The days get shorter, the nights longer, and people retreat to the fireplace reading books. Publishers have announced quite a number of forthcoming Mac OS X programming titles for autumn and winter. Such announcements don‘t mean that titles are actually published on time, or are published at all, but we can at least look forward to reading them.

New Books

This overview doesn’t cover anything that has been announced but just a number of titles I think I will like.

  • Aaron Hillegass, Adam Preble, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (November 2011, 4th edition), 528 pages. The new edition of a modern classic, a must read for anybody interested in OS X programming. Published by Addison-Wesley, more info. This is one of the few book I have bought a number of times, at the moment I use a paper copy for reading at the fireplace and a digital copy for screen reading. The new edition adds so many new topics, among them blocks, view-based table views, ARC, the Mac App Store, concurrency and more Core Animation, that I wonder what will fall down behind.
  • Chris Adamson, Kevin Avila, Core Audio (February 2012), 300 pages. Published by Addison-Wesley, more info. Special interest title, seems to cover quite anything relating to sound and audio programming on the Mac, be it recording, playback, transcoding, 3d effects and midi data. Available as preview rough cut already now.
  • Matt Aimonetti, MacRuby: The Definitive Guide: Ruby and Cocoa on OS X (October 2011), 206 pages. Published by O‘Reilly Media, more info. I’ve never worked with Ruby on the Mac, but if I would, this looks like a title to start with. Early release ebook available.
  • Juan Pablo Claude, Aaron Hillegass, More Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (April 2012), 355 pages. Published by Addison-Wesley, more info. Was included already in last year’s Cocoa Harvest, perhaps it will be published this year. Explains advanced Cocoa programming issues in a recipe-like style, covers Cocoa‘s text system, Spotlight, Quick Look, AppleScript, help and accessibility features, unit testing, automatic updates and much more. I think I will buy this. Available as preview rough cut already now.
  • David Chisnall, Objective-C Phrasebook (October 2011, 2nd Edition), 380 pages. Published by Addison-Wesley, more info. A quick second edition with the first edition published in January 2011. A small but thick volume comprising Cocoa and Objective-C phrases, sorted in 19 chapters and going from memory management, string manipulation, key-value coding to notifications, block programming and network access. The new edition will contain updates for ARC, OS X 10.7 and iOS 5. I use this one on a regular basis but still don’t know if I like it or not as I generally prefer more extensive recipes instead of short phrases.
  • Aaron Hillegass, Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (October 2011), 320 pages. Published by Addison-Wesley, more info. This is no Cocoa book but covers the underlying Objective-C language with a focus on introductory level explanation. Will try to have a look at it though I rely on the excellent Programming in Objective-C 2.0 book by Stephen G. Kochan at the moment.