Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X 3rd Edition
My editor at Addison-Wesley wrote me today. He says that 6000 copies of “Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, 3rd Edition” are on trucks. I think the 3rd edition is pretty good; it adds two chapters on Core Data, and chapters on the garbage collector, Core Animation, Web Services, NSTask, and NSViewController. A lot of little things were tidied up.
One important note: The most recent betas of Xcode have started using XIB files instead of NIB files by default. XIB files are readable XML representations of the stuff that is usually in an NIB file. At compile time, the XIB is converted into an NIB. As you go through the book, you can ignore the difference between the two file types.
Here is a tarball of the solutions to the exercises, not the challenges.
Posted by Aaron Hillegass on May 8th, 2008 under Cocoa.
Comments: 27
Comments
Comment from Kern
Time: May 9, 2008, 7:43 am
Hope my pre-order is one of those 6000. Congrats!
Comment from Jeremy
Time: May 10, 2008, 10:03 pm
Will there be a PDF version for sale, perchance?
Comment from Administrator
Time: May 12, 2008, 7:10 am
The question about digital forms of the book (including PDFs) is answered by the publisher, not me. The publisher, Addison-Wesley, has decided there will be no PDF and no book-on-taper version of the book, but it will be available on O’Reilly’s Safari Bookshelf.
Comment from Chris
Time: May 12, 2008, 9:41 pm
As a former Cocoa Bootcamp attendee, and someone who has been doing quite a bit of Cocoa development, I am still pretty excited to see the new chapters. I always have a few books close at hand for a different reference perspective from Apple’s documentation. I look forward to this new addition. Keep it up. One of these days I am going to try and make the OpenGL Bootcamp.
Comment from Simon
Time: May 13, 2008, 2:57 pm
Well I’ve got my copy on order with Amazon.com and it will hopefully reach me here in the UK in a week or two. I’ve just started looking into Cocoa development properly so the timing is perfect for me.
However, the errata for the second edition seems to have vanished from the Big Nerd Ranch site. Is it still available?
Comment from Robert McGovern
Time: May 14, 2008, 9:32 am
Hoping this will turn up sooner than the listed June 28th in Germany 
Looking forward to it.
Comment from kusmi
Time: May 14, 2008, 12:59 pm
@Robert
Just buy it on amazon.com, they deliver it to Germany as well – AND it’s cheaper this way too, you only pay $32 -> that’s 21 Euros… compared to the official 36 Euros at amazon.de – you almost get two books for the same price.
I really don’t understand amazon’s pricing…
Comment from Michael
Time: May 16, 2008, 9:10 am
As Simon already pointed out, the page-indexed errata and the solutions to the challenges for the second edition has vanished from this website. Any chance it will reappear or did I overlook it?
Comment from Administrator
Time: May 16, 2008, 9:14 am
I’m sorry that the page-indexed errata and discussion are gone for the moment. We are revamping the website. I had hoped that we would have this taken care of before the book shipped, but the book shipped early and the site took longer than expected.
We will get it going as soon as possible, but it will take at least a week.
Comment from iBrent
Time: May 16, 2008, 9:20 am
I’ve been reading the 3rd edition online at safari.oreilly.com. This is my first introduction to Cocoa and it’s a great read. I really appreciate the walkthrough examples.
Brent
Comment from Robert Marini
Time: May 16, 2008, 9:00 pm
An e-book version of the 2nd edition formatted for the Kindle is presently available, is there any chance at all that the 3rd edition might see that format as well?
Comment from charles pritt
Time: May 24, 2008, 11:18 am
i second the request to get the 3rd version in Kindle format. I already own the 2nd version in paperback format and now have a Kindle. I won’t purchase the 3rd edition unless it is a Kindle version.
Comment from Terry Mahoney
Time: May 25, 2008, 12:26 am
What’s the URL for the website listing Errata of the 3rd edition? I have the book and am running Mac OS X 10.5.2 and Xcode 3 but (as with the 1st edition) the figures in the book do not match the dialogs presented by XCode 3. I’d be quite happy to contribute to a list of errata but I do not see a way to do this.
Comment from derek
Time: June 2, 2008, 11:42 am
The news of there being no PDF version is very sad news. I was looking forward to the 3rd edition, but I would much, MUCH prefer a portable, searchable digital form over dead-tree. I don’t especially want to subscribe to Safari for a single book, aside from the fact that I’d much rather give someone money and get a copy that I own, as opposed to rent on a month-to-month basis.
I’m not trying to be extreme or anything, I just find that I rarely look at my dead-tree books anymore, since it’s much easier to use searchable PDFs that I have sitting on the computer where I’m working.
If you have any pull at all with your publisher, let them know at least one sale is probably lost to the lack of a decent digital version. (I’m sure they don’t care, but it never hurts to try.)
Comment from Priscilla
Time: June 3, 2008, 2:57 pm
I already own the 2nd version, but I can’t find the solutions for this edition, where can I find it?
