Cocoa is Apple's powerful and mature object oriented development technology for creating Mac OS X applications quickly and efficiently. Apple recommends that all new applications written for Mac OS X use Cocoa. Cocoa is a collection of software objects that implement almost all features common to Mac OS X applications. Programmers extend the Cocoa objects to provide application-specific features. The Cocoa objects are reused in every Cocoa application so that programmers can concentrate on adding unique value with each line of code rather than constantly reimplementing common features or struggling to access operating system services. Significant applications can be built with very little code.

Cocoa is distinguished from other object-oriented development environments in several ways: Cocoa is mature, consistent, and broad. Cocoa is based on a cross-platform specification and has evolved from a cross-platform implementation. Cocoa is extraordinarily extensible, flexible, and dynamic in part because of Objective-C, the language used to implement it. This comprehensive book covers virtually every aspect of Cocoa application development from the tools used to build programs to sophisticated multi-media and low level implementation details. Topics ranging from client-server networking to game development are covered. Examples that can be used directly in application code and a companion Web site provide a treasure chest of reusable objects that illustrate the best practices developed through years of use.

Cocoa Programming includes information about Mac OS X 10.2, code named "Jaguar", and the latest tools and technology included in Mac OS X