Re: Any new/updated Cocoa books soon?
Re: Any new/updated Cocoa books soon?
- Subject: Re: Any new/updated Cocoa books soon?
- From: Chris Hanson <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:11:18 -0600
On Jan 26, 2004, at 5:35 AM, Robert Tillyard wrote:
It sounds like the Cocoa market is too small to make a book that
doesn't lose money, but without these books the market won't grow. I
wonder if an electronic book would be able to make the revenue needed
to make the project worthwhile for someone to do.
Microsoft's way out of this trap is to publish the books themselves.
Just as they don't rely on third-party tool vendors for anything, they
don't rely on third-party publishers either. And they over-publish, so
any time you look for information on .NET you'll see literally dozens
of Microsoft Press books on anything and everything to do with .NET
from any of the supported languages. Heck, I even saw a "Programming
WinFX" book the other day, based on the version of Longhorn Microsoft
shipped at the PDC.
It would not surprise me in the least if Microsoft considers their
technical publications group a marketing arm. Apple is doing very well
with what it has, and I'm very grateful that talented people like Scott
are there in techpubs. But honestly, availability of complete,
up-to-date and relevant Macintosh developer documentation has been a
serious problem for nearly a decade now.
Hire more good technical writers. Yes, it's hard, and it costs money,
but it's worth it. Make sure every part of the system is documented at
or preferably before release, and not just in brief reference
documentation but in tutorials and conceptual overviews. That will
make developers' lives much, much easier and get new technologies
adopted faster. Bonus points if this material shows up on bookstore
shelves at the same time a new operating system is released.
Apple should also bring back "develop". How many Mac developers
adopted new technologies after reading a short, clear article by the
actual creators of those technologies? It was before most of the Cocoa
crowd's time, but it was sort of like Microsoft's MSDN Journal, only
without ads, with a whole lot of class, with little to no marketing
fluff, and with consistently solid technical content.
I'd love to know how to use technologies like BlueTooth but I can't
see how-to's or tutorials on that showing up in books.
Some Cocoa developers write tutorials on these kinds of topics, time
permitting, and publish them online at places like Stepwise,
MacDevCenter, CocoaDev, CocoaDevCentral, etc.
There are also quite a few Cocoa user groups out there where people
will investigate a technology and then present it to the group so
everyone can learn a bit about it. Anyone in the Chicago area should
attend the Cocoa and WebObjects User Group meetings (first Tuesday of
the month at the Michigan Ave. Apple Store at 6PM, it's on the store's
calendar), and then come out with everyone afterwards....
-- Chris
--
Chris Hanson <email@hidden>
bDistributed.com, Inc.
Outsourcing Vendor Evaluation
Custom Mac OS X Development
Cocoa Developer Training
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