These are obviously, things that were introduced in Leopard, but even Tiger features didn't always look the same (interface builder screenshots for example).

This third edition is a massive update to virtually any aspect of the topics being covered. From the garbage collector, to CoreData, to CoreAnimation, properties, Objective C 2.0 in general - It's all there.

Hillegass goes a great length to try to explain the "Why?" and not just the "How?". This is very important if you want to turn a developer into a creative spirit and not just a dumb robot.

All in all, this is a must-have for any new/slightly experienced Cocoa developer. Amazon has a terrific price on it too, so the deal is actually sweeter.