Comment from Robert Marini
Time: June 8, 2008, 5:14 pm
I believe that the figures were generated using the beta of XCode 3.1 available as part of the iPhone SDK. If you install it, they should match up.
Comment from Ell
Time: June 20, 2008, 9:01 am
It is so sad that all material regarding the second edition disappeared from this Web site.
Fortunately, there is the Internet Archive with the Wayback Machine:
Overview and errata: http://web.archive.org/web/20070607154145/http://www.bignerdranch.com/products/cocoa1.shtml
Creating Frameworks and Interface Builder Palettes: http://web.archive.org/web/20070607154002rn_1/www.bignerdranch.com/palettes/
Corrected book pages 69 to 75 from 5th printing: http://web.archive.org/web/20070607154145/http://www.bignerdranch.com/products/Page69to75.pdf
Unfortunately, the solutions do not seem to have been archived correctly. I cannot download them completely and the file seems to be broken: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.bignerdranch.com/products/Solutions.tgz
Comment from Kira
Time: June 26, 2008, 10:49 pm
I’ve had the book for a little over a month now, and the binding has broken in three places, and the pages are falling out. Poor production quality? Is there someone I can contact at Addison-Wesley about getting a replacement? (At the very least, they should know there’s a problem…)
Comment from Arthur Coleman
Time: June 27, 2008, 11:25 am
First, I truly love this book and do enjoy the challenges. I am attempting to complete all of the challenges as I agree with the author that the only way to really learn and understand a new language is to code, but although I hate to admit this but every once and a while I could use a hint, beyond what is given in the book, on the challenges. Is there anywhere I can go to find a couple of hints?
Thanks – Art
Comment from oliver
Time: July 5, 2008, 7:15 pm
the people at CocoaCast go thru the challenges in their podcast…
Comment from Dylan Malone
Time: August 22, 2008, 5:07 pm
I’ve put > 50 hours into trying to get past the very first challenge in this book… but I’m not even close to figuring it out. I don’t understand why this book, as popular as it is, doesn’t have help for the challenges online somewhere.
I realize that “cheating” could rob us of some learning, but I’m very, very, close to throwing the book in the garbage, which will rob me of more! I’ve never felt so stupid in my life, but the harder I try to understand, the worse it gets. I’ve set the problem aside and turned to other resources online, and other tutorials, hoping to pickup whatever tidbit(s) are keeping me from moving ahead, but I’m getting nowhere.
The CocoaCast people don’t seem to have dealt with this challenge (perhaps it’s new to the 3rd ed.). Anybody willing to help feel free to IM dylanm@me.com
Comment from Gustavo Pizano
Time: November 30, 2008, 3:23 am
Im already in chapter 24, I came back to chapter 19 to look how to implement a rollover that I needed for the app Im building, I did as it says in chapter 19 and when the cursor enters the view, the app crashes.
I then put the roll over on the chapter 19 app, the TypingTutor, and it happens the same, so there is something wrong, I dunno what to do.
Comment from Lynn
Time: January 23, 2009, 2:32 pm
If you get the second edition solutions from the Way Back Machine, you can extract the first 29 chapters’ projects using the command line. Attempting to extract using the gui Archive Utility fails, but the terminal extracts everything up to the “unexpected end of file.” So, that’s all but the last two chapters of the 2nd edition solutions.
Command used:
gunzip
Comment from Antony
Time: June 25, 2009, 2:31 pm
I was able to download the solutions for 2nd edition by:
1) navigating to:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.bignerdranch.com/products/
2) Choose a link (July 27, 2007 worked fine)
3) Clicking the link at bottum of page, ‘More information, errata, reader comments, etc.’
4) Clicking the link at ‘Here are the solutions to the exercises for the second edition.’ –just below the submit button.
This should initiate the file download. It will show up as a ‘tar’ file and the Mac OS will automatically extract it if you click on it.
I did this these steps after I trial and error using methods suggested by others here. I hope this works for you.
Comment from Kevin Hackman
Time: September 8, 2009, 5:07 pm
Really need a place to go to see the challenges or at least some more hints, I’m already stuck on the first one, and this one should be the easiest I would think..
Comment from John
Time: November 15, 2009, 1:02 pm
What’s really needed is a dedicated forum for “Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X 3rd Edition” readers to discuss problems they’re encountering. (This would be a great usability research tool for Aaron as well to make improvements for future editions.)
Any recommendations for the best (existing) forum to post questions about this book?
BTW electronic versions are now available in several formats including online reader at eBooks.com.
Comment from John
Time: November 17, 2009, 1:26 pm
Following up on my previous comment…
I’ve found the (mysteriously stealthy) support site:
http://techstra.bignerdranch.com/
But it’s a terrible format — should be a regular forum with threads so people can ask questions and get answers in an organized way.
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