Trent Michael - Beginning Mac OS X Snow Leopard Programming

CONTENTS

Beginning Mac OS X Snow Leopard Programming

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For Angela, Katie, and Sophie
MT
For Jennifer, Gileesa, and Rylan
DMc

CREDITS

EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Carol Long

PROJECT EDITOR
Tom Dinse

TECHNICAL EDITOR
Michael Morrison

PRODUCTION EDITOR
Rebecca Anderson

COPY EDITOR
Tricia Liebig

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Robyn B. Siesky

EDITORIAL MANAGER
Mary Beth Wakefield

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF MARKETING
David Mayhew

PRODUCTION MANAGER
Tim Tate

VICE PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE GROUP PUBLISHER
Richard Swadley

VICE PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE PUBLISHER
Barry Pruett

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
Jim Minatel

PROJECT COORDINATOR, COVER
Lynsey Stanford

COVER IMAGE
Bart Coenders/istock

COVER DESIGNER
Michael E. Trent

PROOFREADERS
Kathryn Duggan
Josh Chase and Kristy Eldredge, Word One

INDEXER
Robert Swanson

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

MICHAEL TRENT has been programming in Objective-C since 1997 and programming Macs since well before that. He is a professional computer programmer and engineering manager, a technical reviewer for numerous books and magazine articles, and an occasional dabbler in Mac OS X open source projects. Currently, he is using Objective-C and Apple Computers Cocoa frameworks to build professional and consumer applications for Mac OS X. Michael holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his family.

DREW McCORMACK has a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics and has worked much of his career as a computational scientist. Recently, he founded The Mental Faculty ( www.mentalfaculty.com ), an independent company developing applications for the Mac and iPhone in the fields of science and education. (The Mental Facultys flagship product is the flashcard study application Mental Case, which can be found at www.macflashcards.com. ) Drew is a board member and regular contributor to the MacResearch web site ( www.macresearch.org ), and is a lead on the Core Plot project ( www.code.google.com/p/core-plot ), an undertaking with the aim to develop a complete open source graphing framework for Cocoa.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK STEVE KOCHAN for his early help with this project. Thanks also to Brett Halle, Pete Steinauer, Yaniv Gur, and many others for their encouragement. Most of all, I would like to thank my wife, Angela, and my daughters, Katie and Sophie, for putting up with all the late nights.

M ICHAEL T RENT

I WISH TO THANK MY WIFE, Jennifer, and children, Gileesa and Rylan, for suffering first hand all of my wacky schemes. Thanks also to my brother and mentor Cody McCormack.

D REW McC ORMACK

INTRODUCTION

MAC OS X REPRESENTS A UNION OF many different operating system technologies. At its core you will find Unix, an operating system once reserved for high-end servers and workstations, now found on common desktop systems. With Unix comes a whole history of tools, computer languages, and runtime environments. At a higher level, you will find Cocoa, derived from the application toolkits found on NeXTSTEP and OpenStep a result of Apples merger with NeXT in 1997. In Mac OS X you will also find Carbon, a library made from elements of the original Macintosh operating system. The original Mac OS API remains for older projects, although Apple is de-emphasizing its role in Mac OS X. Other technologies have found their way into Mac OS X through the open source community, and Apple is hard at work developing new technologies unique to Mac OS X.